She's twelve when she realizes that maybe it really is possible to hate someone you've never even met.
(Because she hates everything about this man that haunts her home, even when he's thousand of miles away and she's never even met him.)
She hates the far away look that her mother gets whenever she talks about him and how tears start glistening in her eyes.
(Why does she care so much anyway?)
She hates how he's never even once sent some child support, because heaven knows her mother needs it.
(He has to have a job, right?)
She hates how other girls hug their dads when they finish a dance recital, and she's left staring out the window, looking for her mom's car because she had to work late.
(Her mother always has to work.)
She hates how when she has a whole binder of letters she wrote for him when she was a kid.
(She still writes them sometimes.)
She hates how he left a hole in their home the size of Texas.
(He's British-he probably doesn't even know where Texas is.)
She's seventeen when she boards a plane that's headed to a foreign country, and she thinks about-for the second time-that she hates him.
(She hates everything.)
She hates how she looks at her phone for the seventh time today, waiting for a call from her mother that will never ever come.
(But she's not gone, how can she be gone?)
She hates how she's on a plane to a place she's never been.
(She didn't want to go to England like this.)
She hates how she's going to live with a man she's never met.
(He doesn't even know her, why does he want to take her in?)
She hates the twelve year old in the seat next to her, because he's swinging his feet back and forth too fast.
(It's rocking her seat too much.)
She hates the smell of the plane, and she hates that she hates him so much.
(Maybe it's not just him.)
She's still seventeen when she finally gets to tell her friends that she hates her father.
Because why on earth is it any of his business what type of guys she dates?
(It's her life anyway.)
He has no right to kick him out on the street because he decided that the guy's sole intention was to "shag her".
(What does that mean anyway?)
She's only lived with him two months.
(And she wants out of there as soon as possible.)
And what kind of job is a consulting detective anyway?
(Why can't he just have a normal job like a normal dad?)
And who does his flatmate think he his anyway?
She's seventeen and she decides that her uncle is the worst man on the face of this planet.
(And her father is possibly the most embarrassing.)
It's not that hard to dress in nice clothes to go to Buckingham palace is it?
(So why on earth did he come in a sheet?)
And why can't her uncle just act like he practically rules a country.
(Honestly, she is more mature than the both of them.)
And she's not going to date any convicted criminals.
(So why is her uncle running background checks on every guy she dates?)
She's eighteen and he's standing on top of a building, phone in hand, and even from where she stands she can see the tears glistening in his eyes.
(Or maybe it's just the tears in her own eyes.)
And she doesn't have time to wait for John to finish talking to him, and she's running, tearing into the building and up the stairs.
(What if she hadn't tripped over the fourth one?)
And it seems like ages until she gets on top of the building.
(Ages and ages and ages, like time slowed.)
Her palms press into the stony ledge of the building.
(It's rough and gravely and the way it feels on her palms is the way her lungs feel.)
All she can see is his broken body and she's gasping for air.
(She can't breath, She can't breath.)
Her legs can't hold her, and she just sits there forever, crying, crying into her knees.
(She didn't hate him. She didn't hate him at all.)
I lied.