**Diary Entry – 15th July**
The village never let Eleanor forget her choices—especially when it came to her daughter, Clara. “How shameful,” they whispered. “Living in that fine cottage while her own flesh and blood cram into a drafty little hut.” Clara, of course, fed the gossip like coal to a fire. “I haul water from the well while she’s got plumbing,” she’d complain to anyone who’d listen. “I scrape pennies for firewood, and she’s got central heating!” Eleanor carried herself tall, never bothering to justify her actions. Some wounds run too deep to explain.
Years ago, life had been kind. Eleanor, her husband Thomas, and their darling Clara—comfortable in their three-bedroom house, wanting for nothing. Eleanor stayed home, doting on Clara: top schools, piano lessons, the best of everything. But when Clara turned fifteen, Thomas fell ill. Eleanor fought tirelessly, selling everything but the house to save him. It wasn’t enough. Three years later, he was gone.
Struggling on a shop clerk’s wages, Eleanor barely kept a roof over their heads. Clara, used to finer things, rebelled. She refused university—“No money for it, and I won’t settle for trade school!”—yet always found funds for nights out. Her words cut deep: *“If you couldn’t provide, why’d you even have me?”* It wore on Eleanor until Clara brought home Edward.
At first, hope flickered. Edward seemed respectable—well-dressed, commanding, generous. “Mum,” he called Eleanor from the start. For months, life was smooth: a tidy house, meals prepared… though Clara and Edward vanished till dawn. Then came the fights—Clara tearful, Edward brooding. Eleanor stayed silent, a mistake she’d regret.
One evening, they cornered her. “We want our own place,” Clara announced. “Sell the house and split the money.” Reluctantly, Eleanor agreed. But at the sale, Clara and Edward vanished—with every penny. Left homeless, Eleanor found work as a live-in carer for an elderly widow, Mrs. Whitmore. Stern but fair, the old woman demanded perfection—starched linens, hearth-baked bread. Eleanor learned fast.
Two years later, Mrs. Whitmore passed quietly. Her son, a well-off solicitor, offered Eleanor the cottage for a token sum. “I looked into your past,” he admitted. “Consider it a fresh start.”
Just as peace settled, Clara reappeared—with two toddlers in tow. “Nice house,” she said breezily. “Which room’s ours?” Eleanor’s reply was sharp: “Your room was sold with the house *you* stole. Where’s *my* share?” Clara’s excuses tumbled out: Edward had gambled everything, two failed marriages, nowhere else to go. Eleanor let them stay the night—no longer.
Clara lingered two weeks before scraping together a council grant for a rundown shack. She barred Eleanor from seeing the grandchildren—until disaster struck. A careless lover burned Clara’s home to ash. By sheer luck, she and the children were spared. When they turned up at Eleanor’s door, she took them in.
Bitterness had festered long enough. Blood is blood, after all. Forgiveness doesn’t erase the past—but it might stitch a future. Only time will tell.
*Lesson learned: Some debts can’t be repaid, but holding a grudge only starves your own soul.*
