THAT sentence.

I think I must have been about 12 when it happened, but I don’t really remember. I think I just tried to block it out.

I don’t know the date, or the time, or much of what happened that day or over days to follow.
I just know that reading that one sentence changed my whole life, and it was raining outside.

The previous week I had been looking through the cupboard in mum and dad’s bedroom for some old photos when came across a shoe box with hundreds of letters inside. The envelopes were all decorated with hearts and flowers and words. I had to have a look but I knew I shouldn’t be snooping and they would be cross if they found out.

I had always known that my dad had been in prison when I was a baby; they always told me about when we had been to visit him when I was very little. These letters must be from then, love letters between my mum and dad from when I was a baby. I had to have a look.

I waited for them to go out one day, and I began to search for the box once again. I looked where I had found it before, on the top shelf behind some random items which look like they hadn’t seen the light of day in several years. I carefully removed the box and lifted it down onto their bed.

I removed the top of the shoe box and peered inside at the colourful, carefully stored letters. The whole shoe box was full. I didn’t even know that my dad could draw, but the envelopes of the letters from him to mum were beautiful.

I carefully opened one of the letters at random. It was at the beginning of the box so must have been one of the first to be written. The envelope was not as colourful as the rest; maybe dad was too unhappy to draw pretty pictures at the beginning of his sentence. The post date said 1987. A year after I was born.

I slowly read through, but something was strange. Instead of the conversation I expected between two lovers who had been parted, it was almost like two strangers writing to each other - the weather, things in the news, things that I can no longer remember.
As I came to the end of the letter, I read the sentence which has haunted me to this day.
“It was very nice to meet your daughter Sharon today”

The world as I knew it fell apart around me.