We opened the front door and immediately realised that most of the house was in darkness. It felt like sneaking home at two in the morning, yet it was only about eight in the evening. There was a quiet murmur from the television and a flickering blue light coming from the lounge room.
We turned towards it and stepped into the lounge. Chilton was sitting on the couch watching TV in the mostly darkened room. He looked up at us as we entered the room.
"Hi, guys. Did you have a good time?"
Mum had quite a glint in her eye and a small smirk as she nodded.
"Yeah, it was nice to sit at the beach and have fish and chips. It makes me feel at home as much as anything ever has. I feel like I have finally returned to my childhood home in some ways."
He nodded along and smiled.
"It's funny how a certain food can do that. I always think of my mother's cooking when I think of home. I miss it a lot, my home and my mother. Well, home before England anyway."
"So where does your family come from originally?"
"Originally, we were from a rather poor place just to the west of Kingston in Jamaica. It was rough there, and my parents wanted to be free of poverty and desperation. As kids we didn't really see it; it just was what it was and was completely normal to my brother and me. Looking back on it as an adult, though, I can see why they wanted out.
The company my father worked for eventually offered him a position alongside a number of his co-workers, which meant moving to England. To my parents, it was like they had won the lottery. When we sailed out of Kingston, it was like we were on a great adventure. It was an incredible experience for my brother and me as we ran amok on the ship for a couple of weeks. We were told stories of the English countryside we would be able to run around in, the education we would get, and the money our family would have. We were promised riches beyond anything we had had at home, and the excitement that we all felt only grew as we got closer."
There was a long pause as his face became sad with the memory.
"It was, of course, all a lie. We basically exchanged a street-level slum for a high-rise one. Our new English home was a two-bedroom London council flat. The gangs of Kingston were exchanged for the same group of thugs in London. Different faces, different accents, same bullshit. We were there for about two years before my father was badly injured in an industrial accident in the factory he worked in. Unfortunately, he never recovered. He lingered in the hospital, attached to machines, for about a month before he eventually passed away from his injuries.
I guess we were lucky that we weren't left destitute as the company kept their promise and allowed us to continue to live in the flat. I believe it was their way of assuaging their guilt and trying to prevent a lawsuit, but sadly my mother only ever saw it as benevolence and kindness. She has refused to leave there ever since."
My mother smiled sadly and nodded.
"We share a similar story."
Chilton nodded.
"Yes, Liz has told me about your father, but I would like to hear your perspective on your childhood."
She looked around the room as though looking at the ghosts of her past, and a smile eased across her face. She began to tell him stories of her childhood. Many of these stories I had heard before, but there were some that I hadn't. It was interesting to get even more insight into her life when she was younger. It was one more of the many ways I felt like I was discovering a completely new person today: a woman who was a child, a teenager, a daughter, a woman, but most importantly, so much more than a mother and wife.
She had had a good childhood with loving parents and the freedom to explore her world. Not all of the stories she told were happy ones, though, including the story of how her father passed away. I felt bad because I had never really talked to her much about it. I knew it had been a car accident, but I didn't know any of the details.
"I was fourteen when it happened. I had come home from school; Mum was here, and Dad was running late. I knew Mum was worried, but she didn't say anything. This was way before mobile phones or anything, so it's not like she could call him. Dad was rarely late home, and it was over an hour after he was due home when the police knocked on the door. I don't really remember the details much after that other than a lot of crying, and my granny, Liz's mum, and Mum's sister came around. They're both gone now too."
There was another long silence before she spoke again.
"A truck went through a set of traffic lights at speed. The driver managed to swerve to miss the cars stopped at the lights but not enough to avoid ploughing straight into the side of Dad's car as he had just taken off from the other side of the intersection. The driver of the truck had gone way over his hours on the road, and the truck itself had faulty brakes because the company that ran them demanded they be running all the time. Servicing got overlooked because it meant they wouldn't be on the road making money, and the drivers were regularly pushed to exceed their legal time limits for the same reason."
"Mum struggled so hard to keep everything afloat for that first year, and I was a typical teenager who didn't really pay as much attention to her struggles as I perhaps should have. I knew money was tight, and I never asked for anything extra, but I didn't pay as much attention to her the nights she sat in her room crying as I should have. It's not that I was completely unaware of it, but I didn't know how to deal with it, so I left her alone thinking that was the right thing to do. I wish I had known better then, but I think she was also hiding a lot of it from me because she wanted to protect me from it as much as possible."
There was a pause as she looked at me, understanding the irony of what she had just said and the way she had handled her own depression lately. She nodded at me to acknowledge but didn't say anything about it.
"There was a court case and a coroner's inquest, and the company was found guilty of a lot of different things. About two years after he died, there was a massive payout, and the owner of the company even went to prison for a while. Those first two years were bloody tough for her. She was working a lot of extra hours, and there were a couple of times that I knew she was scared of losing the house. Fortunately for Mum, the payout meant she could finally get rid of the house loan and cut back the hours she was working. She even took my new best friend, Susie, away with us on a small holiday.
That was a great time in my life, but I always felt a little guilty that the quality of our life came from the death of my father. Afterwards Mum still had quite a bit of money left over, although I never really knew how much, and I never really asked for much anyway. Mum continued to work part-time, but I suspect it was more about having social contact with her work friends and feeling that she was still doing something worthwhile. It has meant that she hasn't had to struggle financially ever since, but I know there isn't a day when she wouldn't give it all back to have him back again. She was absolutely heartbroken for years after that, and I don't think she ever really got over it. She never dated anyone that I saw or had any boyfriends that she told me about. Certainly nobody serious."
Chilton nodded in agreement.
"We never really do get over something like that. You just learn to adapt and live around the pain."
Mum nodded then gave a small bitter laugh.
"You know, that has always been the standard by which I have judged a marriage. It's partly why I feel that my own marriage has never measured up. Yes, I would be sad if my husband passed away or if we separated, which I suspect is imminent, but I would probably only feel a sense of relief, of freedom. Is that wrong of me?"
He eyed her carefully as though debating the best way to answer that question.
"I don't necessarily think it's wrong, but it is telling. I think it answers any questions you might have about your marriage. I'm no marriage counsellor, though, and I have never been married, so I don't think it's really my position to say how anyone should feel in their marriage. Having said that, I think if I were in your position, I would consider very carefully what I wanted from here on out. Life is too short to stay in an unhappy situation. It can be scary to change, but anything worth pursuing should be a little bit scary."
Chilton asked her about her friend, Susie, and if she was still in touch with her.
"I loved Susie in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, her parents were ultra-conservative and religious, and they really restricted the places she was allowed to go. It was a monumental undertaking just to get them to agree to let her go on a holiday with us for those couple of weeks. Mum practically had to undertake a full interrogation about where we would be going, as well as who she would be around, and they had all these strict rules for her. Thankfully, Mum was really good about it and agreed to everything they said. As soon as we were out of town, she stopped the car and had a talk with us both. She told Susie that she had no intention of being as strict as her parents were, but she had to promise not to let on that she had allowed her the extra freedoms. Susie laughed and said there was no way she was going to tell them. We had the most amazing time on that trip. The things we got up to would have had her grounded for the rest of her life."
She chuckled and gave me a knowing look.
"Anyway, as teenagers so often do, we eventually went our own ways. Susie moved away from the area with her parents because her father had some falling out with their church. We stayed in touch for a while after that, but with new relationships and other interests, we just kind of lost touch with each other. There was never a falling out or anything, just a gradual moving on. I haven't heard from her since just before I got married."
"Did she know you were getting married?"
"She did. I have to admit that she was never much of a fan of Darren. She always said he was too square for me. She was right, of course, but I thought that's what I needed and that he would ease up a bit with time. Once we got married, though, if anything, he got worse. Mum tried to talk me out of it too. She could see him for who he was, but I was young and pig-headed and thought I knew better than anyone else what was good for me. Within months of getting married, Darren got the job he has now. That, of course, meant moving away. I thought it was a promotion they offered him, but I found out several years later that he had lobbied very hard for that particular job. They had even offered him a better role in the same place he was originally working in, but he knocked it back. It turns out he really wanted to move away from here. I feel awful that I left Mum on her own. She told me that all birds should fly the nest, but I suspect she knew his motivations all along and just didn't feel that she could tell me. I feel like an idiot and such a crappy daughter."
"I don't think trying to make your marriage work makes you a bad daughter. You still came back often, and you called regularly. You are allowed to live your own life."
"I know, but I just feel like a fool and that I neglected her. I didn't even know she was sick until I got the call two days ago. No offence, but you have known her for a few weeks, and you have known more about her health in that time than I, her own daughter, have. Why wouldn't she tell me something like that unless she didn't trust me to know?"
