switched off his phone but not taken out the SIM card—the police can still contact you when you do that—they knew he was alive. They weren’t legally bound to let Mum know. It was only when Paul, my father’s young boyfriend, called his parents weeks later to tell them that he was in Leicester with Dad that Mum found out the truth. I think she’d begun to wonder if he was with another woman when his body wasn’t found, but she hadn’t been prepared for the news that he’d left her for a man…someone who had grown up close to our family. She had a nervous breakdown, I think. She started drinking heavily. The hospital fired her because she didn’t turn up for work or report sick. We ended up living on benefits.
“It was fun for the first week or two. Mum didn’t cook and we had Chicken & Chips practically everyday. But one day a social worker visited and found the house in a mess. Dishes piled high in the sink, the bathroom filthy, our bed sheets hadn’t been changed in weeks and almost every piece of clothing we owned dirty. By then we had begun sniffing clothes to see which ones could be worn again. Mum had sent us to play in the back garden when the social worker had arrived, but I came back in to get us ice lollies and heard the woman say that she would have us put in foster care if she returned and found the house in the same condition the following week. Mum told her to ‘f-off’, that we were her children and no one could take us from her.
“I felt proud of Mum for standing up for us, but when I realized she didn’t intend to tidy up or stop drinking, I started to clean up myself. I had no idea what to do at first—she and Dad had spoiled us. I’d never done any housework—but by the time the woman visited again I had the place in some sort of order.”
“You said this has been going on for ten years?” Dominic asked her quietly. He couldn’t imagine a mother not looking after her children properly. His mother would still fuss over him if he gave her a chance.
“Almost eleven now,” Chantelle confirmed. “At least she doesn’t go drinking at the local pub anymore. We used to get worried when she staggered home alone. Though that was better than when she staggered home with some strange man. She sobered up a bit when she got pregnant with Charmine, but went back to her ‘bottle of vodka a day’ before Charmine was one. If she knows who my sister’s father is, she’s not telling.”
“Didn’t you have any relatives who could have helped you?” he asked, reaching across and gently pushing a few strands of her Sisterlocks behind her ear to get an unobstructed view of her profile. He couldn’t resist stroking the soft skin of her jaw line before pulling his hand back and allowing her to concentrate on her driving.
“Everyone’s in Jamaica. My grandparents want Mum to go back home. She wants to go back too, but her brother renovated the house my grandparents lived in and added a couple of bedrooms upstairs. Now he acts like the house belongs to him. He said he’s a Christian and doesn’t want ‘a drunkard’ living under his roof. I sent more than half of that money…the money I got from you to my grandparents to buy a plot of land and build a house for them and Mum to live in, but the contractor doubled the original estimate once the work had started and I didn’t have any more to send to him. My grandfather believes that my uncle somehow got involved with the contractor and that the man and my uncle split the extra money he demanded.”
“Your uncle sounds like a piece of work.”
“He is,” Chantelle agreed. “I didn’t want him involved, but my grandparents are farmers. They are barely literate. He took over their land, saying that it was time they didn’t work as hard, but he now keeps the money when he sells the animals and the produce. They have very little money of their own.”
“So what’s the
“It was fun for the first week or two. Mum didn’t cook and we had Chicken & Chips practically everyday. But one day a social worker visited and found the house in a mess. Dishes piled high in the sink, the bathroom filthy, our bed sheets hadn’t been changed in weeks and almost every piece of clothing we owned dirty. By then we had begun sniffing clothes to see which ones could be worn again. Mum had sent us to play in the back garden when the social worker had arrived, but I came back in to get us ice lollies and heard the woman say that she would have us put in foster care if she returned and found the house in the same condition the following week. Mum told her to ‘f-off’, that we were her children and no one could take us from her.
“I felt proud of Mum for standing up for us, but when I realized she didn’t intend to tidy up or stop drinking, I started to clean up myself. I had no idea what to do at first—she and Dad had spoiled us. I’d never done any housework—but by the time the woman visited again I had the place in some sort of order.”
“You said this has been going on for ten years?” Dominic asked her quietly. He couldn’t imagine a mother not looking after her children properly. His mother would still fuss over him if he gave her a chance.
“Almost eleven now,” Chantelle confirmed. “At least she doesn’t go drinking at the local pub anymore. We used to get worried when she staggered home alone. Though that was better than when she staggered home with some strange man. She sobered up a bit when she got pregnant with Charmine, but went back to her ‘bottle of vodka a day’ before Charmine was one. If she knows who my sister’s father is, she’s not telling.”
“Didn’t you have any relatives who could have helped you?” he asked, reaching across and gently pushing a few strands of her Sisterlocks behind her ear to get an unobstructed view of her profile. He couldn’t resist stroking the soft skin of her jaw line before pulling his hand back and allowing her to concentrate on her driving.
“Everyone’s in Jamaica. My grandparents want Mum to go back home. She wants to go back too, but her brother renovated the house my grandparents lived in and added a couple of bedrooms upstairs. Now he acts like the house belongs to him. He said he’s a Christian and doesn’t want ‘a drunkard’ living under his roof. I sent more than half of that money…the money I got from you to my grandparents to buy a plot of land and build a house for them and Mum to live in, but the contractor doubled the original estimate once the work had started and I didn’t have any more to send to him. My grandfather believes that my uncle somehow got involved with the contractor and that the man and my uncle split the extra money he demanded.”
“Your uncle sounds like a piece of work.”
“He is,” Chantelle agreed. “I didn’t want him involved, but my grandparents are farmers. They are barely literate. He took over their land, saying that it was time they didn’t work as hard, but he now keeps the money when he sells the animals and the produce. They have very little money of their own.”
“So what’s the
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