We watched as mum slowly killed herself with drink

anyone what was happening. I soon learnt from my three brothers that l had to grow up quickly and, in our different ways, we hid the truth from each other as well as from the world outside. We existed rather than lived, separately but together’ sneaking around, sniffing her breath for clues

I remember once when my mother fell downstairs and lay at the front door for hours. When l got home from school, l thought she was dead, but she was just drunk. We lived like that for years, never knowing what would happen next. l became adept at pouring vodka down the sink and replenishing the bottle with water in the vain hope that she might not get too drunk.

To say that her drinking ruined my life would be a cop- out. Ruled my life is more like it I watched her drink from the bottle until, one day, the table turned and the bottle began to drink her; all of her. In her forties she changed from being a strikingly beautiful woman into a pickled old prune. When she could no longer collect her stash herself, she order it from the local shop and hid it wherever there was space in the wardrobe, in drawers, laundry, baskets, behind the cistern, in boots and shoes. Her drinking was snatched, furtive

Yet, l loves my mother. I just wanted her to be normal like other mother to bake scones, make us meals when we came home. I could never understand why my father didn’t stop her drinking. It was only years later that I understood that nobody stops anyone drinking

We were well off although the money was my mother, which rankled with my father had been a famous psychiatrist who treated member of the royal family and had left her an inheritance as well as a propensity for valium.

My father drank too, but his drinking was the acceptable sort: a beer before dinner, a few glasses of wine with his meal, a whisky afterwards.

God knows why my parents got together. They seemed to stumble into one another while working as doctors at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. They resembled film stars, she tall, slim, dark, floaty; he silent, brooding almost Brando-esque. Their tragedy began in 1941, with a glamorous wedding at the Brompton Oratory in Knightsbridge. Years later, my mother told me she’d had several strong drinks to steel herself for the long walk down the aisle

When my father went off to the war, she set about having a good time. Together, they were never happy. He shouted and banged doors. She drank, trembled and took pills to calm her down and help her to sleep; horrible concoction of sodium Amytal, Largacty, valium, Mogadon, and Melleril all of which she mixed with drink. She would lie on her bed dressed in a shabby tweed suit covered in food stains from drunken raids on the fridge. The two of them never spoke, other than at mealtimes and then it was only to fight.