Suspect BP (EV 11)

My father has always been an amorous man. Rumour has it that he used to have money back home and there were numerous affairs throughout the marriage, including with many with his friends’ and relatives’ wives too. My mother says he even went off two hours after my birth for a shagathon in another city (my mother did not use that word, of course).

Anyway, at no point did he consider blessing his family by actually leaving for any of those women. It was just sex, sometimes a paid transaction, sometimes a fantasy in his head. He had no fear of getting caught and made no attempt to hide it. He tried it wherever he got the chance – my mum’s sister, my mum’s niece. Openly. Brazenly.

One of his own cousins who he had shagged in his youth came to our house to ‘visit.’ She was sitting on his lap whilst her husband and my mother watched and served them food, whilst enduring their shameless behaviour.

One particularly awful year, a young woman who got divorced moved into our home – a family friend. Her family was abroad so my parents took her in and she became a sister to me. We had a small room that my baby sister and I shared and this young lady moved into this room and we all slept in one bed. It was amazing having an older sister for the first time. We lay in bed chatting, eating snacks, watching films. She waxed my arms and legs for the first time and took me shopping.

It was all going well until my father decided he was in love with her. So began his infatuation. As always, it began in a ‘jokey’ way and escalated to the point of an obsession and paranoia. He became her bodyguard and even the local grocer became a love rival; once he decided my 16 year old brother was eyeing her up and kicked him out of the house for a night, with no mobile phone, no money and no explanation. He spent the day following her around anywhere she went and at night, when my mother fell asleep, he even turned up to our bedroom. My sister and I squeezed our eyes shut tightly as he whispered perverted things and gradually this progressed to tickling her feet, touching her leg – or even worse. I developed insomnia and had school the next day.

Most of it, I have blocked out but until today, I cannot stand the sound of a man whispering.