The phone had rung several times that week. Each time it was my uncle wanting to talk to my mother. As brother and sister they had always been close but in recent times they had drifted apart, mum preferring not to talk with her brother who had come off the rails and was now living with a woman she disliked on the edge of town.

Mum refused to speak to him saying she’d call him back. She never did.

So he kept ringing and my dad on the second last time said he didn’t sound so good so maybe you’d better speak to him. She turned away, used to her brother and his manipulative ways.

I liked my uncle, he was a lovable larrikin, a man who had his fair share of life’s traumas. He discovered what happens when you test the law, he found out the hard way what a woman could do to a vulnerable and damaged man. Despite his flaws he was my uncle and I always believed family stood for something. But mum was a stubborn woman and refused to discuss her brother with anyone…

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