**When Help Isnt Wanted**
“Oh, you ungrateful girl! We raised you, fed you, and now youre abandoning your dying father!”
“Mum, enough! I wont send another penny while you drink it all away. I wont fund your binges!” Emily tried to keep her voice steady, though tears pricked at her eyes.
“Fine, then dont call us again. I refuse to speak to youand Ill make sure your father doesnt either!” Her mother slammed the phone down.
Emily sank into a chair, dropped her mobile onto the table, and buried her face in her hands. From the next room, her little son whimpered. She swallowed a sob. She had to stay strongfor him.
But how do you stay strong when memories gnaw at you from the inside?
…Images from childhood flickered behind her eyelids. The stale stench of booze and cigarettes. Peeling wallpaper, dents in the doorsher hiding place when her drunk parents screamed and smashed plates. Back then, she didnt understand, only feared. Every night, she wondered if one of them wouldnt wake up.
Her only toys were makeshift things: empty tins, carrier bags, beer bottle caps. Shed play “happy families,” dreaming of a life where her parents smiled, or where shed be a proper mum one day.
Mum was the worst. Emily learned to stay out of her way. Even sober, she was sharp-tongued, quick to snap. A dropped plate meant a slap. A spilled drink? The belt.
Now, Emily knew it wasnt her faultMum just took her anger out on her. But back then? She believed she deserved the nightmare.
Dad had his moments. Hed try to care, in his own way, before reaching for the bottle again.
“Liz, have you even fed the girl?” hed ask, stumbling in from work.
“Shes old enough to fend for herself!” Mum would wave him off.
“Liz, shes seven! Too young to cook. Make her something.”
Mum would grumble but whip up dinnerusually pasta, sometimes with sausages. More often, Emily scavenged: bread, a forgotten carrot in the fridge, cold baked beans.
Fear and worry were her constant companions. She fell asleep to the clink of bottles, woke to shouting. And prayed for it to stop.
Education was her escape. The second she could, Emily fled to uni in another city. Stepping into her dorm, she breathed freely for the first time. Yet guilt crept in at nightshouldnt she have stayed? Surely theyd fall apart without her.
Calls with Mum stopped straightaway. Dads tapered off.
“Hey, love. Hows things?” hed ask when he rang.
So much swirled in her mind. *Lifes easier without you. Im exhausted from extra shifts. Ive got friends nowones Im not ashamed to face.* But all she said was:
“Fine. You?”
She already knew the answer. No change. Maybe she hoped for thatbecause change could only mean worse.
“Yeah, fine,” Dad would reply. Then silence. Neither knew what to say next. Eventually, the calls stopped altogether.
Her parents life became her secret cross to bear. She never spoke of it. Not even to her husband.
“My parents wont be at the wedding,” she told him calmly, though her stomach lurched. “They live too farin the countryside. Cant make it.”
“What? Well cover their train tickets,” George offered. “Theyre your parents. Every parent wants to see their child married.”
*Every parent but mine.* Emily bit her lip to stop the tears.
“It wont work. Mums got a heart conditionlong trips are risky. Look, I knew what I was doing moving here… and so did they. Ill send photos. Its fine.”
George shrugged and didnt press.
She couldnt face the shame. She remembered her tenth birthday, when shed dared invite a schoolmate over. Mum and Dad had rowed at the tablethen Mum turned on her friend.
“Shut it! Youre eating *my* food in *my* house!”
Her friend locked herself in the loo, pretending to wash her hands. When Emily finally got in, the girl was crying. Emily burned with humiliation.
The friends parents collected her early. Emily never invited anyone again.
She couldnt risk a repeat at her weddingso she didnt even tell them. She left the past behind. Now, she had a proper family. A home without shouting. A son, Oliver.
Then the past came knocking.
“Em, your dads not well…” a neighbour called one day. “Hes in hospital.”
Her heart dropped. Shed always known this day would comebut nothing could prepare her.
“What happened?”
“Hes ill. Lost weight. Yellow as custard. Liver, they reckonbut you know how they live. Its not just the liver… Will you come?”
The unspoken *last chance* hung in the air.
“Ill try,” she promised.
That night, she told George everythingthe drinking, the rows, how Dad had tried, in his way.
*Thats* what you call trying?” George frowned. “Leaving a kid with a drunk? Letting it get so bad you drove her away?”
The pain in Emilys eyes silenced him. She loved them anywaylike a pup that still licks the hand that kicks it. He sighed.
“Em, you cant go with Ollie, and I cant take time off… Maybe send money for meds?”
“George, men like that? Hell drink it.”
“Please…”
“Fine. But thats Ollies new toy fund gone.”
She sent more than George allowedlying about haircuts, secretly transferring the cash.
Dad recoveredor so he claimed. Relief came, brief as a British summer. Two months later, the neighbour rang again.
“Em, I get it… but theyre still your parents,” she tutted.
“I cant exactly move back…”
“But to leave him like this? Fading away, no one caringits awful!”
Emily froze. The words didnt compute.
“No one caring? I send money!”
She dug deeper. The cash went on booze. Mum wailed that Emily had abandoned them; Dad moaned that Mum stole his medicine money.
When she confronted Mum, she got the same old threat: *Dont call us…* Blackmail. Her head knew it was manipulationbut what if Dad *was* dying?
That night, sleep wouldnt come. Memories, doubts, then a desperate search for rehab clinics. Maybe *there* was the answersomewhere Dad couldnt drink the funds. Expensive, but George would understand.
Next morning, she rang Dad, hopeful.
“Dad, I found a clinic near youspecialists in, well… drinking. Well cover it.”
“Dont need no clinic,” he snapped. “Ill quit when I want. And I dont need your pity, understood?”
Then she knew: he didnt *want* help.
“Dad, the doctors could”
“Emily, *no*. Drop it.”
“…Alright. Just wanted to help.”
As they hung up, her throat tightenedbut her heart loosened. No more guilt. Shed done all she could. More would wreck the family shed built.
She crept to Ollies cot, watching his steady breaths. Her mind was made up: no more calls. Her energy belonged to those who deserved itGeorge, Ollie. The rest? Let fate decide.
