Chapter 107

• "I hear from him every now and then. I used to get birthday cards every few years, a Christmas card once, but that was it. After he left, my mum she um, she kind of fell apart. Throughout everything we went through as a family my mum adored him and when he left she was never the same"
• "It started off kind of slowly; she would become really forgetful, she'd ramble on for hours about people who didn't exist, sometimes she'd just become so angry that she would scream and punch the walls" I feel Rhodes reach out his hand to touch mine. "She never hurt me" I say quickly, placing a pair of jeans into the bag.
• "My aunt would help me look after her sometimes, when I would go to school she would keep an eye on her and make sure she went to work. But when I was around 17, things got really bad and she couldn't work anymore. We got a bit of assistance from the government but it didn't quite cover things so I started doing more work. On top of walking dogs and babysitting for other families in the neighbourhood; I worked in one of the cafes on the weekends and a local fish and chip shop at nights. Eventually my aunt said she couldn't do anything more for her and took off too. The doctor finally insisted that she had to go into a facility where she could be looked after" my voice shakes as I tell him. I refuse to tell him why the doctor made that decision, the mental image of my mum attempting to jump out of a moving car on the highway is one that still gives me nightmares.