My sister and I hadn’t spoken in over twenty years. Now she’s asking to move in with me… I’m at a loss.
My name’s Eleanor. I’m forty, happily married with two sons, a cosy flat in Manchester, and a cottage in the Lake District where we spend every summer. By all accounts, life’s been good. But right now, I’m staring down a choice that’s left me utterly torn—because it involves my sister, a woman separated from me not just by distance, but by decades of silence, resentment, and heartache.
When I was five, we lost our dad. Ten years later, cancer took our mum. Suddenly, it was just me. My older sister, Margaret—or Maggie, as everyone called her—was already twenty-three. On her deathbed, Mum begged Maggie not to abandon me. She took me in, and we stayed in our family home together. Though “home” might be too generous a word.
I was a troubled teenager—angry, defiant, adrift. Maggie was stern, distant, and painfully reserved. She never hugged me, never offered a kind word. She didn’t even scold—just watched me with a sort of detached indifference. I remember crying into my pillow at night, dreaming of nothing but escape.
When I turned seventeen, I fell in love. I brought my boyfriend home—only for Maggie’s husband, Robert, to practically shove him out the door. Afterwards, Maggie simply said, “If you don’t like it here, you’re free to leave.” So I packed my things and walked out. No one stopped me. No one called. No one came looking.
Things didn’t last with Daniel—turns out he wasn’t the man I thought he was. We lived hand-to-mouth in his parents’ cramped flat until we inevitably split. I couldn’t face going back to Maggie’s. She was expecting a baby by then, and after everything, I knew I didn’t belong there anyway.
I moved to Leeds instead, took a job as a shop assistant, and scraped by in a tiny bedsit. It was hard and terrifying, but I clung to every opportunity. Then I met Oliver. Steady, kind, reliable. We married, had two sons, got a mortgage on a flat, then a car, and eventually that little Lake District cottage.
Maggie? I’d heard nothing for years. Whispers here and there: she and Robert were doing well, he’d started a business, they had a big house, money. Then suddenly—it all fell apart. Robert turned to drink, they divorced, sold the house, split the proceeds. Maggie and her daughter downsized to a pokey little flat.
I kept my distance. Everyone’s got their own path, their own mistakes. But a few months ago, a mutual friend messaged me—Maggie’s daughter had married and promptly kicked her mother out. No warning, no right to return.
Then the calls started. The texts. The emails. Maggie. The sister I hadn’t spoken to in twenty years. “Please forgive me…” “I’m ill…” “I’ve nowhere to go…” “Let me stay at the cottage, just for a while…” I read them all, and I don’t know what to feel. Pity? Anger? Grief? Or just… emptiness?
Oliver says, “Let her stay. We’re only there in summer, and she’s still family.” I stay quiet. I think. I remember being seventeen, standing on the doorstep with a suitcase, the house behind me indifferent to whether I’d survive or vanish.
I’ve forgiven her—truly, without bitterness. But letting her back in means welcoming someone who once erased me from her life. What if she leaves again? Disappears? I don’t want to shoulder her burdens. But I can’t abandon her either.
So here I stand, on the threshold of a decision, heart aching more than ever. And I still don’t know which way to turn.
