Mum, its us your children Mum They looked at her.
Ann and Robert had spent their whole lives scrimping and saving, with the sort of luck that makes a lottery win seem more likely than a second cuppa. Shed once dreamed like so many girls of happiness, white picket fences, and possibly a little dog. But life, as is its habit, took a detour. Robert worked himself ragged for a wage that barely bought fish and chips on Fridays, and Ann, soon after, found herself expecting. Not once, not twice, but three boys in rapid succession. Ann left work behind for motherhood not that the single salary would stretch to cover everything. The boys grew, as boys do, needing trousers, jumpers, and shoes that somehow always sprouted holes.
Every penny of Roberts salary disappeared on groceries, bills, and whatever else needed paying. Twelve years vanished in this manner, chipping away at both their sanity and the family as a whole. Robert, stressed to the gills, took to the bottle, bringing home his pay but stumbling through the door stewed most nights. Ann, disillusioned with both love and lager, eventually snapped. One evening, Robert staggered home clutching a half-drunk bottle of gin. Ann, at her wits end, snatched it from his grip and, with more courage than sense, downed it herself. From that day, she found solace at the bottom of a glass.
Sobriety became optional. Problems fluttered away, like tax returns stuffed in a drawer; life, oddly, felt lighter. In no time, she was waiting eagerly each afternoon for Roberts boozy homecomings. Soon, gin became their shared hobby.
The boys might as well have been invisible. The neighbours never ones to mind their own business gossiped over garden fences about how gin could turn a person inside out. Eventually, the three lads were seen knocking on doors, scrounging leftovers and stale custard creams. Finally, one exasperated neighbour snapped:
Ann, honestly, youd be better off handing them to care than letting them starve. How much longer are you planning to drink your life away and forget your kids exist?
Those words haunted Ann, replaying every time she poured another glass. Life, she thought, would be far simpler if the house was quieter. Not long after, Ann and Robert gave up pretending. They sent the boys away, left them in the hands of the system. So, they ended up in a childrens home, crying and watching the door, always hoping Mum or Dad might come to fetch them. Ann and Robert carried on, barely remembering their sons at all.
Years shuffled past. One by one, the lads left the childrens home, given one-room council flats not Buckingham Palace, but at least the rain stayed mostly outside. They found jobs, cobbled together pork pies on a shoestring, and leaned on each other. No one talked much about Mum and Dad, but deep down, they wanted to ask why: why had it all gone so wrong?
One overcast Saturday, the brothers gathered the nerve and squeezed into a battered old Vauxhall, headed back to their childhood street. As fate would have it, on the walk to the door, they passed their mother, hunched against the wind with shopping bags straining at their seams. She breezed straight past, not even recognising her sons.
Mum, its us. Your boys Mum
She turned, confusion clouding her face. Then, something clicked.
Tears started, splashing down her cheeks, and she began to apologise over and again, words tumbling out desperately. The brothers stood awkwardly, not sure if the rain was on their faces or just the moment. In the end, they decided for all her faults and failings she was still their mum.
And so, they forgave her.
