Hello, Ethel? Come home right away, somethings happened, her fathers voice crackled over the line, panicked and pleading. The young woman snorted, then asked what the emergency was.
The neighbours are causing a ruckus again. Hes shouting that hell kill her, shes saying hell kill me, and now they the line filled with the sound of slamming doors and raised voices. Theyre trying to break in, Ethel! Theyll kill me, Im
Dont call me when theyre about to kill you. When youre actually in danger, ring. Do you need a chair to prop the door, in case they push it half open? he replied, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
What a
Whatever youre doing, lad, youre not doing it right. If Im not right for you, you could go to your dear little brothers place and let him look after you, give you everything you want, Ethel muttered, her sarcasm cutting sharper than a kitchen knife.
She hung up before she could finish the thought. It was clear she could have kept going if she had wanted to.
Ethel grew up in a seemingly ordinary, respectable household, though it was never officially registered as a fulltime family. Her mother had died when Ethel was a baby, leaving her father, Harold Barnes, to juggle both parental roles.
On the surface the Barnes family were typical. Yet, like most closets, they hid a few skeletonsspecifically, a pair of women: Harolds mother, Mabel Barnes, and his late wife, Eleanor.
Mabel, after whom Ethels middle name was chosen, was a peculiar woman. From Ethels perspective she seemed a selfabsorbed old woman, though respectable girls of the time would never call her that outright; they merely called her eccentric.
Mabels eccentricity lay in the fact that, well into her pension years and without any medical diagnosis, she behaved as if she were in the final stages of dementia. She never left her bed, soiled herself and, if the circumstances were right, smeared the mess on the nearest wall. She took great offence when relatives tiled that very wall to make cleaning easier, and covered the mattress with a sheet of vinyl.
When it came to food, Mabel adored the finest thingsmeat, fish, and, above all, chocolate. Not the cheap cocoa tablets that most British pensioners bought with their tea, but genuine Belgian chocolate, which cost a small fortune. Harold, a skilled turner, earned a decent wage, though not a fortune, and he spent the bulk of his earnings on Mabels every whim.
The Barnes family lived in a council flat with four rooms in Manchester. One room belonged to Mabel, another to Harold and Ethel, and the remaining two were rented to Polish migrants and a typical English couple down the hall.
Trouble didnt come from strangers but from neighbours of a similar stripe: the friendly English folk who loved a pint and a good laugh, then promptly went to confront other neighbours or gossip about the latest scandal.
No one ventured near Mabels room after an illfated night when a stray bottle smashed a window, and the tenants swore never to cross that threshold again. Young Ethel, however, was often cornered. She had no children of her own (thankfully), yet the drunken men, after a few rounds, liked to squeeze an innocent childs arm for a laugh.
When Ethel grew older and began to refuse Aunt Nancys parties, the men would threaten to slap or pinch her. She told Harold, but he merely waved her away: Dont go out into the hallway, youll get hurt. Prop the door with a chair, then stay inside and watch TV until I get home.
One night, after shed taken a shortcut through the back garden to the old flowerpot, the loving dad pot fell and knocked her on the head. It wasnt the worst thing that happened, though. The flats other tenants were decent, the neighbours didnt drink every night, and there was always food on the table.
Ethel resented that Harold bought the finest treats for Mabel while she, his daughter, scraped by on cheap spaghetti and the lowestpriced sausages. Yet, because everyone around them lived much the same way, she never complainedat least not as a child.
When she turned thirteen, Harold decided to start a new chapter in his love life. He brought home a woman named Clara, who immediately began imposing her own rules. She demanded that she and Harold share the master bedroom, insisting that a grown man should not be sharing a bed with his teenage daughter. Its improper, she declared. Ethel should have her own room. Harold, now in his fifties, conceded and moved Ethel into the room that Mabel occupied.
Mabel welcomed the new arrangement with surprising cheer, but she didnt expect that Ethels hardened schoolyard spirit would confront her directly. When Ethel threatened, Try anything, you old fool, and Ill smash you with a pillow, and my age wont protect you, Mabel, whose mind had never slipped into senility, was genuinely frightened. She never complained to Harold again.
Harold, meanwhile, continued to bring exotic delicacies for Mabel, and Clara never objectedperhaps because Harolds income had risen, allowing Clara to afford clothes, cosmetics, and weekend lunches with friends.
Are you still in the tenth form? Drop it. Start looking after Mum and earn your keep, Harold told Ethel, trying to push her into domestic duties. Ethels protestsshe wanted an education and a respectable career were met with a thinly veiled threat: If you dont like it, youre welcome to leave the house.
At sixteen, Ethel forged Harolds signature to enroll in a college. She worked hard, hoping no one would ever need to call the parents to the school. She told everyone her father worked long hours caring for his ailing mother. She cleaned the floors of a nearby shopping centre at night for extra stipend money.
From her first paycheck she finally tasted the Belgian chocolate shed never afforded before. After college she stumbled into accounting and analyticsa field that turned out to be her calling. Over the next two decades she built an excellent reputation and amassed a solid nest egg.
She married, had a son and a daughter, and seemed to have fulfilled the expectations of the older generation. She never thought of Harold again, until she ran into him about a year and a half ago, a frail, shuffling man at what seemed the bottom of his life.
In the years since, Harold had buried Mabel, divorced Clara, lost his flat which he had foolishly transferred to his son from a second marriage and now found himself a homeless, bitter old man. The son, of course, told him he didnt need his father any more, and Harold turned to Ethel for a place to stay.
Ethel helped, but only enough to keep herself out of any deeper obligation. She found a modest twobed flat that she and her brother had inherited from their mother. Her brother, unstable half the time, refused to sell his share, so she listed the property at a low price, hoping the buyer would cover the deposit.
Ill take it, the buyer said cheerfully.
Are you sure? Its a respectable home for a lady, the seller replied.
Im buying it for my father, Ethel reassured her, and a week later moved Harold, along with his few belongings, into the new flat, saying, Make yourself at home, its yours now.
A dark, vengeful satisfaction pulsed through her as she watched Harold grumble about the different treatment he received from his daughter compared with his late wife. She called her own mother a kind, supportive woman who never overstepped for birthday gifts, and even sent Harold and his new wife on a short overseas holiday, paying for everything herself.
I raised you, Ethel, Harold said once.
And Ill support you now, Father, just as you once supported me, she retorted. Heres your cheap spaghetti, the same you fed me when Mum had a ham steak. Heres the discount sausage packs I bought on sale just think of me as the caring daughter you always wanted.
Harold sighed, looking at the pack of sausages. Youre ungrateful, he muttered.
Ethel didnt toss them at him. She knew that if she acted like her childhood self bitter and spiteful she would end up with nothing. Im grateful, Father. Ill repay you a hundredfold for everything you gave me, she said.
Friends whispered that she was too kind to a traitorous father, that she should have abandoned him altogether. But Ethel didnt wish him death. He hadnt left her in an orphanage; he had at least provided. She had learned early that love and care are scarce resources, not owed to anyone. She would use that lesson wisely.
In the end, Ethel realized that the only true inheritance she could pass on was the understanding that kindness, even when unreciprocated, is a strength, not a weakness. By choosing compassion over revenge, she broke the cycle of bitterness and taught herselfand anyone who heard her storythat the greatest wealth is a heart that gives freely, regardless of what it receives in return.
