It was not drive. It was four of them and no second adult and a calculation about nursery fees that did not work out, and a decision that if I was going to be exhausted either way I would rather be exhausted on my own terms.
And here is the part that matters for the rest of this.
By the March of 2021, when I could have found him in an afternoon, I had already built the whole of my life round his absence. The house, the hours, the childcare, the shape of my week, the story the four of them had about themselves.
Finding him would not have added a father. It would have taken a brick
out of a wall I had spent four years building without him, and I knew it, and I did not want to find out which brick.
That is not the same as protecting them. I have stopped letting people tell me it was.
