My Mother's False Teeth

My parents' marriage was troubled. The house thrummed with currents of resentment and blame that sometimes erupted into violence. My mother could be sullen and unresponsive. She struggled to express her emotions. Our childhood dinners were mostly fish fingers and baked beans, often with chips cooked in the pan of evil brown oil that lived on the stovetop. During the day my mother chomped through packets of barley sugar or tubes of round-trees fruit gums. It wasn't until they broke when I was a teenager that I realised her pretty teeth were not her own.