What We Can Afford

"Sometimes ‘making do’ isn’t about the money — it’s about pretending things are normal long enough to get through dinner."

The Corolla made its usual rattling sounds as I pulled into our street just after five.

The sun had already dropped behind the houses on the western side of Bowden Street, throwing long shadows across the cracked footpaths and the patchy front yards of our neighbours. The streetlights hadn't come on yet—that awkward twilight hour when everything looked grey and tired and slightly unreal.

Our place looked the same as it always did. Small. Tired. The paint peeling around the window frames in long curls that caught the fading light. The gutters sagging slightly on one side where the brackets had given up years ago and nobody had the money or the energy to fix them. The front yard that had once been a lawn but was now mostly weeds and bare patches where the grass had surrendered to the clay beneath.

Home.

I sat in the car for a moment after killing the engine, staring at the house through the windscreen. The lounge room light was on, visible through the curtains that had been there since before I was born—faded floral things that Mum had always meant to replace but never had.

She would be in there, probably on the couch, probably not watching whatever was on the TV. Just sitting. Thinking. Same as she'd probably been doing all day, replaying this morning over and over, trying to work out how to face me when I came home.

The plastic shopping bag on the passenger seat crinkled as I reached for it.

Twenty-three dollars and forty cents. That's what I'd spent at Woolies on the way home, standing in the fluorescent aisles and making choices I had no right to make. Twenty-three dollars that should have gone towards bills, towards the mortgage, towards the hundred other things we needed. Twenty-three dollars that would show up as a gap somewhere, an absence, a small crisis waiting to happen.

But I'd spent it anyway.

Two chicken schnitzels from the deli—the good ones, crumbed fresh that day, not the frozen ones we usually got from the budget freezer section. A bag of those fancy oven chips, the ones with rosemary and herbs and stuff that cost twice as much as the home-brand version. A head of broccoli that actually looked fresh instead of half-dead and yellowing at the edges. And, because apparently I'd lost my mind completely, a small tub of ice cream.

Vanilla. Mum's favourite. Though we hadn't bought ice cream in months—not since winter had settled in and every dollar needed to go towards heating we could barely afford.

Special dinner, I thought, looking at the bag. As if chicken schnitzel and oven chips could fix what happened this morning. As if twenty-three dollars' worth of food could make up for nineteen years of lies.

But I'd bought it anyway. Because I needed to do something. Because I couldn't walk through that door empty-handed, couldn't face her with nothing to offer but the weight of everything we weren't saying.

I grabbed the bag and got out of the car, my body protesting with every movement.

My back ached from lifting boxes all day—eight massive tent boxes at the Berriedale house alone, plus the delivery out to the Woolleys in Huonville, plus a dozen other stops I could barely remember. My feet hurt, that particular throb of standing and walking on concrete all day. My head hurt, a dull pressure behind my eyes that had been there since this morning and showed no signs of leaving.

Everything hurt, actually, but that was normal after a shift.

What wasn't normal was the knot in my stomach that had been there since five-thirty this morning, since I'd found Mum crying in the dark kitchen, since the world had tilted sideways and nothing had felt right since. That knot hadn't loosened all day—not during the deliveries, not during the drive home, not even now as I stood in our driveway with groceries we couldn't afford.

The front door stuck slightly—it always did, the timber frame warped from decades of Tasmanian weather—and I had to shoulder it open. The wood groaned against the frame in that familiar protest I'd heard a thousand times.

The smell of home hit me immediately.

That particular combination of old carpet and the laundry detergent Mum used because it was cheapest, the faint mustiness that came from a house that was never quite warm enough or dry enough. The accumulated scent of two people living in close quarters, of meals cooked and clothes dried and lives lived within these walls.

Usually that smell was comforting. A reminder of stability, of belonging, of the small sanctuary we'd built together against the world outside.

Today it just made me feel tired.

"Mum?" I called out, closing the door behind me with my hip.

"In here." Her voice came from the lounge, quiet. Flat. The voice of someone who'd been sitting alone all day with nothing but her thoughts for company.

I kicked off my work boots—they were filthy, covered in mud from the Huonville property, caked with red dirt from the Dawson’s' driveway—and padded down the short hallway in my socks. The brown carpet was worn thin in places, compressed by years of footfall into familiar pathways.

The floorboards creaked under my feet in all the usual places.

Third board from the bathroom. The one near Mum's door. The sounds of home, as familiar as my own heartbeat.

Mum was on the couch, exactly where I'd pictured her.

The TV was on—some cooking show, the sound turned down low, chefs preparing things we'd never be able to afford—but she wasn't watching it. She was just sitting there, her legs tucked up under her, making herself small.

She was wearing the same faded tracksuit pants and jumper she'd been wearing this morning. The grey trackies with the stretched-out elastic at the ankles. The navy jumper with the pulled thread near the collar that she kept meaning to fix. Her hair was still down, still unbrushed, auburn strands tangled and flat against her head.

She looked small. Tired. Old, almost, though she was only forty-one.

The blue eyes that usually held such warmth were red-rimmed and hollow. The freckles scattered across her cheeks—those constellations I'd memorised as a child—stood out against skin that looked pale and drawn. She'd aged a decade since this morning.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi," she replied, her eyes finding mine for a second before looking away. Like she couldn't bear to see what was written there. Like my face held accusations she wasn't ready to answer. "How was work?"

"Fine. Long." I held up the shopping bag, letting it speak for itself. "I brought dinner."

Her eyebrows lifted slightly—surprise, or maybe confusion. The bag crinkled in my grip.

"You didn't have to do that."

"I know. But I did." I moved past her towards the kitchen, not wanting to stand there in the doorway having a conversation neither of us was ready for. "Chicken schnitzel. The good ones."

"Joel—" Her voice caught slightly, snagged on something she couldn't quite say. "We can't afford—"

"It's fine," I interrupted, not wanting to hear the rest of that sentence. Not wanting to talk about what we could and couldn't afford, not today. Not when I knew exactly how little was in our account, how carefully we had to stretch every dollar. "I got paid yesterday, remember? It's fine."

That was a lie.

I'd gotten paid last week, but most of it had already gone—rent, her medical bills from last month, the electricity that we'd been warned about in increasingly threatening letters. The twenty-three dollars I'd spent on dinner was money we didn't have.

But I couldn't come home with nothing.

Couldn't just walk through the door and pretend this morning hadn't happened, couldn't sit down to another meal of two-minute noodles or toast or whatever scraps we had in the cupboards. Couldn't let this day end with nothing to show for it but the weight of revelation and the silence between us.

The kitchen was exactly as I'd left it this morning.

The tissue box on the side bench, half-empty now. The yellow envelope—now empty—sitting on the counter where Mum had left it, its official Department of Justice lettering visible even from the doorway. The birth certificate itself was gone, though. She must have put it away somewhere. Hidden it, maybe, as if hiding the paper could hide the truth it contained.

I set the shopping bag down on the bench, next to the cracked laminate that we'd concealed under a cutting board, and started unpacking it.

The schnitzels went in the fridge—that rattling secondhand thing that hummed and groaned every time you opened the door. The chips would need to go in the oven. I checked the box: twenty-five minutes at 200 degrees. The broccoli could just be microwaved or something. The ice cream went in the freezer, nestled next to the half-empty bag of frozen peas and nothing else.

The freezer door closed with a soft click.

"Joel." Mum's voice came from the doorway. I turned.

She was standing there, her arms wrapped around herself in that way she had when she was trying to hold herself together. Watching me with those eyes that always saw too much, that had known me since before I was born, that had looked at me every day for nineteen years while carrying a secret I couldn't begin to comprehend.

"We need to talk."

"I know." I turned back to the bench, pulling the schnitzels out of the fridge and unwrapping them from their butcher's paper. "But can we eat first? I'm starving."

Another lie.

I wasn't starving. The servo pie from this morning was still sitting heavy in my stomach, a solid lump of regret and cheap pastry. But I needed something to do with my hands, needed a task, needed to not look at her face and see all the guilt and pain and love that was written there.

Needed to not have this conversation. Not yet. Not until I'd had time to work out what I wanted to say.

"Okay," she said quietly. Then, after a pause, "Do you want help?"

"Nah. I've got it. You just... sit. Relax."

She didn't move.

Just stood there in the doorway, watching me fumble with the oven dial—the numbers worn off from years of use, the settings guesswork now—while the weight of all the things we weren't saying pressed down on the small kitchen like humidity before a storm.

The fluorescent light hummed overhead, harsh and unforgiving, casting everything in that clinical white glow that hid nothing.

"I'm sorry," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper.

My hand froze on the oven door.

For a long moment, I didn't turn around. Just stood there, staring at the dial that said 200 degrees, watching my reflection distort in the glass of the oven door. A warped version of myself, stretched and strange, as unrecognisable as everything else had become.

"I know," I managed eventually.

"I should have told you. Years ago. I should have—" Her voice cracked, splintering on the weight of everything she'd carried alone. "I was trying to protect you, but that's not an excuse. I lied to you. Every day. For your entire life. And I'm so, so sorry."

I closed my eyes.

Took a breath. Then another one. Counted to five the way I did when I was trying to fold a particularly difficult piece of origami, when the paper wasn't cooperating and I needed to find my centre before I could find the next crease.

"Mum, can we just... not right now? Please?"

Silence.

Then the sound of her retreating, footsteps soft on the brown carpet, the couch springs creaking as she sat back down in the lounge.

I stood there for another moment, gripping the edge of the counter hard enough to turn my knuckles white, trying to get myself together. My eyes were burning. My throat felt tight, like something was lodged there that wouldn't move. But I wasn't going to cry. I'd done enough of that today—in the truck between deliveries, sitting in empty driveways, wiping my face on my sleeve and pretending the radio was just too loud.

Get it together. Make dinner. Just... do something normal.

The oven took forever to heat up—it always did, the element half-busted, needing replacement we couldn't afford. While I waited, I put the chips on a tray, arranged them in a single layer like the packet instructions said. Put the broccoli in a bowl with a bit of water, ready for the microwave. Set out two plates—the mismatched ones we'd always had, one with a chip in the rim, the other slightly too small for a proper meal.

Normal tasks. Normal movements. The kind of things I'd done a thousand times before.

Except nothing was normal. Nothing would ever be normal again.

When the oven finally beeped, I put the chips in, then the schnitzels on top of them—not technically how you were supposed to do it, but we only had one oven shelf and I was making it work. The way we always made things work.

Twenty-five minutes. I set the timer on my phone.

Then there was nothing left to do but go back to the lounge.

Mum hadn't moved.

She was still sitting there, curled up small, staring at the TV without seeing it. The cooking show had ended. Now it was the news. Something about politics, about budgets and cuts and things that affected people like us without ever acknowledging we existed.

I sat in the armchair.

Dad's chair, I'd always thought of it, though he'd never sat in it, never existed to sit in it. Just the chair opposite the couch, the one that faced the TV at a slight angle. My chair now, I supposed. Though that designation felt different than it had yesterday.

The news droned on about some scandal in Canberra.

I watched without processing, just letting the images and voices wash over me whilst the smell of cooking chips started to fill the house. That particular scent of oven chips—potatoes and oil and rosemary—slowly overwhelming the mustiness, transforming the space into something almost warm.

"How was your day?" Mum asked suddenly.

Her voice was careful, tentative, like she was testing the waters. Testing whether I'd let her back in, even this much.

"At work, I mean."

I looked at her, surprised she was even asking. We hadn't really spoken since this morning—not properly, not about anything that mattered or didn't matter. Just the silence of two people sharing a house while the truth sat between them like a third presence.

"It was... fine. Just deliveries."

"Anywhere interesting?"

I shrugged, staring at the TV. A weather map of Tasmania now, fronts moving in from the west.

"Started out in Huonville. Rural property. This woman had goats."

"Goats?" A tiny spark of interest in her voice. The smallest flicker of something that wasn't grief or guilt.

"Two of them. They tried to eat my shoelaces." A small smile tugged at my mouth despite everything, despite the weight of the day and the knot in my stomach and the thousand things I wanted to say and couldn't. "And she was wearing her nightie and gum boots when she answered the door. Said it was standard country-folk attire."

Mum's face softened slightly, the first real expression I'd seen there all day. Almost a smile. The ghost of the mother I knew, surfacing briefly through the guilt.

"That sounds very Huonville."

"Do you know the area?"

"A bit. When I was younger." She pulled her sleeves down over her hands—a habit she'd had forever, making herself smaller, disappearing into her clothes. "Rural Tasmanians. They're good people. Honest. They don't pretend to be something they're not."

The last sentence hung in the air between us, weighted with meaning neither of us acknowledged. The irony wasn't lost on me. Honest people. People who don't pretend.

We sat in silence for a bit.

The news moved on to weather. Rain coming in tomorrow, apparently. Good for the farmers. The screen showed satellite imagery of clouds building over the Tasman, swirling systems approaching our island like slow-moving inevitability.

"And the other deliveries?" Mum asked eventually. "They went okay?"

I shrugged again. "Yeah. Just... normal. Some bloke in Berriedale with way too many tent boxes. His dogs stole the manifest."

"Dogs?"

"Two Shih Tzus. Little fluffy things. Caused absolute chaos."

Another small smile from her. It didn't reach her eyes, but it was something. A thread of connection, however thin.

"He answered the door in his shorts. Barely dry from the shower. Just... didn't seem bothered at all." I shook my head, remembering Luke Smith standing there with Duke in his arms, dripping onto his pristine tiles. "And the house was massive. Like, properly nice. Eighty-inch TV. Fancy kitchen. The works."

"Berriedale's expensive," Mum said quietly.

"Yeah." I thought about it for a moment. The stone benchtops. The styled cushions. The artful arrangement of candles and decorative stones on the coffee table. A life so far removed from ours it might as well have been another planet. "Made me wonder..."

"Wonder what?"

I hadn't meant to say it out loud.

But now it was there, hanging in the air, and I couldn't take it back. The words that had been circling in my head all afternoon, ever since I'd reversed out of that Berriedale driveway and watched the expensive house shrink in my mirrors.

"Made me wonder what kind of life he has. Jamie Greyson. If he has money. If he lives in a nice house like that. If he..."

I trailed off.

Mum's face closed up immediately, all the softness gone. The shutters coming down, the walls going up. The same expression she'd worn in the kitchen this morning when I'd asked who he was.

"Joel—"

"I'm not asking you to tell me," I said quickly, raising my hands. "I'm just... saying. I wondered. That's all."

The timer on my phone went off, cutting through the tension like a blade. Twenty-five minutes. I stood up quickly, grateful for the excuse to leave the room, to escape the conversation we kept circling but never quite having.

In the kitchen, I pulled the tray out of the oven.

The chips were golden, crispy around the edges where the heat had caught them just right. The schnitzels looked perfect—dark brown, breadcrumbs crunchy, the way they looked in the deli photos but never quite matched at home.

I nuked the broccoli for two minutes, listening to the microwave hum, then split everything between the two plates. No fancy presentation, just food on plates. Chips in a pile. Schnitzel in the middle. Broccoli on the side.

But it looked... good. Better than anything we'd eaten in weeks.

I carried both plates to the lounge, handed one to Mum.

She took it with both hands, looking down at it like she wasn't sure what to do with it. Like the food was a gift she didn't deserve, an offering she couldn't accept.

"Joel, this is too much."

"It's chicken schnitzel and chips, Mum. It's not too much."

"You know what I mean."

I sat back down in my chair, balancing the plate on my lap. The warmth seeped through my jeans, grounding me.

"Just eat it, okay? Please?"

She looked at me for a long moment.

Those blue eyes, red-rimmed and searching. Looking for something in my face—forgiveness, maybe, or permission, or just some sign that we'd survive this. That we'd come out the other side.

Then, slowly, she picked up her fork and cut a small piece of schnitzel.

We ate in silence.

Not the comfortable silence of people who knew each other well enough not to need words. Not the easy quiet of ordinary evenings, of meals shared after long days, of two people who'd built a rhythm over nineteen years of living together.

This was the awkward silence of people who had too much to say and no idea how to start. The silence of things unsaid, of revelations unprocessed, of a relationship cracked down the middle and neither of us knowing how to begin repairs.

The food was good. Really good, actually.

The schnitzel was juicy inside, the breadcrumb coating crunchy and salty the way deli schnitzels always were. The chips were exactly right—crispy outside, fluffy inside, the rosemary giving them a sophistication our usual frozen ones never had. Even the broccoli wasn't too soggy, steamed to that perfect point between raw and mushy.

It was the kind of meal that, in any other circumstance, would have been nice. Simple but satisfying. The kind of thing you'd eat and feel good about, feel like you'd treated yourself to something.

But every bite tasted like guilt.

Every mouthful was a reminder of money we didn't have, of the electricity bill that needed paying, of the doctor's appointment Mum had been putting off because we couldn't afford the gap payment. Every forkful was twenty-three dollars we'd miss when the next crisis came.

I watched her eat.

She was taking small bites, chewing slowly, like she was trying to make it last. Or like every bite hurt. Her fork moved mechanically, cutting and lifting and returning to the plate, the gestures of eating without the pleasure of it.

"It's good," she said eventually. "Really good. Thank you."

"You don't have to thank me."

"Yes, I do." She set her fork down, the plate still half-full. Her eyes found mine, and for a moment she looked like she was about to cry again. "You shouldn't have to be doing this, Joel. Any of this. Working instead of studying. Buying groceries. Taking care of me. You're nineteen. You should be at university, or travelling, or just... being nineteen. Not..."

"Not what?" I challenged, the sharpness surprising me. "Not taking care of my mum? Not helping pay the bills? What exactly should I be doing, Mum?"

"Living your own life."

"This is my life."

"It shouldn't be."

I set my own plate down on the side table, harder than I meant to.

The fork rattled against the ceramic, a small sound that felt too loud in the quiet room. The news was still on, murmuring something about interest rates, about things that mattered to people with savings and mortgages they could actually pay.

"Well, it is. So can we just... not do this? Not tonight?"

She looked at me with those eyes that knew everything, that saw right through me, that had watched me grow from infant to child to the young man sitting across from her now.

"When, then?"

"I don't know. Just... not now."

"Because we need to talk about this morning. About Jamie. About everything."

"I know."

"About why I lied. About who he was. About—"

"I said I know!" The words came out sharper than I intended. Louder. I took a breath, forced my voice back down, felt it scraping against the tightness in my throat. "I know we need to talk. But I can't... I can't do it right now. I've been thinking about it all day. Every single delivery, every single moment, I've been thinking about it. And I'm just... I'm tired, Mum. I'm so fucking tired."

She flinched at the swear word. I never swore in front of her. Ever.

"I'm sorry," I said immediately. "I shouldn't have—"

"No." She shook her head, and something shifted in her face. Acceptance, maybe. Understanding. "No, you're right. I'm pushing. I'm sorry." She picked up her plate again, looked down at the half-eaten food. "Let's just... eat. We can talk later. Or tomorrow. Or whenever you're ready."

But when would I be ready?

When would there ever be a good time to hear about how my entire life had been built on a lie, about the father who wasn't dead but just... absent? When would I be ready to hear whatever explanation Mum had for keeping that from me?

I didn't have an answer. I wasn't sure there was one.

I picked up my plate and kept eating.

The schnitzel had gone lukewarm. The chips were going soft, losing their crispness. I ate anyway, because I'd bought it and because wasting food was unacceptable in a house where we so often went without. Every chip was money. Every bite was a choice we'd made with resources we didn't have.

Mum ate too, slowly, determinedly, like finishing the meal was an act of love. Maybe it was.

When we were done—both plates empty, though mine emptier than hers—I collected them and took them to the kitchen.

Ran the hot water, squirted in dish soap, washed them one by one. The familiar motions. The soap bubbles catching the fluorescent light. The heat of the water on my hands, almost too hot but grounding, real, something I could feel.

Behind me, I heard Mum get up from the couch. Heard her footsteps on the brown carpet, approaching.

"Ice cream?" Her voice was tentative.

I turned.

She was holding the tub I'd bought, looking at it like it was something precious. Something she didn't deserve but wanted anyway. Vanilla. Her favourite. The label slightly frosted from the freezer.

"Yeah," I said. "Got it for dessert."

Her eyes got watery. "Joel—"

"Don't," I said quickly. "Just... let's just have ice cream, okay? Like normal people. Like we used to."

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

I pulled two bowls from the cupboard—the small ones, because we were rationing, because half a tub needed to last, though I didn't say that out loud—and scooped ice cream into both. Not much. Maybe two scoops each. Half the tub saved for another time.

We took the bowls back to the lounge. Sat in our usual spots. Ate ice cream and watched whatever was on TV—some game show now, people answering questions and winning money they probably needed as much as we did.

The ice cream was good.

Sweet and cold and exactly what vanilla ice cream should be. It melted on my tongue, familiar and comforting in a way that made my chest ache with something I couldn't name. This was what childhood tasted like. This was what safety used to feel like.

This was what we did, Mum and I. This was who we were.

Small treats when we could afford them. Cheap dinners that we made special through sheer force of will. Looking after each other because there was no one else to do it. The two of us against the world, making it work however we could.

Except now there was this thing between us.

This Jamie Greyson-shaped hole that had always been there but that I'd never known to look for. A gap in our history, a missing piece of my own story. And I didn't know how to bridge it, didn't know if it could even be bridged.

"I do love you," Mum said suddenly, quietly, staring into her ice cream bowl.

The words were almost a whisper, fragile as spun glass.

"I need you to know that. Whatever else you think about me, whatever else happens, I love you more than anything in this world. You're the best thing I ever did. The only thing I got right."

My throat felt tight. "I love you too."

"I know I messed up. I know I should have told you the truth. But I was so scared, Joel. Scared you'd hate me. Scared you'd leave. Scared you'd go looking for him and he'd..." She stopped, took a breath. "And I'd lose you."

"You're not going to lose me."

"Promise?"

I looked at her—really looked at her.

My mum. Kate Elizabeth Gibbons. Forty-one years old, looking fifty tonight. Auburn hair going grey at the temples, shot through with silver that hadn't been there a year ago. Blue eyes that had cried too many tears today, red-rimmed and exhausted. Freckles scattered across her cheeks like constellations I'd memorised as a child, when I'd sit on her lap and count them while she read me stories.

The woman who'd raised me alone, who'd worked herself to exhaustion at the nursing home and come home too tired to eat but never too tired to ask about my day. Who'd sacrificed everything so I could have something resembling a childhood. Who'd chosen my wellbeing over her own, every single time, for nineteen years.

The woman who'd lied to me for nineteen years.

"I promise," I said, even though I didn't know if it was true.

Even though part of me wanted to leave, wanted to run, wanted to find Jamie Greyson and demand answers that Mum either couldn't or wouldn't give. Even though I could feel the ground shifting beneath me, could feel the foundations of everything I thought I knew crumbling into uncertainty.

But she needed to hear it. And I needed to say it.

She set her ice cream bowl down on the side table and came over to me, perching on the arm of my chair. Her hand found mine, squeezed it. Her fingers were cold from the ice cream bowl. Small and rough from years of work, from hands that had scrubbed and cleaned and cared for others all her life.

"I'm going to tell you everything," she said.

"Not tonight. But soon. I promise. Everything I know about Jamie. About what happened. About why I made the choices I made. You deserve to know."

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

She leaned down and kissed the top of my head, like she used to when I was little. When I was small enough to fit in her lap, small enough to believe that she could protect me from anything, small enough not to know about the things she'd hidden.

"Thank you for dinner. It was perfect."

It wasn't perfect.

Nothing was perfect. Everything was broken and complicated and wrong.

But it was what we had.

We finished our ice cream in silence.

Mum went to bed early—said she was tired, though I think she just needed to be alone. Needed to stop holding herself together long enough to fall apart in private. The click of her door. The creak of her bed.

I stayed up, sitting in the darkened lounge, staring at nothing.

The TV was off now. The house was quiet except for the fridge humming in the kitchen, that familiar rattle and groan of machinery working past its prime. The streetlight outside cast faint orange patterns through the curtains, shadows that shifted when cars passed.

The birth certificate was in her room somewhere. Jamie Greyson's name written in official type. Proof that he'd existed, that he'd been real enough to be listed as my father. Proof that everything I'd believed about my origins had been a carefully maintained fiction.

Tomorrow I'd go back to work. More deliveries. More houses. More people living lives I'd never have.

Tomorrow Mum would probably try to talk to me about Jamie.

Tomorrow the bills would still need paying, and the fridge would still be mostly empty, and nothing would be fixed just because we'd shared chicken schnitzel and ice cream.

But tonight, for these few hours, we'd pretended.

We'd sat together and eaten a special dinner and been a family, broken and complicated as we were. We'd shared ice cream and said words that mattered, even if they weren't the words we needed to say. We'd held onto each other in the small ways we knew how.