My father used to stay in bed a lot.

My mother said she sensed something was wrong when he got food poisoning and then refused to get up during their entire honeymoon in Greece. She had to go down to eat alone.

He stayed in bed during his university finals. He stayed in bed during their honeymoon, he stayed in bed when he was supposed to be at work.

He'd lie in bed and smoke and play his trumpet and he wouldn't answer the phone. My father would only bath on Christmas Day.

He would never do the washing up, he would say ‘Simon says hands on heads’ at the beginning of mealtimes and leave us trapped.

He would let us climb on things that were too high and take us outside during thunderstorms in just our knickers and vests.

One time, he encouraged us to paint the kitchen black whilst my mother was at work. It was the windows that upset of the most.

After lying in bed for the two weeks leading up to my ninth birthday, my father decided to get up and go to a book launch just as my party guests are arriving in their party best. I was speechless.

My mother was hurt inside and she says she ‘sensed something was wrong’, but he told her ‘Woolfendens don’t do divorce’ and anyways by then she was getting too depressed to do anything.

He would argue with my sister. I'm not going to hit you. He would say yes, you are. She would reply. It really infuriated him that She flinched.

‘You're turning them against me’, He'd say to my mother. ‘She doesn't love me’ He’d tell us

He took early retirement and started to have strokes.

He chose a chair in the sitting room and more or less stayed there until my mum had gone to bed, then he'd slip in beside her while she was snoring and then return to his chair at around lunchtime.

And there he sat year after year smoking, watching telly, listening to jazz, reading Byron or Pushkin and creating bloody scabs and bald patches in his beard. He became an obedient child to my mother. ‘Move Peter I want to Hoover’

He’d leave his flies undone and sometimes wouldn't make it to the toilet in time.

One day when he was shuffling back from the tobacconist, he was run over.

‘I live alone’ he told the driver

My father would cry spontaneously and frequently.

After dinner once. I asked him why, he clumsily put his cigarette out in his plate and shot a sly look at my mother, because he knew how much he hated it when he did that.

Then he looked up at me with snot dangling in strings from his beard

‘I'm crying because I am alive’ he said.

I put my hand on his balding head and for a moment the kitchen disappeared and the profound sadness of his six words shot up my arm like a legacy