She hides the numbers so her kids can stay carefree a few more years

Night. The house has gone quiet, both kids are asleep, and only now does she pull the pocket calculator closer. This year's school fees for two: add them up any way you like, it still comes to half a month's pay. The window is black, there's one yellow bulb in the kitchen, and she presses the keys as softly as she can.

She never does the sums while the kids are awake. Not because the numbers are hard — she's had them in her head since the afternoon. She waits because she doesn't want them to see their mother sitting there counting. She isn't afraid of running short; short can be managed, it's managed every month. She's afraid of them finding out that a number like this exists. Because once the little one knows, he'll stop asking. He'll quietly put his wants away — exactly the way his mother puts hers away. She puts the calculator back and goes to pull the blanket up over him.

The older one asks for new shoes; the old pair is too tight. "Mm, let me see," she says. That night she takes the old pair out, loosens the strap, polishes them till they shine. In the morning he slips them on and grins, sure they're new. She watches him walk out the door, knowing they're old, and realises she has just traded a tin of shoe polish for a smile. That knowledge she keeps to herself. The loose change goes into the piggy bank — next month, she'll buy them.

The little one comes home saying a friend has a box of 24 crayons. The wallet, just emptied for school fees, is paper-thin. She buys the 12-crayon box and tells her child the first lie she's ever told him: "this one's the better kind." He believes her. He colours all evening. The only person in the house who feels the lack that night is her. Then she pulls up a chair and colours with him — twelve colours, plenty.

She doesn't hide it because she's good at bearing things. She hides it so he can stay carefree a few more years.

There are numbers our mothers added up on many nights that we never once heard. Is there a pair of shoes, a box of crayons from back then — that you only now realise she gave something up for?