It was 2005, I was 25 years old and living at home with my parents when the relationship between my mum and dad ended and he left to go and live with another woman that he had met.
Even at my mature age I found this quite unsettling, whereas mum, to her credit, was quite philosophical about it, believing that if his heart wasn't with her then it is for the best that he move on. I admired her for this and came round to feeling the same way.
As a family unit we were never financially very well off; dad had a job at the post office and mum worked part time as a cleaner which didn't pay her very much, and neither did my job at the local supermarket as a stocker, so dad leaving left me and mum in an even tighter financial situation.
I assured mum that we'd be OK; all we had to do is make some adjustments and sacrifices and we'd be alright. She placed her hand on my shoulder and told me that I didn't have to stay here and support her and that I should meet someone and start my own life.
"I know, mum," I said, thinking to myself that there was little prospect of that happening any time soon... "for now, its you and me," I said back to her.
"Bless you," she replied with watery eyes as she kissed the top of my head.
In the proceeding days we both just carried on as before in our normal working routines trying not to talk about the situation when we were at home together in the evenings.
It got to Friday evening and we were both at home, each of us having had a long week, and we decided that we needed to sit down and organise the household finances, as in, who was going to pay what bill going forward. Mum got out all the paper work and bills and laid them out on the dining table, before going upstairs to change out of her work clothes.
When she returned she was wearing a long cardigan, with what appeared to be little else underneath, and had quite a lot of breast cleavage showing which was hard to not look at. I was a little taken aback as she had never presented herself in this way in front of me before.
She was quite relaxed, as usual with a glass of wine, but unusually she gave me one too as we sat to discuss the bills and stuff.
As I sat at the table mum sat opposite me and I noticed that she had opened her cardigan a little further, revealing yet more breast cleavage, and she had her feet around my ankles under the table, rubbing my leg with her toe as I was crunching some numbers on a calculator. Meanwhile she topped up my wine.
Once we had finished all the talk of bills, mum kept the wine flowing as the conversation finally turned to other light hearted things; she was laughing at all my witty remarks and was really in to everything I was saying, still rubbing my leg with her foot and now also my hand with her hand. She kept catching me looking at her cleavage which brought a naughty smile to her face.
She began asking me if there were any girls in my life, mentioning one particular girl at my work that she had seen who she thought was really nice and would be the right type of girl for me.
"A young stud like you needs a girlfriend," she said to me. Bashfully I told her there wasn't anyone.
