Where did the letters come from

I'm painting myself a dark shade of black, and have little if any interest in mitigation. This is it with gloves off.

But that doesn't mean explanations are utterly redundant.

The letters, deeply personal, caustic and pathetic by turn were not filched from a hiding place; they were gathered up from where they'd been left: left lying around in his room for me to find.

So here is the first explanation.

The house is at one end of a terrace, a group of four adjoining houses. The other three are 'two up, two downs'. This fantastical English contrivance is precisely what it claims to be: a house with two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs. They typically were constructed in the days before indoor conveniences, in the days when the working classes who were their occupants had no expectations. The kitchen was rudimentary, washing facilities were portable and entire families, typically large in the days before contraception, lived cheek by jowl in such small premises.

Two doors up from us, in one the two middle houses there lived when we arrived here a very, very old lady. She had been born in the house, one of something like 12 children. The shed that took up most of the 'garden' had in fact been built to accommodate the overspill; and by some miracle they did not all perish of cold.

At some time in the relatively recent past a previous owner had an extension built onto what is now our house. Each of the other three houses has an extension but in each of their cases the extension is a bathroom built onto the back of the house at ground level. In our case the extension is effectively a 'two-up-two-down' built along side. In it we have a kitchen, dining area, third bedroom and bathroom. So in the original part of the house we have a long living area knocked through and upstairs we have two bedrooms. And we have all the garden front and back still.

Since very soon after moving in our daughter and I have shared the second double bedroom, the bedroom in the new part of the house. The fat bastard has had the really big double bedroom which is in the old part of the house all to himself.

Periodically, usually when he is absent for a week or thereabouts, I go in wearing full body armour and render the place safe for normal human occupation. In the process I gather together black sacks of rubbish comprising stale food, empty wrappers, drink containers, cigarette packets, the discarded inserts from said packets, newspapers, magazines, cotton buds, used tissues and other unmentionable detritus.

The mountains of clothing, some washed some unwashed, are brought together and bundled up so that I might dust and vacuum the floor, wash the walls and generally smarten up the place. Once I actually re-painted.

The letters from his mother emerged in the course of this cleaning. They were there, lying about amongst the above mentioned detritus. I thought it only right that I should be discriminating in what I threw out and so I checked everthing before I disposed of it; and that is how I came to discover that his mother maintained a rather one-sided correspondence with her son through the difficult years.

Should I have thrown them away realising that they were personal correspondence. Possibly yes. I kept them not really out of any consideration for posterity but because they cast a very particular light on that dark passage of time, provide another voice, another narrative.

And since I'm providing my version of events it is only right and fair that another speak too, since those letters so patently came from the heart.