A Mother's Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

with my own life, but I still cared for Jake and couldn’t just abandon him. And so I would visit him regularly to see how he was doing. He was on a path of self-destruction, drinking heavily and hating himself for it. One time I found him at home nursing a huge scar on the side of his face. He had fallen in the night and cut his face on the kitchen bench. In his fridge was a bottle of Coke and a bottle of milk. On the kitchen table was an empty bottle of scotch.
    He had lost his job and sold everything we owned. The rent was in arrears, and I was liable for it because my name was on the lease. He was at the point where he needed someone to take him to rehab, and so I did. From rehab, he ended up going home to live with his mum. Jake was a lovely guy but clearly damaged and susceptible to the ravages of alcoholism. It was, for me, another chapter in my already chequered romantic story.
    When Jake’s problem with alcohol first became apparent, I suppose I kidded myself that I was going to be his saviour. And so I was gratified when he started to make positive changes in his life, and I believed I was helping to turn him around. But ultimately you can’t turn alcoholics around. Nobody can help them until and unless they want to help themselves. Jake used to beg me to stay, telling me I was the only thing keeping him from going completely over the edge – and for the longest time I allowed myself to be emotionally blackmailed like that. When you are young and in love, you make all kinds of excuses forbehaviour that frankly should never be indulged. If only I had been clever enough to learn from that situation. If only that was the only instance of emotional blackmail to which I would be exposed in my life.
    I decided to treat myself to a season of skiing at Mt Buller that year to clear my head and to put some space and untouched powder between Jake and me. And it was like a tonic. Weekends that winter were spent happily schussing down the slopes and letting my hair down on the après-ski scene. It was just what I needed.
    Towards the end of winter I applied for a job at a recruitment company. The job was in sales and it saw me undertake a daily commute to the company’s headquarters in the Melbourne CBD. As it was my first sales job, I was nervous. But there was rent to pay and a new life to forge, so I threw myself into it.
    Because of the recession there was a lot of uncertainty in the sector, meaning it wasn’t long before I was asked to take on extra duties and become an account manager.
    It was in this capacity that I first met Greg Anderson. He was one of the members of the sales team with whom I had contact. He was good-looking, tall and extremely well-groomed. He was also charming in his way, a great bear of a man with a quick (if occasionally off-kilter) sense of humour. We hit it off straight away.
    With a romantic past peppered with alcoholics, one-legged Austrian skiers and one-armed farmers, I was open to the idea of embarking on a relationship with an urban sophisticate. And while few others would ever have described Greg as urbane or sophisticated, to my country-girl eyes he presented as eminently more corporate and together than my previous boyfriends. He wore a suit, and he appeared – to all intents and purposes – tohave a job about which he was serious. He had, at least at first glance, what might be referred to in the classics as ‘prospects’.
    I bumped into him one day when we were both cold-calling a client and he asked me if I wanted to go for a drink. I did. But instead of meeting at a bar for the customary first date, I invited Greg to join me for a drive out to the Dandenong Ranges where I had only recently put a down payment on a house. And so we set off, driving through the mountains to the small community of Belgrave on Melbourne’s outskirts, taking in the tiny cottage on acreage that I had just committed to. It was a day in the country in the company