Where the House Once Stood
When Eliza stepped onto the soil of her hometown after twenty years, the first face she saw was old Alfred—once the postman, now just a man with cloudy eyes. He sat by the crumbling corner shop on the same bench where life had once hummed in the evenings: men arguing over pints, boys kicking a football, women trading gossip instead of news. On his lap lay a torn plastic bag—bread, a jar of pickled onions, and a weathered tabloid. Alfred cracked sunflower seeds and spat the husks at his feet, squinting at the dull spring sun as if surprised it still shone in this forgotten corner, abandoned by everyone—even God.
He stared at Eliza. Not surprised, not joyful—as if looking through her, back to the days when she’d left, young and furious.
“Eliza?” he muttered. “So, you’re alive then?”
“You thought I wasn’t?” she gave a faint smirk.
“Well, round here, we reckoned you’d either made it in London, married some foreign bloke, or—God forgive me—gone six feet under…”
She didn’t answer. Just nodded. Alive, yes. But not the same.
Behind her stood the house. Crooked, grey, its walls cracked, the porch rotted away, the step where her mother once greeted her after work—then later, just fell silent. It looked smaller than in her memories. Weary. Hunched. Like an old man no one visited anymore. As if waiting—not for forgiveness, not for return—but for an end. Quiet, unnoticed, like the last years of its existence.
That first day, she circled the house. Didn’t step inside. Didn’t touch it. Stared at it like a healed but itching scar. Everything inside her was pulled tight, a thread about to snap. One turn of the doorknob, and all she’d held back might collapse.
She’d left at nineteen. After her mother died, and her father drank himself into mornings where he didn’t recognise her. Called her by other names. Spoke to her as if she were a ghost from old dreams. The house became unbearable. Like a coat three sizes too small—too wretched to keep, too painful to wear. Fights happened daily. Over nothing. Over silence. Over every little thing. She shouted; he hurled mugs at the wall. The last thing he’d said: “I don’t need you. Piss off.” So she did. Vanished. First to the city. Then further. Manchester. Then London. Then just—anywhere but the past.
She worked where she could: waitress, shop assistant, typist, scrubbing stairwells, living in rooms that smelled of other lives. Wrote poetry until the words stopped saving her. Life moved like water through rusted pipes—grating, loud, sometimes thick with mould. But it moved. And Eliza moved with it.
She never wrote. Never called. Didn’t know if her father lived. Until one day, a man from the council rang—he was dead. A week ago. Alone. No witnesses. The neighbours noticed when the smell got bad. Buried at the town’s expense. The house remained.
She came back. Not knowing why. To check? To forgive? To bury the past? Or just to be sure he was really gone.
On the third day, she stepped inside. Forced the door open, inhaled the air—damp, smoky, steeped in time. Everything was still there. The table where they’d once ground mince. The chair he’d sat in. A newspaper on the sill. A mug reading “World’s Best Dad”—absurd, bitter, almost a joke. The house was silent, but the walls seemed to whisper: *remember?*
She stood in the quiet and didn’t know why she was there. To forgive? To confirm? Or to draw a line under it all?
For a week, she cleaned. Painted the sagging fence, patched the roof, scrubbed the windows until they squeaked. Not because she’d stay. But because someone had to remind the house it was still alive.
On the ninth day, she left. No keepsakes. No souvenirs. Just a photo—her, about eight, her mother still young, her father smiling. Or pretending to. But there they were—together. She slipped it into her purse. Not to mourn. Just not to forget.
The house remained. Weary. Peeling. But not empty. It held footsteps, voices, fights, laughter, the scent of jam, the shadows of nights and people gone. Some pain doesn’t leave. You just learn to carry it.
Sometimes a house stops being a wound. It becomes earth. The very ground where you first learned to walk. To fall. To stand.
And that’s enough—to start again. Not from nothing. But from what’s left. And what’s yours. For good.
