So many unlabelled splinters in my memory. In my grandparents’ bedroom, I had been shown formal pictures of my mother as a student but there was not one of my father. Even after her death, when I scurried around White Paint to discover whatever clues I could find of her life and death, I came across no photographic evidence of him. All I knew was that the political maps of his era were vast and coastal and I would never know if he was close to us or had disappeared into one of those distances forever, a person who, as the line went, would live in many places and die everywhere.
