One

When my father died, I thought my life was over. My mother Karen was a drunk, and a whore, and we hated each other. My dad was all I had in the world. I was only eight years old when it happened, and while it seems an age ago now, a mere ten years have passed. My memories of the day it happened, and everything after it, are still precise. My mind is still storing, as though recorded on video, each second, broken down into fragments that I can play over and explore. The pictures are blurry, especially at the funeral, because my eyes were thick with warm tears, but my memories are still strong. I could fill an entire book with the story of that painful week, each tiny and insignificant detail in dull exactitude. I could start with the morning of the day he died, and describe the events as they unfolded after that. Or the exact point at which he died: the moment the tip of that bullet met the cool tang of the autumn air. Or I could go back even further, and describe the events that led to my father becoming involved in something I am only just beginning to understand. But the strongest memory of that week is the last, and that is where I shall begin; it was where this new chapter of my life began. This is the memory I shall begin with:

It was my father's funeral. My entire world had shattered inwardly the moment my father fell to the floor; I was alone, distraught, and devastated. I remember standing in front of all those people, and all I could think about was how I didn't know who any of them were. It was as though a crowd of strangers had filled the church. Black suited men with blank faces and women whose cold silence seemed to freeze the air around them. My mother was not present. Only two figures stood out to me: my baby sister Carrie, only three years old she squirmed in her seat because she was alone too, and she didn't understand why. And one woman, who didn't wear black but bright blue, with a black band around her pale upper arm. She stood against the wall at the back of the church and wept hideously into her handkerchief. No one knew who she was. She was alone too.

I rubbed my eyes into my skirt and stared out at the people I didn't know and didn't care about: none of them were my dad and none of them could bring him back. Mrs Kent, our neighbour, who had organised the funeral, stood at my side. She tried to take my hand but I wouldn't hold hers. I didn't like Mrs Kent, because she was a prim, tight lipped old lady who pitied Carrie and me; she knew what our mother was and she pitied us… and that I could not stand.

Up on the stage I was shaking, fidgeting with my dress and shuffling my feet. Even now I squirm at the memory of the tension in that room, the quiet that was broken by Mrs Kent's soft words and the woman's sobbing. Mrs Kent finished talking. She walked away from me to switch on the song that I had chosen. It was my dad's song, mine and his. Whenever he went away I would play it and close my eyes and then I would feel his hands smoothing my hair and his voice comforting me. That magic was gone now, in front of those blank faced strangers I felt nothing and I feared my father was lost to me forever. I was still alone.

I started to speak. Mrs Kent had written something nice for me to say which I had learnt that morning eating cereal, but now my mind was blank. Instead I said a bunch of jumbled up lines from her speech and my own thoughts as they jumped into my head. I told everybody about the time my dad took me to see where he worked in Africa, and how he was such a good man because he cured the dying children there, who were just like me only they had no food or water or toys, and because we had everything we wanted we had to help them. I told them how whenever I was afraid my dad would hold my hand and everything seemed alright again, and he told me that that the only thing to be afraid of was fear. I've held onto that motto my whole life but right then, without my dad, I was alone and I had everything to be afraid of.

It must have been a wonderful speech, the sort of terribly depressing thing they have children say in the movies. I just spoke and spoke and spoke, not to the people or to the crying lady or my sister or Mrs Kent, but to my dad, to God, to anyone above who might have been listening and who could help me feel less alone. I spoke until I'd upset myself so much that I could barely breathe for crying, and my face screwed up and my eyes were wet again and I could speak no longer. Mrs Kent tried to usher me off stage, but as I turned to go I glanced down at the front row and through my tears I saw him.

He just sat there, calm and cold, as though he had every right to be there, to be sitting at my father's funeral. I was transported in a rush of nerves back in time to that hideous moment, cowering in terror behind the bushes where my father had pushed me, string in wide eyed horror into the shadows. The man's face was not placid and silent there, but twisted and distorted in rage, like a monster or devil. I had no idea who he was or what he wanted but his face was etched into my brain. I still wake up in cold sweats when he enters my dreams at night, his hands trembling as he holds the gun, his long finger pulling the trigger as though in slow motion, his panic stricken face as my father fell backwards in shock, a red stain creeping across the chest of his blue shirt.

He glanced up at me, saw me looking at him. He even smiled sympathetically. I was terrified. I screamed. I screamed and his face went white as he realised. He got up hurriedly as though to run, and some hidden primal urge pulsed from deep within me: pure, unbridled hatred coursed through my veins. I leapt from the stage and crashed into him. His head made a crack as it hit the floor beneath me. He lay on the concrete under me, not struggling or trying to escape. I pounded his chest with my fists; my face was contorted by overwhelming grief and fury which I was far too young to comprehend but obeyed blindly. I hit him and dug at him with my nails like an out of control child in a fight, which I was. And then grief overwhelmed me and I buried my face in his chest and wept and wept and wept, not even realising what I'd done until I heard someone shout "He's dead."