The Flat, or A Family’s Story
Emily trudged home from school, racking her brain for a way to hide her failing grade from her mother. Maybe Mum wouldn’t even be home. Then she could just tuck the report card under her pillow and say she’d left it at school. But what about tomorrow? She couldn’t “forget” it every day. Mum would find out eventually.
“Hide it today, fix the grade tomorrow,” Emily decided, quickening her pace.
Mum drilled it into her daily—good grades mattered. First, to uphold the family name. Dad had been a professor. Second, to keep her mind sharp. Some illnesses ran in the family. Her grandmother had had Alzheimer’s. She’d passed when Emily was two.
Emily slipped inside quietly, careful not to slam the door. Mum’s coat hung on the rack. She was home. Emily tiptoed to her room, stuffed the report under her pillow, and exhaled. Changed, then straight to homework. She even read the history chapter twice—yet Mum never checked on her. Unusual.
She cracked the door open. Silence. Maybe Mum was ill and asleep? Their flat was spacious—high ceilings, wide windows, right in London’s heart. The furniture was old, dark, and heavy. The hallway, lined with wardrobes, felt endless and shadowed.
Then the grandfather clock in the living room chimed. Emily nearly jumped. She steadied herself—just the clock. Peering down the hall, she spotted Mum at the kitchen table, head in her hands.
“Mum?” Emily touched her shoulder.
Mum lifted her tear-streaked face. “Dad’s gone. In the middle of his lecture…” Her voice was hollow. She pulled Emily close and sobbed. Emily held on, then broke down too.
School was forgotten the next day. They went to the hospital, then the morgue, where Mum brought Dad’s best suit and polished shoes. The funeral was packed—mostly university colleagues, where Dad had headed the department. Emily barely recognised him in the coffin. A stranger. But Mum wept over him, whispering, “How will we manage without you?”
Afterwards, Mum stayed in bed for days, crying, barely eating. Emily lived on pasta and pies. When the food ran out, she asked for money.
“Take it,” Mum said, not even asking why.
Emily bought sausages, bread, and more pasta.
One evening, she came home to find Mum cooking. “How’s school? What have you been eating?” Mum asked. Emily told her. “I’m sorry. I forgot about you.” Mum sighed. “Tomorrow, I’ll ask the department for a job. They’ll say yes, won’t they? We must carry on.”
Mum looked gaunt, ghostly—nothing like when Dad was alive. But she wasn’t crying. That was something.
The new department head, Dad’s former student, gave Mum a lab assistant role. Her unfinished degree barred her from teaching. The pay was meagre, so she took evening cleaning shifts.
“Embarrassing. A professor’s widow, mopping floors,” Mum muttered. Emily often helped.
Money stayed tight. Mum sold her jewellery to colleagues, accepting whatever they offered. Soon, even that was gone.
A neighbour offered to buy furniture. Mum refused. “The flat won’t feel like home without it.”
“Why sell the jewellery but not the furniture?” Emily asked.
“Because this is antique. Museum-quality. Even in wartime, no one sold it.”
Mum told her how they’d come to own it. She’d arrived from a tiny village to study, living in dorms. Dad, a lecturer, was much older. They hid their affair until she fell pregnant. He brought her home.
They married, though Dad’s mother disapproved, calling Mum unworthy. “I wanted to leave, but Dad stood by me. Then you were born. His mother quieted. One day, she went shopping… and never came back. Dad found her at the train station. She’d forgotten they’d sold the country house. Forgot to turn off the gas, the taps… I cared for her two years. By the end, she didn’t know us.”
After Grandma died, Dad turned her room into a study. He worked tirelessly, publishing papers. “Kind, wasn’t he? I loved him. But these last years… He forgot things, like his mother. Mid-lecture, he’d blank. Feared forced retirement. Then his heart gave out.”
When Mum brought Victor home, Emily scowled. “He’s moving in?”
“He doesn’t drink, earns well. It’ll be easier. I won’t have to clean anymore.”
Emily avoided him. Mum said he’d divorced, left his flat to his ex.
She once caught him stroking the furniture. She warned Mum—he only wanted the flat. Mum brushed it off, rambling about love and loneliness. Victor was younger than Dad.
For months, things improved. Mum smiled again, dressed well. Then she caught a cold. The cough worsened. Doctors found nothing.
One morning, the phone rang. Victor answered. “I’ll come now.”
“Who was it?” Emily asked.
He turned sharply. “The hospital. Your mother…”
In the hospital, they said Mum had a heart attack. The night nurse missed her call.
“Orphans now,” Victor slurred later, downing whiskey.
At the funeral, few attended—two colleagues, the nosy neighbour. All pitied Victor, patted Emily’s head.
Days later, she overheard Victor on the phone: “Patience. Too soon… they’ll suspect.”
“Who called?” she demanded.
“Loan sharks. I borrowed for Mum’s treatment. They want the furniture. I’ll sort it.”
She almost believed him.
A year passed. Emily got into university—Mum’s wish. Victor drank daily. Sometimes he lingered in her doorway.
“You hate me. But your mother loved me. We’re all each other has.”
“You have a daughter,” Emily said.
“We don’t speak. You wouldn’t understand.”
Autumn brought classes. Professors recognised Dad’s name. Students avoided her.
Winter came. Emily fell ill. Coughing, feverish. Victor made her berry cordial—just like Mum’s. She poured it out. A gnawing suspicion grew.
At the police station, the officer brushed her off. “See a doctor.”
Outside, a young constable, Jack, listened. “Call me tomorrow when he’s out. Don’t eat or drink at home. Pretend you’re nauseous.”
Next day, Jack searched. In the bin, he found an empty vial.
“Who’s been injected here?”
“No one,” Emily said.
“Lab’ll test this. Stay safe.”
That night, Victor loomed over her bed. “Soon, it’ll all be over…”
The doorbell saved her.
“Search warrant,” Jack said.
“You can’t! I live here!”
“You poisoned Vera Dobson. Now her daughter. The vial matches a toxin.”
Victor sneered. “She killed her own mother!”
He was taken. Jack got Emily to hospital. Drips, medicine—she recovered.
“Now what?” Jack asked.
“Sell the flat. Before someone else poisons me.”
“Just sell the antiques. Keep the flat. I’ll help.”
They did. Jack repainted with friends.
“Where do you live?” she asked after.
“Dorms.”
“Stay here. Safer with you.”
Life’s dark streaks fade. They wed within six months, happy in their central London flat—minus the antiques. Emily didn’t miss them. She’d found something better: love.
People are people. They love money—always have. But bricks and mortar? They change nothing real. Only the heart counts in the end.
