My birth mother died in a car accident when I was just three years old, so for many years it was just me and my dad. Then, when I was seven, he met Beverley, a secretary at the plumbing business which employed him. She was a big black lady of Jamaican descent and had two kids – Tyrone was a year younger than me, Tommy was five.
After a few months, things got serious and Beverley and Dad decided to get married. They each sold their houses and bought a new one between them, and all five of us moved in together. My dad was white and interracial marriages were a distinct novelty in those days (early 1980s) but we all rubbed along together happily enough for a while.