“Come get your worthless daughter and take her back,” my mother-in-law shouted my father as I lay broken at the bottom of the stairs after my husband shoved me down. “Your family will answer for it if she has even a scratch,” was the sole warning Dad offered her. They had no notion who my father really was, so they made fun of him.

Gabriel looked toward the line of curtains, lowering his voice a little.

‘That’s something you should discuss with your father directly,’ he said to me.

There was a light tap on the metal frame of the curtain, and it was pushed aside.

My dad walked into the tiny triage room.

He was wearing his comfortable brown jumper, but his physical posture was completely different from the quiet man I knew.

At home he walked rather stiffly and his gait was slow and gentle.

And now he carried himself with a rare authority and self-possession.