A Mother's Story Read Online Free PDF

put down roots? I half-heartedly applied for university and was accepted into a polytechnic to do business studies in Cardiff.
    And so I had to weigh it up: return to sunny Australia and throw my fortunes to the wind or study business school in Wales’s blustery capital. In the end, the decision was not so difficult to make. And yet, in years to come, I would look back on it and recognise it as one of many ‘sliding doors’ moments in my life: where a decision made at a crossroads would alter the entire course of my life.
    I bought an airline ticket and flew back to Melbourne.

4
A Fateful Meeting
    As the plane touched down in Melbourne, following a frantic couple of months working at a motorway diner near Retford to earn the money for my fare, I was filled with a sense of trepidation. Here I was, aged twenty-five, once again on the other side of the world, having made a conscious decision to return for a relationship that was embryonic at best, in a country where I had no family or any obvious prospect of gainful employment. But, like many thousands of my country folk before me, I was ready to take a chance on this bright and shiny new land.
    I moved in with Jake pretty much straight off the plane, an arrangement that would last, as it turned out, for the ensuing five years. For the first few weeks, life was idyllic. Almost immediately, I lodged an application for residency on the grounds of being in a de facto relationship. I wanted time to explore the relationship with Jake, which I felt had enormous promise, without the added pressure of feeling we needed to get married. I started working as a temp, doing secretarial work in the city, and Jake continued to work at the TV network.
    Over the next few years, we were part of a group of friends who went out a lot. There always seemed to be a dinner out somewhere or a house party at someone’s place. And with every occasion there was alcohol. I liked a drink as much as the next person, but always knew my limits. Jake, on the other hand, began to drink more and more heavily. And, after a while, it started to impact on our relationship. He was never violent when he drank, but he would turn to the bottle whenever life started to become a little difficult for him. It was his coping mechanism – his crutch, if you like.
    At work, his boss would try to cover for him and help him. For a long time, I didn’t realise the extent of his alcoholism. You just think someone is drinking a little more than usual but that the incidents are isolated. And then you come upon, as I did, empty scotch bottles in the neighbour’s garden. And you start to monitor more closely the rate at which they are drinking and the occasions on which they are drunk.
    One evening, we had invited people over to dinner. I was driving home from the hairdressers when I saw a man struggling to stay upright as he staggered, clearly drunk, along the footpath. It was Jake. It was the middle of the day and he was lugging a joint of beef he’d picked up at the butcher’s. He’d also clearly stopped off at the pub. I was disgusted. For him to write himself off like that when we had friends coming over was the last straw for me. There had been times in our relationship when we’d had troubles because of Jake’s drinking. He would invariably straighten himself out for a while before falling off the wagon again. But it had gotten to the point where I was too frightened to go to sleep next to him at night, because I worried he was going to fall asleep drunk with a cigarette and set the house on fire.
    I pulled the car over, wound down the window. ‘I hope you enjoy it,’ I said, pointing to the joint of beef he was carrying. ‘Because I won’t be around to eat it with you.’
    I went home, packed my bags and left.
    I moved out to a friend’s place in Richmond and set about starting over. It was 1992, and I was about to turn thirty. I was determined to get on