Broken Trust : Pacific Prep

by R. A. Smyth

  Our life is one of survival, of scraping by with the bare essentials and nothing more. Some days I struggle to remember what life is all about, why we keep trudging on, but then my mum has a good day where she smiles and laughs and makes everything feel right in the world. It’s on those days that I remember exactly why we get up each day and continue the fight to remain alive.

  My mum has had mental health problems my entire life, resulting in a plethora of diagnoses from bipolar disorder to depression, meaning it’s always been a struggle for her to maintain a stable source of income. Unfortunately, things have got worse as time has gone on, with her having fewer good days. Instead, it feels like every day recently she is either a shell of herself, remaining in bed all day, practically catatonic, or she’s an emotional mess getting upset or angry over the slightest thing, often throwing things across the room and destroying what little furniture we have.

  Like I said, the good days are worth it all. Worth the late nights and early mornings. Worth my education taking a backseat. Worth my lack of a normal childhood with friends and normal worries like if a boy at school has a crush on me, or what the current fashion trends are.

  I pass the café, where I have to be for work in a few hours, before turning the corner onto my street. The street itself isn’t much to look at. It’s dodgy as fuck, but then half the estates in this part of town are. One wrong turn and you could end up on a street you seriously shouldn’t be on, and for no other reason than because you don’t belong to the ‘right’ denomination – Protestants or Catholics. That was just Belfast or, well, Northern Ireland as a whole. Completely messed up if you asked me. I certainly didn’t have any time or energy to give two shits about what religion people were; so long as they left me alone, I left them alone.

  The street we live on is full of terrace council houses containing a strange mix of residents. You have the cute elderly people whose houses you can spot immediately by the well-maintained front square of lawn and window boxes filled with flowers; you have the middle-aged couples and foreigners who work all hours and keep themselves to themselves; then you have the hoodlums who just want to stir up trouble, are always partying and playing their music too loud. Those are the houses to avoid, but that can be difficult to do at this time of night, especially if the weather is good and they are standing outside smoking. Thankfully, I’m in luck tonight as all is quiet as I amble down the street towards my terrace at the far end of the road.

  Our own house isn’t terrible. It’s a small two-bedroom, one-bathroom terrace. Looking at it from the outside, it looks worn down, as if life has been battering at it and it has long since given up fighting back. Weeds are growing up between the cracks in the paving slabs and paint is peeling off the door and window, but I do my best to keep the inside clean and tidy. I just don’t have the time, money, or energy to waste on pretty window boxes of flowers or making it feel more homely with pictures and decorations or whatever.

  Standing outside the front of the house, looking up at the darkened windows, the weight of everything hangs over me like a dark cloud of oppression, weighing heavy on my soul. I can’t wait until I turn eighteen and I’m done with school. I could have dropped out at sixteen, but I want to better my chances of getting a higher-paid job once I do finally finish school. I don’t want to live this life forever. I want more for myself, for my future.

  Once I’m eighteen, I can get a job at one of the strip clubs in town where I will be able to earn a lot more than I do now, meaning we wouldn’t constantly have to decide between having heating or having electricity; we wouldn’t have to live off ramen noodles every night or go a day or two without food when the money won’t stretch far enough.

  Working in a strip club would only be a temporary solution. Something to pay the bills while I finish school, possibly do an online college course or while I apply to jobs. I haven’t exactly had the time to work out the specifics.

  Thankfully, over the summer, when school was out, I was able to save up a decent amount of money. It should tide us over for a while, but there is never enough. We will burn through it in no time.

  My little side-gig pick-pocketing drunk students and unaware tourists also helps, especially with the explosion in tourism since ‘Game of Thrones’ hit the big screens and became an international success. It’s risky, I can’t afford to get caught, so I only resort to it when I’m desperate, which seems to be more and more often these days.

  Not wanting to waste any more time out in the cold, I quickly unlatch our front gate and hurry up the path to the door. Inserting the key and pushing against the door to unstick it, I practically fall through the doorway, into the hall.

  I don’t immediately notice the sickly sweet odour in the air or feel the heavy weight of silence in the house, which is more desolate than normal. It takes a full minute of standing frozen in the hallway before the clues register in my brain. As soon as I realise what’s going on, the horribleness that has happened in this house tonight, time seems to slow down. I sluggishly stumble my way down the hall towards the kitchen, following the ever-increasing stench in the air.

  I know what I’m going to see when I push the kitchen door open. I know I’m going to find my mother dead.

  Despite not needing to see my mother’s body, that is exactly what I’m met with as I push the door open and step into the kitchen. My mum is sitting at the kitchen table, slumped in the chair with her head resting on the table’s surface, eyes wide and glassy in death with foam around her mouth. Numerous bottles of pills are scattered on the table in front of her and an empty bottle of vodka has been dropped on the floor beside her, presumably from when she lost consciousness.

  I don’t know how long I stand there, just staring at the scene in front of me, not really taking anything in but also knowing this moment will be burned into my mind forever. I don’t think I will ever get the stench of death out of my skin. It feels like it has embedded itself in the very fibre of my being.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve come home to find my mum has overdosed. I think part of me has always known it would end like this. She certainly has been trying her best for years now.

  Nothing ever seemed to improve her mood for very long. I can remember short periods of time, mostly when I was a lot younger, when I would wake up to her humming in the kitchen while she made breakfast, the sunshine through the kitchen window making her blonde hair glow, and emphasising the tired, worn look on her face and the age lines around her eyes; but seeing her smiling was the best thing. It was in these moments that everything felt like it was going to be ok; that, at least for a short time, I would have my mum back - the mum who would clean the house, do the food shopping and watch movies on the couch and laughing over stupid things with me.

  Of course, it was during those times, when she appeared happy and optimistic, that she would make impulsive decisions. One month she spent all of our rent money on online gambling sites. In another instance, she transferred every penny that was in our bank account to help support Seamus, the sea lion in one of those animal adoption things. Worse than spending all our money, I would often come home to find strangers in our house who my mother had picked up online, or off the street, to sleep with or offer a warm bed – my bed - to. Some of them would linger around, eating what little food we had and giving me lecherous looks when I was home.

  It was a vicious cycle, starting with a few days of lucency where I had my mum back, before escalating into a manic episode of reckless behaviour and insane spending, climaxing to a failed suicide attempt and triggering her spiral down into depression, until she finally crawled her way back out of it to normality again.

  I would never know how long these episodes would last. Sometimes it was only for a few days, then her mood would change once again, other times she could remain depressed or manic for months. Sadly, the periods of stability never seemed to last more than a few days.

  The worst thing was that there was nothing I could do except stand by and watch her se
lf-destruct.

  Honestly though, it was exhausting, not knowing what to expect every day. Whether she would act like a mum, completely ignore my existence or treat me like shit if I did anything to stand in her way or argue with her; tidying up her messes and dealing with the creepy men and other strays she would bring home.

  It didn’t help that, as I got older, the periods of sanity became far and few between, and the periods of depression and mania became more severe. Over the last few years, we frequently ended up at the hospital when she made some sort of suicide attempt or thought she could do something ridiculous like fly.

  Each time I took her to the hospital, they would just patch her up and make some changes to her medications, not that they ever seemed to make much of a difference.

  So yeah, I can’t say I’m surprised at the scene currently in front of me. Not that that makes any of this easier. All I can hope for now is that she has finally found some peace.

  If I’m being honest with myself, part of me feels relieved it has finally happened. I hadn’t realised until this moment that every time I left the house, this feeling of dread would coil in my stomach at what I would come home to. Part of me has been waiting on tenterhooks for this day to come; and as devastating as it is that that day is here, it has lifted some of the weight off my shoulders that I hadn’t realised I was carrying.

  Eventually, I pull myself out of my trance, fishing my brick of a phone from my bag and calling the police. Once I’ve relayed the necessary details, I head back outside and sit on the brick wall surrounding our tiny square of outdoor space. I can’t bear to be in that house any longer.

  Fifteen minutes later, blue flashing lights illuminate the street as emergency services arrive. I sit and watch, still in a state of shock, as a police car pulls up onto the curb across the street and the ambulance parks in the middle of the one-way road, preventing any other traffic from getting down the street.

  A policewoman gets out of the car, crossing the street to stand in front of me.

  “Are you Sophie Prescott? You phoned emergency services?”

  Struggling to find my voice, I just nod in confirmation.

  “I’m Officer Murray. Can you tell me what happened here tonight?” She asks me gently, giving me a reassuring smile.

  I give her a brief run-down of everything that has happened since I locked up at the pub an hour ago. God, was that only an hour ago? It feels like a lifetime.

  Once I’ve finished updating Officer Murray and she’s taken whatever notes she needs, she leans in to squeeze my arm in an act of comfort and silent support. “I’m sorry about your mum, Sophie. It can’t have been easy on you, finding her like that. The paramedics are in with her now, and they are going to take really good care of her, okay?”

  I just nod, not having anything to say.

  “This is what we’re going to do now,” she continues, laying out a game plan, giving me something to focus on other than the fact that my mum, the only family I have, is dead. “I’m going to contact a social worker, and we are going to pack up some stuff for you so you can stay with a foster family nearby tonight. We can sort something more permanent in the next few days. Alright?”

  Was it okay? I don’t think anything was okay right now, and the last thing I wanted was to spend the night in some strangers’ home. But since I’m not yet eighteen, I’m guessing I have no actual say in the decision.

  So, as the paramedics lifted my mum out of the house in a black bag, I climbed into the back of the police car and was driven to a foster home a few streets away.

  Start the series today