Brought Up by My Gran, but Now My Mum and Dad Say I Owe Them Child Support Payments

My parents make their home in Liverpool, while I live in London.

Its been more than two decades since we last saw one another. Theyre both artists, travelling the country with a troupe of singers, always on the move from festival to harvest fair. My entire childhood feels like a collection of their echoes. When I was five, I went to live with my gran. To ease the burden on her, she and I moved in with her cousin in the rolling hills of Yorkshire. My mum and dad did visit, perhaps twice a year at first, but as more seasons rolled by, their visits faded like chalk in the rain. Eventually, I stopped picturing their faces at all. Our calls fizzled out, and silence swallowed the years. While I was studying medicine at Kings College, I married in my third year.

Now my husband and I run a bustling dental practice, turning a tidy profit in pounds sterling. It was not until last year that my parents reappearedquite suddenlyringing the clinics landline, since they didnt even have my number. Our conversations blurred into their moans and lamentations about the sorry state of their lives.

I listened quietly, then reminded them that the path they had chosen began the day they sent me off to my grandmothers. Occasionally, they posted a few quid to Gran, but mostly, we scraped by on her pension. She never let me forget itwe pinched pennies for heat and meat, cut corners wherever we could.

I did well at school, which earned me a scholarship. To afford clothes and keep food on the table, I worked nights as a care assistant in the ward. Looking back, I see that my life is mine alone, just as theirs is theirseach to get on as best they can.

When my parents caught on that I was not a solution to their troubles, they started threatening to take me to court for financial support. But with the state of affairs between Liverpool and Londonso much distance, so much historyI think its a hollow threat. Their pettiness finally dried up all lingering affection I had for them. Where I once wondered if I ought to send the odd cheque, that moment set my certainty in stone: I have no wish to know them now. Am I justified, or am I being unfair to my own parents in this dream that keeps endlessly returning?