We talked for about two hours, mostly about other things. She is funny. She is much funnier than I am.
And at the end, at the door, she asked me one question.
She did not ask for anything. She did not ask why it happened, or what my sister was like, or whether I was sorry, which I had prepared for.
She said: did you know it had your name on it?
And I said: yes.
She thought about that for a moment.
And she said: okay.
Then she said goodbye, and I walked to my car.
I have been asked since, by somebody who cares about me, why I did not explain. The lawyer. The press. The reasons. All of which were good.
And the answer is that she had not asked for my reasons. She had asked a yes or no question, and she was entitled to the yes.
We speak now. Not often. It is careful.
Here is the only thing I have.
Everybody wants this to be about parents who threw a sixteen-year-old out with a bin bag, and about the daughter who ended up owning the better apartment.
That part is true and I would be lying if I said the lift doors were not satisfying.
But a name is not a small thing to lend out, and I lent mine out by saying nothing for seven years.
If somebody is using your name — on a company, a foundation, a mailing list, a review, anything — and you have decided it is not worth the fight because fighting it would drag you back into something you got out of —
I understand that decision completely. I made it.
May you like
Just be honest with yourself that it is a decision, and that it has a cost, and that the cost will not be paid by you.
It will be paid, quietly, at a kitchen table, by somebody who reads your name and thinks: this one will understand.
