Read Me Myself Milly for Free Online Page B

his twin daughters. It didn’t seem right that somewhere there was a man wandering around who didn’t know
he was our dad.
    When we were ten Lily and I decided it was our duty to find this man and inform him of his good fortune. We imagined the scene, sometimes even acting it out. Lily always played the part of
our father because it required a great deal of emotional acting and Lily was better at that sort of thing than me.
    Sometimes we pretended we’d tracked him down and we acted out the scene where we knocked on his door and told him who we were. Or we’d pretend we were on a train and we’d
overhear a man telling his friend how he’d met the most beautiful woman called Summer at a musical festival years ago but he’d never been able to forget her. We’d then reveal our
identity and it would all end in joyful tears.
    We pestered Mum for every small detail she could remember about him. Then we bought a big scrapbook and wrote them all down carefully. When we’d finished we had covered half of the
first page. This is what we had:
    Shaggy:
    • about twenty-five (ten years ago – so mid-thirties now)
    • about five foot eleven
    • hair and beard – long, brown and curly– like our hair
    • accent – not really, might have been to public school but was covering it well
    • had a friend called Spikey or Spidey or something like that
    • liked pickled onions and real ale (apparently not a good combination when you’re sharing a tent)
    • distinguishing marks – none, no tattoos or weird-shaped birthmarks
    That was all we managed to get before Mum twigged what we were doing and gave us the lecture on how our father, while important in our conception, was not important in any other respect.
Traditional family units were redundant in this day and age and we were well provided for as we lived in a communal household. This was true, at the time there were seven adults and five children
in the house on King Street, but none of them was our father. What made it harder was the fact that we don’t look like Mum so therefore we must look like him.
    In the absence of any information about our real father and the fact that we had a whole scrapbook to fill, we took to finding and cutting out any photographs of men that even vaguely fitted
his description. Which turned out to be pretty much anyone with brown hair. We got pictures of actors and rock stars as these were the easiest to come by. Then we moved on to catalogue models and
politicians and TV presenters. By the time the scrapbook was nearly full I felt I should point out to Lily that our dad might not be in the public eye. He might be a normal man whose photo had
never appeared in a magazine or paper or on the internet. Lily didn’t like the idea but she had to agree it was possible, so we moved to plan B which was to take pictures of likely looking
men with Mum’s camera.
    To be honest we didn’t find very many. Lily refused to accept that he’d had any other children, so men with families weren’t allowed. But we got a few; not many people
notice where children are pointing their cameras. Lily would stand as close as possible to the man in question without looking suspicious and then I would pretend to be taking a picture of her.
This had the added bonus that when we printed the picture off we could immediately compare him to Lily to see if there was any family resemblance.
    Of course, eventually Mum found the scrapbook and realised what we were doing, so she sat us down for another talk. She looked really unhappy.
    ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’m really sorry that I don’t know who your father is and I’m not proud of the fact. I think you need to accept that there’s no
way of finding him and there’s no point in thinking about him; you’ll drive yourselves mad if you spend the rest of your lives thinking he could be that man in the street or so and so
on telly. Please let it go. You’d be much better off thinking about what you do