Long ago, Mum and Dad bought a cosy two-bedroom flat for me and my sister. They used to say that one day, we could sell it and swap it for two separate one-bedroom places, so each of us would have a home of our own.
Years passed, and my sister met a man and got married. She asked me if Id mind if she and her new husband moved in with me, right there in our flat. I said yes, picturing cups of tea in the kitchen and peaceful evenings in the lounge.
At the start, everything seemed rather lovely, until my sister learned she was expecting a baby. Since then, she and her husband have been quietly and not-so-quietly nudging me to move out, saying the baby would need my room. Sometimes, she speaks as though Im some distant guest, already vanished from the place. She makes plans about where the cot will go and what colour theyll paint my wallsshe barely looks at me as she says it, as though Im just a thought blowing through the hallways.
Suddenly I’m being ushered out of my own home, even though I legally own half of it. Im a student, scraping by on a bursary and a little job at the campus library. The thought of paying London rent is laughablemy pay barely covers groceries, never mind a roof of my own.
At first, they danced around the subject, Perhaps you could find somewhere closer to uni? Wouldnt that be easier for you? Now, its become blunt: We need you to move out so the baby can have your room. My sister is measuring curtains with her mind and planning a nursery full of plush hares and painted clouds, as if I never existed in that room at all, as if Im a ghost shes long since forgotten.
I told Mum and Dad about it. Mum just chuckled in that distracted way she does, making a joke about pregnant women having wild ideas, that itll blow over with the next breeze. She told me not to pay any mind, to let my sisters words slip off me. But how am I supposed to ignore being gently, dreamily evicted every time I have breakfast? How do you stay invisible in your own life?
It feels as though Im floating through my own flat, unseen, while my sister sketches futures over all the parts of the world I still call my own. Every night, my flat becomes strangecorridors stretching too long, doors opening to rooms that feel less and less like home. My sister doesnt seem to notice I might have dreams, too, or that I still live here.
Sometimes, I think I might simply evaporate into the wallpaper, and no one would notice but perhaps the cat that wanders in the lane behind our garden. What am I meant to do now, when I feel like a visitor beneath my own eaves?
