2. Adverts for take-away pizza, the parish newsletter, and all the other leaflets that came through the door while I was trying to block out the sound of Mum and Dad arguing.
3. The back of the Cornflakes packet, the telephone directory and Mum’s copy of The Mail, sometimes before she’d looked at it herself and it was still smooth and uncreased.
4. The note Dad left for Mum on the night he finally moved out, found stuffed down the side of the sofa while searching for my bus fare next morning. It was crumpled and wine-stained, Mum’s reaction as clear as Dad’s words.
5. The unpaid bill for the ballet lessons Mum told me she could easily afford. It was only when I looked up the word ‘arrears’ that I understood why it was buried beneath her socks.
6. The letter from the heart specialist that Mum refused to show me. This was much harder to find.
7. The text Mum sent Auntie Sue after her final hospital appointment, the one she didn’t even try to hide from me. “Bad news” is all it said.
8. The look on his new wife’s face when Dad told her I’d be staying for a while.
Ruth Bradshaw writes short stories and creative non-fiction and works part-time in environmental policy. Her writing has been published in a number of journals, anthologies and websites including, Nation Cymru, The Clearing and Spelt Magazine. She also publishes a monthly Substack newsletter about urban wildlife called Stories of Coexistence.
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