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I am my mother's dirty little secret

On an otherwise unremarkable day during my tenth year, my mother picked me up from school and told me my father had died.

I was unmoved. My mother had left him three years ago, and his mercurial moods made me feel uneasy, so I had been happy to stay away. Now he was dead, and that was that.

My mother didn’t comment on my lack of distress, but made me take a day off school a few days before the funeral. We went to a park with a man I knew as a family friend. As we sat beside the duck pond my mother began to talk about my father, and everything suddenly made sense.

Before my brain had caught up with my mouth I interrupted my mother’s awkward monologue and, indicating our companion, blurted out, “Is he my real dad?”

He was. I’d been conceived while my mother’s husband was on a six-month tour with the navy. But once we’d gone home, my mother instructed me to never tell anyone else. “I told you in case someone says something at the funeral, but it must stay a secret,” she said. “Just say your father is dead.”

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