Why I won't be calling my Mum on Mother's DayKathryn Flett was devastated 35 years ago when her mother told her she was leaving to live in Australia. Their relationship has never really recovered.

Kathryn Flett and her sons in 2011Photo: Harry BordenByKathryn Flett6:00PM GMT 14 Mar 2015One fine spring morning, when I was fifteen (thirty-five years ago, almost to the day) my mother came into my bedroom, perched herself on the end of my bed and told me that in just a few weeks time she would be leaving England and returning to her native Australiapermanently. I sat on the bed quite still, in total silence, too stunned to speak, much less cry. I hadnt seen this one coming. Id probably assumed that, like most kids, Id be the one doing the leaving someday. But not yet.My mother explained, calmly and unemotionally, that I was welcome to come too, of course but that I probably wouldnt want to. She was returning to live the sort of horsey rural life shed grown up with and left far behind when she and my father had emigrated to Britain twenty years previously. And while a horsey rural life would have been perfect for me at nine at nearly sixteen, with a taste for vintage stilettos and asymmetric haircuts, this idea was anathema.More importantly, there was the fact that she was going with Arthur, her partner of eighteen months or so and my mothers third 'boyfriend (he was in his fifties) in the six years since my parents own difficult relationship finally ended with my fathers departure. My mothers acquisition of Arthur whose wife had been a close friend of hers had been, to say the least, messy.Arthur was an alcoholic and I became weary of locating whisky bottles hidden in cisterns and pouring the contents down the loo. I loathed the sordid squalor of alcoholism: the pointless foul-mouthed rages and the constant passing-out in a blind stupor (beer binges were bad, whisky binges far worse). But most of all I hated the fact that Arthur was so intensely consuming that at precisely the point in my life when I needed my mother to show me how to be a woman she was not only emotionally absent but, increasingly, physically absent too. I would occasionally arrive home from school on a Friday afternoon and find a note from my mother saying shed be away for the weekend (one, memorably, was scribbled in biro on the back of a paper plate and asked if I could please tidy my bedroom. I still have it). Mum would usually leave me twenty quid. You could do quite a lot with twenty quid in 1978; I recall going to Miss Selfridge first thing on the Saturday morning and spending the rest of the weekend living on tea and crisps.

Kathryn Flett as a baby with her mother in 1964

Unthinkable now, of course, but it never occurred to me to talk to anybody about this. Who would I tell? I was an only child with no blood relatives in this country apart from my parents. My dad had his own life, and though we were in regular amicable contact that life seemed to be so far removed from my own as to be entirely irrelevant. Instead, I became an habitual truant, did badly in my OLevels, fell in with a crowd of Bad Boys, stole lip-gloss from the Miss Selfridge Kiss and Make-Up counter... By the time my mother sat on the end of my bed and told me she was going, she was, of course, already well on her way.Within weeks of this conversation, having just turned sixteen (I remember nothing about that birthday. Erased), I was living with my (bemused but bravely stepping-up to the paternal plate) father in a hastily-bought two-bedroom Maida Vale mansion flat just around the corner from his previous bachelor one-bedder. Bizarrely, Id said 'goodbye to my mother after a lengthy tube and bus journey from Maida Vale to the middle of Kingston Bridge. For some reason this was convenient for her and Arthur as they were driving to the airport. (From where, I have no idea; the relevance of Kingston Bridge still eludes me).The next time I saw my mother was the following Christmas, arriving jet-lagged after a Singapore Airlines flight (Flight SQ84, for the record) that, for numerous reasons, took several days to get me to my destination. Eventually, after a connecting flight to Canberra, I was met by a mother I only half-recognised for the simple reason that she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. She 'hadnt wanted to tell me on the phone, apparently. She also asked me not to tell my father who, extraordinarily, was at that point still paying alimony. Things hadnt been going brilliantly, she said, and she and Arthur needed the money for the new baby. I shrugged, indifferent. Not my problem, right? I was growing-up fast toughening up. My half-brother was born during my stay and of course I told my father of my brothers existence within five minutes of being met at Heathrow on my return. I suspect hed cancelled the alimony payments by the end of the day. And who could blame him?Arthur died when his son, his only child, was nine. My mother claims hed been sober for several years by then, however the last time I saw the man who stole my mother was in the first few days of 1982, after Id flown out to see my little brother celebrate his first birthday. Arthur was on a bender during my trip and being particularly poisonous, his insecurity somehow magnified by my presence: she doesnt want you any more he hissed in my ear, she has a new family now. Intellectually, of course I knew this was the drink talking; emotionally well, I didnt see or speak to my mother or brother for five years; for a few of those years I didnt even have their address or phone number. Sometime in this period my mother and Arthur married, though I only found out years later and not from my mother.Once-upon-a-childhood-time I really and truly believed that my mother was absolutely right about everything and I loved her unconditionally. I loved her kindness and her sense of humour and her wardrobe of beautiful clothes and shoes, and I revelled in her company. The pedestal started crumbling thirty-five years ago and, very gradually, entirely disappeared. Ive seen my mother on (and excuse me while I count on the fingers of two hands) eight separate occasions since 1982. The most recent was Christmas 2013, when I cooked a goose and sat around the table in my own kitchen alongside my father, my mother, my two sons, my partner, my brother and sister-in-law and my nephew. So when was the last time you had Christmas with your mum and dad, Kate? asked my sister-in-law. We worked out that it was 1973. Statistically, it is never going to happen again.

Kathryn Flett with her brother and mum, on mother's day 1997

Since then Ive spoken to my mother two or three times though not for about a year, I think. I left her a phone message on Christmas Day, though she didnt call back. She doesnt send cards and nor do I. Happily, there have been other women in my life who have picked up the maternal baton (special Mothers Day thanks to Shirley Nathan, who has kept an eye on me since I was sixteen), but growing up effectively motherless leaves its scars.However, after the almost-inevitable therapy these scars can work to ones advantage. For example, in common with all the other motherless women Ive ever met with whom I often connect long before I know about their motherlessness (and most of whom are properly motherless) Im a bit brittle and brusque on the outside, have a very good (if dark) sense of humour, am domestically capable, self-starting and almost pathologically driven to create a physically nurturing and attractive home for my family as if this will in some way make up for all the skills I so obviously lack. I am damaged-but-mending, I suppose and have habitually found partners who love-me-and-leave-me (though sometimes I do the leaving, just to save them the bother). Whatever. Like everybody, motherless women are the sum total of their life experiences or, more accurately in our case, lack of them.Unsurprisingly, I have a fairly ambivalent attitude to Mothers Day. After the break-up of my relationship with their father, the biggest regret of my life, by an Outback mile, has been failing to provide my two beautiful and brilliant boys with the kind of happy, nuclear family-style stability they deserve and I dreamed of. And while my children will be spending today with me, theres a very good reason why I wont be in touch with my mother this weekend as I found out many years ago, having travelled 12,000 miles to arrive unannounced on her doorstep, bearing flowers.Hi! Happy Mothers Day!Oh, its not Mothers Day here, darling! said my mother, laughing through her tears.It didnt really matter, she was definitely pleased to see me and even though I can only tell mine there are, of course, two sides to this story. Meanwhile, Im sure that even my AWOL Ma would agree that as much as mothers appreciate the flowers and cards, for us its Mothers Day every day, wherever our children might be.