A year ago, everything turned deeply peculiar. After my husbands funeral, I wandered through rooms haunted by echoes, slowly gathering my scattered thoughts, only to realise that aside from an aching solitude, something else was quietly tightening its grip: an alarming shortage of money. I coil myself into thrift, denying even the smallest indulgencesyet expenses slither in, unpredictable as the English weather, for medicine or the doctors reassurance.
Together, my husband and I brought up two children in this drizzly land, always striving to give them our last farthing, our last and only. Our modest home was often a lifeboat for thempurchases, new appliances, little comforts, the notes and pounds delivered with an open hand. Perhaps its written, somewhere beyond the grey clouds, that whatever happens, my flat will find its way to my son and daughter, unless, in some lucid night, I decide differently by penning a will, which Im in no hurry to do. Theyre clever folk, my children; they know the value of bricks and mortar and keep half an eye on what they might inherit.
Ive tried, in jittery conversations over weak cups of tea, to suggest that the household bills swell like the Thames in winter, and if only theyd cover the ever-rising water rates and council tax, perhaps I could stop the endless fretting until my next pension fluttered in. My daughter, eyes drifting to the rain outside, acts as though shes missed my meaning entirely. My sons wife counts every penny for them both, brushing off my hints, which dissolve into empty air.
I have a rough notion what both children pull in at their jobs. Im glad, truly, that they enjoy cars in the driveway and can take flights to sun-soaked foreign beaches. My grandchildren jingle plenty of coins, spending sums at the Saturday market which match what the government parcels out to me each month. I find myself startled, wondering if somehow, with all our goodwill and heavy shopping bags for our own parents, buying medicine, footing the GP bills, my husband and I have raised children untouched by such exampleschildren unfazed by my threadbare purse, unwilling to reach back.
My companion over the garden fence proposed, almost dreamily, that I could settle in with one of my children, unannounced, and let out my own flat for extra cash. I recoil at thatyet perhaps fate and rain-streaked desperation will push me into such oddness, if the next heart-to-heart with my children does not twist in my favour. I simply cannot survive on my pension, my meagre savings drained for the youngsters, and now the cupboards echo like yesterdays news.
