My father was a big, red-headed man with a booming voice and his rare appearances in our lives generally led to trouble. Debts, confusion, embarrassments of assorted types for my beleaguered mother to clear up..

After our parents divorced, the official close of a long-defunct marriage, my three siblings and I saw him even less often. There were presents one Christmas and a handful of awkward meetings when we didn’t know what to call him. If Daddy seemed over-familiar, the cosy Dad sounded weirder still. As for Father, it made us think of muttered prayers in school assembly.

He died when I was 19 and he was barely 50. I felt terrible sadness for the relationship we’d never had and was now impossible. The grief hung around as a minor key refrain of “what ifs?”

Several years later I was sent as a young feature writer for the Express to interview a best-selling spiritualist called Betty Shine. I understood the doubting tone expected of me and, armed with 20-something cynicism, had no intention of falling for her eyewash. Betty turned out to be charming. Then, shortly after offering me a cup of tea and complimenting me on the brightness of my aura, she declared that my father was in the room.

“He needs to be forgiven”, she said. “He can’t move on.” I ran through the ways in that pre-internet age she might have discovered anything about him and kept a poker face. I asked her for evidence in the form of details about his accent or appearance. An unabashed Betty failed to supply them. “I just get the message, dear.” And then the announcement that finally made my composure wobble: “he wants to say sorry, to your mum.”

Cynicism dented, I wrote the piece and filed the experience as intriguing. Betty, genuine or not, unlocked real curiosity about the man I had hardly known. I requested a copy of his death certificate and discovered that the barrel-chested farmer and amateur boxing champion I remembered in his prime was so frail by the end that he was described as anorexic.

At the sight of that heart-breaking note, the words “I forgive you” escaped from me unbidden. There was a moment of release and then my father’s trailing ghost floated peacefully away.

Betty has herself passed to the other side, where she is no doubt kept busy. I owe her thanks for prompting my first lesson in the power of letting go.