DAD’S SICK SECRET FIGHTING BACK
Pushing soggy cereal around my bowl, my mum Michelle* looked at me.
‘Are you OK, love?’ she asked, concerned.
‘Mmm-hmm,’ I replied, not meeting her gaze.
Then the doorbell rang, and I froze like a rabbit in headlights.
As Mum went to answer it, I heard a familiar voice and I felt a knot in my stomach.
‘Where’s my Baby Doll, then?’ my dad Gordon, 29, said.
Mum and Dad had split when I was just six months old. Now I was five and they shared custody of me.
I spent my weeks with Mum, 22, and my stepdad Michael*, 25.
They were the happiest times.
‘What did you do at school today?’ Mum would ask as we tucked into dinner.
They were always so interested in how my day was, and always checking how I was feeling.
We spent evenings cuddled up on the sofa, watching cartoons, and Mum and Michael tucked me in every night.
They were so loving and supportive, and I wished that Michael was my real dad.
Mum and Michael were how parents are supposed to be.
But I spent every weekend with my biological father.
Strolling into the kitchen, he grinned at me.
‘We’re going to have a fun weekend, aren’t we Baby Doll?’ he said.
I grimaced.
He’d always called me his Baby Doll, and I hated it.
Traipsing with Dad back to his miserable three-bedroom house in Bridgeton, Glasgow, I felt numb.
Dad lived with his wife Joanne*, 29, and every
