Nicolas Ridley

NON-PATERNITY EVENT

When he told me, it felt like the confirmation of something that I’d always known but must now remember. I’d felt something similar when, at school, we were taught that the square on the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. I seemed to know this already but was pleased that Pythagoras had provided the proof. Or, later, when I learnt that light bends; or, later still, when I learnt that time bends, too. It didn’t surprise me. It seemed right. It’s my belief that we frequently know more than we think we do. The corollary is that sometimes we know less. To put it another way, when Dad told me that he wasn’t my father, I didn’t think it would change anything.

Non-Paternity Event was first published in Tears in the Fence Issue 59 in May 2014.