It was Friday, again. They seemed to come around so quickly. But, I had to do my duty.

Shit! Did I really think that? Duty? Visiting my mum, once a week, and doing what I could to assist her with the complex task of keeping on top of the basics of life.

Christ! That sounded so self-important.

Yeah, she had regular carers. They were generally pretty good, but mum could be hard to please.

When she had been physically whole she had set high standards for cleanliness and tidiness.

I knew how much she looked forward to Fridays. It wasn't so much what I did, or could do.

It was the being together. The reciprocal space and time. The memories of early family life, some joyfully recalled, others lurking subconsciously, needing no iteration, acknowledged by a shared conspiratorial smile.

It was just me and mum now, although I had my own two kids to look after and enjoy. That was my family. Today it was her family. Of course, she idolised the twins, but that one degree of separation somehow determined her emotional hierarchy.

Dad had buggered off early in the marriage when the going got tough. My elder sister fell victim to tuberculosis. Pre-war Gorbals was one of the most impoverished, unhealthy environments in Britain.

I was overweight. I couldn't fairly lay that on mum's door although she fed me all she could afford.

Carbohydrate-rich fillers. Bread, dripping, lard, tatties. And more tatties. Porridge each morning was the healthiest meal of the day. But she knew we had to have treats. Siobhan and I would race to the sweetie shop clutching halfpennies in our hot little hands. Humbugs, pear drops and gobstoppers were favourites.

I sighed as my mind took me on a nostalgia trip. A guilt trip?

Poverty and an imbalanced glucose-rich diet had reduced mum to a wheelchair-bound diabetic amputee. Two toes on one foot. The other leg missing below the knee.

But she remained feisty.

"How are ma boys, hen? Are ye feedin' them well. Keepin' them in order?"

Was I feedin' them well? She might have said so, failing to recognise the generational repetition of poverty-driven malnourishment and its toxic consequences.

I was fat. Jock was fat. Malkie was fat. I knew that was wrong. They had to eat. I had to feed them.

But the food I could afford in the shops was poison. Cheap unhealthy crap. I was keeping them alive, while killing them slowly. And surely. They would die, bit by bit, like mum. Toe by toe, limb by limb.

And it was my fault. I was a killer mother. An infanticide behind a smiling facade. I couldn't cook. I was never taught. I peddled culinary death to the people I loved most, who trusted me with their fragile lives.

I looked again at mum.

"It's tough, darlin'. Isn't it? You're daein' a great job."

"Thanks, ma."

I looked away and choked back the burning tears.