The day after I was born, I was taken off to an isolation hospital. My parents had both had TB and there was a concern that I might develop it myself. So I spent the first three months of my life in hospital, 30-odd miles away from where my parents lived in Kirkcaldy. There was no bus service and my parents didn’t have a car, so they only managed to visit once in that time. When my mother saw me, she didn’t recognise me. She just walked straight past me.
All her life, I think my mum tried to love me in the way she knew she ought to – she tried to make herself feel that absolute bond that you’re supposed to have between mother and child. But we didn’t have that intimacy. A few months before she died, she said – almost in passing – “I always thought we never bonded properly, because we were separated when you were born.” That was the first time she’d ever directly addressed it. We’re Scottish! We don’t talk about our emotions.
We always used to joke that my father was taking my life in his hands when he took me out. So many times, something awful happened. When I was tiny, he’d do that thing where you push a pram away from you on a hill and let it roll back. He did this with rather too much vigour once and the pram and I went over the brow of the hill, down the other side, and crashed into a pillar box. Another time, when I was about four, I ripped the skin off my arm going down a helter skelter with him, and when I was six or seven, he rammed us so hard on the dodgems my front teeth went through my bottom lip. I came out all covered in blood. So my mum always used to say, bring her back in one piece!
My paternal grandfather got sent to jail for selling cigarettes on the black market during the war. My dad had lied about his age to sign up for the Black Watch [a Scottish infantry battalion] and so my gran, who had four other kids and no money coming in after my grandfather was arrested, went and grassed my dad up. She told the army, “My son’s joined up under age, you’ve got to throw him out,” and my father was discharged after 124 days. He never had to go back into the army, because my gran got him a reserved occupation job in the shipyard, building ships. He was a welder.
Both my grandfathers were miners. I was closest to my maternal grandfather, who loved the fresh air. I’d be playing out the back of their flat with the other kids in the neighbourhood and my grandad would go, “Come on, we’re away up the woods,” and we’d all just trail off after him. He was like the pied piper, he always had a gaggle of us kids at his heels. He’d take us along the shore or up to the woodlands, and teach us the names of the plants, the shells and the fish, and how to make bows and arrows.
My parents both understood the value of reading and an education. When I was little, my mum would take me to the library and read me picture books all afternoon. I’d walk along the street reading novels and newspapers. Once, I came home with a black eye and grazed cheek, and my mum thought I’d been in a fight. But no, I’d been reading and had walked straight into a wall.
My cousin Senga, who is 11 years older than me, was a big influence when I was young. She went to university and became an academic, ending up as a professor at Newcastle University. She always encouraged me to have a can-do attitude, and would invite me to stay, and go to the theatre and concerts with her. She was very much an example of why my parents would say to me, “Follow your dreams.” She was the one that got away, and she showed me the way to reach escape velocity.
I don’t remember having a “coming out” conversation with my parents. It was part of the landscape of my life. The first time I was living with someone, I just brought her home. My parents were quite chilled about it. I look back and think it’s amazing, with their background and their experience of the world, they were so open-minded and liberal. It was quite hard being a teenager, trying to find something to rebel against. I ended up having to have some quite extreme leftwing politics to get a rise out of anybody in our house.
My dad died 10 days before my first book came out. I’d taken the jacket flap up to show them, and they were very proud and excited about the publication. But my dad never held one of my books in his hands, which is a great sadness to me. He was 64 and his death was very sudden. I don’t have feelings of things unsaid, though. He knew I loved him, and I knew he loved me.
Back in the days when I came out as a lesbian, motherhood was one of the things you got a free pass on. You didn’t have to think about it. But then the world changed for the better. Every child who, like my son, is born in a gay or lesbian relationship is very much a wanted child. There are no accidents in these births. And that’s the way you break down prejudices and barriers, and show people that we’re not two-headed beasts.
I enjoy being a mother enormously. It’s something that’s added a whole layer of complexity to my life. It’s not always easy – but it has been an amazing experience. I feel immeasurably enriched by my son’s presence in my life.
• Out of Bounds by Val McDermid is published by Little, Brown, £18.99. Buy for £15.57 at bookshop.theguardian.com
