Long ago, in a weathered brick house nestled in the outskirts of Manchester, my old university friend Alexander—just two-and-twenty at the time—found himself tangled in a family dispute over bedrooms. His parents’ three-room flat sheltered three generations: his mother and father, himself, and his elder brother Edward’s young family, who’d recently welcomed a babe into the world.
Edward, though hardworking, earned scarcely enough to afford a place of his own, so with his wife, Millie, and their newborn, they shared the cramped quarters. Each had their own room—kitchen and loo common to all. Tight it was, yet for a while, peace held. Alexander minded his own affairs, studied, took odd jobs, and as the saying goes, trod lightly where he stood.
Then, one grim afternoon, Millie cornered him with a proposal.
“Al,” she said, all honeyed concern, “the wee one needs proper sunlight. Your room faces south—bright as a summer’s morn! Ours is ever so draughty, dim as a cellar, and damp besides. Surely you’d not deny an infant better air?”
Alexander near gaped. Damp? Never a word of it before. True, his room was smaller by a yard or two, but better shaped—square and snug, while theirs had a narrow balcony where his mother hung the washing, his father stashed tools, and Edward slipped out for a smoke.
Millie pressed on. “Ours is the larger room! And if the chill bothers you, a lad like you could seal the windows—hardly a task for a scholar!”
Alexander simmered. His own space, quietly claimed, was being bargained away under the guise of a child’s need. Edward kept mute as a trout in the reeds, never once hinting he wished to move. Only Millie circled, insisting it was right, that he owed them this.
Politely but firmly, Alexander refused. He’d not trade for a thoroughfare of a room, where folk tramped in for nappies, socks, and fags at all hours. Nor surrender the right to bring a sweetheart home without someone clattering about for washing powder.
“Mother and Father’s room is theirs. Edward’s is for his family. Mine is all I have,” he told Millie. “I shan’t be moving.”
After that, the air in the house turned as thick as porridge. Millie ceased greeting him, passing by with lips pursed, eyes sharp as splinters—as though he’d committed some great crime. Edward pretended the matter didn’t exist. Their parents stayed neutral, wading no deeper into the mire.
Alexander let it lie. He knew Millie’s game—press with kindness, with need, with a mother’s plea. None of it left room for his own stake in the matter.
“I’d help if I could,” he told me later. “But why must it cost my comfort? Why must I yield, when they might sort themselves instead?”
He had the right of it. A man’s boundaries are his own, even in his parents’ home. Even at two-and-twenty. Even when a babe enters the fray.
Millie sulked, of course. She couldn’t bend the matter to her will. But Alexander never doubted—it wasn’t his fault. And he’d not feel guilt for guarding the one space that was truly his.
Sometimes, to keep hold of yourself, all you need is a good, hard “No.”
