I remember reading about a lonely mother once, on an odd sort of noticeboardshe wrote she didnt know what to do and every path out felt like walking through thick fog. That struck something inside me, and made me want to unfurl my own storynot to cast blame, but because when youve got children and a hollow purse, waiting around for a miracle feels like floating in a boat without oars. Nothing was gifted to me. I carved out my own patch of ground.
At sixteen, I left my parents house in Sheffield, driven by stubbornness and youthful nonsense, convinced Id blossom on my own with my boyfriend. We found a tiny bedsit; the kitchen melted into the lounge, a thin wall tried and failed to divide off a bedroom, and the bathroom stood in the chill of a narrow garden out back. It wasnt much, but we called it ours. Two sunspins later, and I’d just marked my eighteenth, I found out I was having our first child. Life carried onhe drove a minicab, brought back enough to fill our fridge, and no one was fasting.
But as our son neared his first birthday, his work dried upso he said. Bad season, heavy competition, the car on the blink. I trusted every explanation. Then, almost on cue, I found myself pregnant againwith my daughter this time. Four months along, he vanished. No clues, no note. One day he grabbed a coat, a few shirts, and was out the door, chasing after someone else.
The sting wasnt just his sudden disappearance, but the way neighbours, distant relatives, and the folks from the estate suddenly had tales to spintheyd glimpsed him with her for months, saw her waiting on corners, whispered that hed been staying with her. None said a syllable while we were together. It all came hissing at me like wind under the door, when I stood alone, pregnant, child tugging at my pyjama hem.
Hed evaporated. Never asked after his children, never sent even a pound for nappies. I sank onto the kitchen floor and let the day slip through the gap as I wept. The fridge was mostly echo; formula would soon be gone. The rent loomed at the end of the month. The cot lay empty, the drawers bare. I sobbed, but the next dawn I clambered up, reminding myselftheres no pausing when youve got little ones.
It began in that same drab flat. I asked for groceries on tick from the kind chap at the corner shop. Made trifles, mini pavlovas, teacakes. Snapped pictures on my battered phone and stuck them in my WhatsApp story and on Instagram: Selling homemade puds to buy milk and nappies. People started buyingsome out of pity, some because they fancied a treat. The money went to groceries, a sliver to save for rent, the rest for essentials.
Then I expandedhomemade lunches to order: rice, lentil soups, stewed chicken, shepherds pie. Sid, from two doors down, delivered them on his old moped; I paid him a bit whenever I could. I was up at 5, belly round as the moon with my daughter, my son giggling at my feet while I chopped and stirred. Some days, exhaustion had me pressed into the kitchen chair, weeping quietly, but the next day Id be banging pans at the crack of dawn once again.
I scrimped, pound by pound. As my due date crept closer, my mum rangasked me to come to her place, so that I wouldnt be on my own. My daughter was born in my childhood bedroom. Since then, my parents have been my anchornot bankrolling my life, but propping me up when things started to teeter, looking after the children when I get orders.
Now my sons six, and my daughters growing fast. Mum and I began a small confectionery from a pocket-sized shopfront. We do birthday cakes, treat tables, bakes for parties. Were not rolling in pounds, but I never go to bed hungry and I dont fall asleep gnawed by the thought that tomorrow my children might starve.
I know all too well the ache when a man leaves a woman holding the tattered cord of a family. Its crooked, it isnt fair. But I learned something else, toowaiting for rescue is like waiting for a London fog to clear with a hairdryer. No one arrived to pull me from the deep. When youre a mum, you dont get the luxury of giving up.
