When I lay on my bed that night, I was half sad about Bella and half so happy, my heart was pushing up out of my chest. It felt like it would go right through the ceiling and fly up up up into the stars and sail around the universe if I didn’t put my hand there to stop it.

You lay down beside me, dressed as a normal kind of dad, for once. In a blue hoodie and jeans. With one Wednesday sock on and one Monday sock, even though it wasn’t Wednesday or Monday.

You looked at me, grinning.

“I won the art competition,” I whispered. “I can’t believe it.”

“Course you did. Didn’t doubt it for a second. How’re you feeling?”

“Pretty amazing.”

“Good. You deserve it. And you killed the beast under your bed.”

“I know, right? And I have you in my life. My dream dad.”

“Yup. Life is all rosy and perfect, eh?”

I sighed. “Not exactly. I tricked Bella and upset her. I don’t feel good about that. And writing those letters made me think about my real dad, and that’s made me angry.”

“Why angry?”

“Because he walked out and he doesn’t even care if we’re alive or dead.”

“Amber,” you said, “you need to forgive him for that.”

My teeth ground together. Me? Forgive him? “No way. Why should I?”

“‘Cause if you carry all that anger around in your heart it’ll come out sometime. Maybe at the world, maybe at someone you love. Maybe even at everyone you meet. Trust me, you don’t want that anger sitting in there drilling a hole in your heart.”

I thought about that. But it was way more complicated than that.

I stared at the floor in my room, at nothing in particular. It helped me to think. Even though I felt happy, the anger about my dad still felt like a long spike wedged in my heart and I wasn’t sure that would ever go away. “If I forgive him,” I said, “that means what he did was okay, and it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t even the tiniest, weeniest bit okay.”

“You might never know the real reason he left. But instead of hating him, you could accept that what he did sucked, it hurt you, and it was very uncool. And then you can let it go and get on with your life.”

I lay there for ages, thinking. About my dad. About my mum and them being together. About them having me and Bella, and looking so happy in those photos of when they came home from hospital with us. We were tiny and cute and helpless. How could he walk away from that and never even call?

At last, I said, “I don’t think I can ever forgive him. I don’t know how to. And I don’t know if I want to. He might never come back and then I’ll go through my whole life without a dad. You know how much that sucks?”

You nodded and let out a long slow whistle. “I know how much that sucks. Humans make mistakes. They get angry, they do stupid things they’re not proud of, and they hurt the people they love most.”

It was true. I got angry and said things to Mum and to Bella that I didn’t mean, and sometimes I hurt them just because I felt like it. And I always regretted it but by then it was too late.

I stared at the ceiling, thinking about what you said. Wishing I lived on the top floor and the roof was made of glass so I could see the sky. I must have eventually fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, my alarm went off and it was Sunday morning.