I grew up in Florida in what was then called a “broken home”. I wasn’t aware of it as a stigma, but I felt deeply apologetic and embarrassed about it, and like lots of kids I tried, unsuccessfully, to engineer a reunion.

My dad was an orthodontist, my mum a teacher. I always had perfect teeth, I always graduated near the top of my class. I was 5 when they split up and after that my mum was the stable, loving point in my life. She stayed with my dad for nine years because she loved him.

My father appeared and disappeared suddenly, sometimes at prearranged times, sometimes not. He would come to get my older brother and me in the summer and drive us to Philadelphia, where he lived, but we never knew how long these trips would last. We were both terrified of him, and with hindsight I can’t imagine why I wanted him in my day-to-day life. He was never physically violent, but he was — still is — a difficult and unpredictable person with a ferocious temper. We were always on edge because what seemed like a happy moment could morph into something tense and confrontational.

Dad had a habit of shouting at weddings. If he saw one, he’d wind down the window of the car and yell “You’lllll beeee sorrrryyy!” at the stunned couple, then he’d honk the horn and flash the lights. He thought it was funny, but for us kids it was mortifying. To this day I associate weddings with mortification and guilt, nausea and anxiety.

What happened in my childhood is responsible for who I am now. When I was at college, I wrote a few short stories and showed them to my father but he said they weren’t very good. I thought: I’ll show you. It’s partly a catharsis to write, and a way to solve a hole in my heart.

As a teenager I had lots of good girlfriends but always the wrong kind of boyfriend. It’s a repetition of that old dynamic: I go for the kind of man who won’t commit. If I find a man who’s decent and kind then there’s something wrong with him, so I find the man who’s going to leave me. You understand these things emotionally and rationally, but it doesn’t stop you doing them.

Five years ago, despite my loathing of weddings, I thought it was time to get married. I was working in a bookshop and I was in love with the guy I’d been dating for almost ten years, but it didn’t seem like he was ever going to ask me so I thought I’d force his hand. I told him I was going to move to Minneapolis, thinking that he’d beg me not to and ask me to marry him to make me stay. Of course, he didn’t — and I had to go. It was a stupid reason to move to a different place. Minneapolis is freezing in winter, and I didn’t even own a proper overcoat — or have a job to go to. But it was also the best thing I’ve ever done. I needed the geographical and emotional distance from Florida to start writing.

People think that a single 40-year-old woman without children must be unfulfilled in some way, but that’s not how I feel. I think I’m unusually happy in my day-to-day life. If you’ve got to my age and you haven’t had children, you’re very used to doing what you want when you want, and I don’t think I could change that.

If I’m bad at relationships with men I’m very good at making friends, and I’ve always had lots of them around me — a makeshift family, if you like. I guess I might get married one day, when I’m old and in a nursing home. But it’s not like I’m actively looking for a husband. God forbid.

My father and I are estranged now, but if he came to me, I would open the door to him and if he called me, I’d go. I don’t feel angry or resentful. I believe powerfully in forgiveness and despite all my cynicism, I also believe in the pursuit and maintenance of love.

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo, Walker Books Ltd, £12.99

A picture of Kate DiCamillo was inadvertently used in Dr Sarah Brewer’s Age of Enlightenment column in yesterday’s edition of T2. We apologise for this error