The tea kettle whistled like a ghost trapped inside, its mournful cry echoing through the Camberwell flat as Eleanor Whitmore adjusted the lace doily beneath the vase of wax flowers. Her fingers trembled as they traced the scalloped edge of her grandmother’s clock. One hour until guests arrived for her sixtieth—a number that always sounded like a bridge crumbling under a too-heavy horse.
“Lucy, are you nearly ready?” Eleanor called into the kitchen, where clattering china and a chorus of birdsong from the radio painted the air.
“I’m finishing the potted meatloaves, Maa!” Lucy’s voice emerged, muffled by something plastic. “Why don’t you check on Charlie? He said he’d pick up the mineral water.”
Eleanor’s sigh was a rustle of moth wings. Ten years they’d cohabited—Charlie in his grotty flat-screen-mind, lolling in boxers and time’s byproducts. She found him in the study, slouched before the PC, his ruddy face blushing deeper with each keystroke.
“Charlie, the guests will be here soon,” she said, her voice soft as moth silk, though the corners were frayed with frustration.
“’M comin’,” he mumbled, not looking up. “Just need to log off this game.”
“A board game you haven’t won yet,” Eleanor muttered.
When Poppy appeared in the hallway, all freckles and untamed hair, her grandmother’s spirit lifted. “Granny, the Victoria sponge—is it still coming from Sweet Hollow?”
“It is, love,” Eleanor said, smoothing the child’s ginger curls. “Charlie was supposed to collect it, but…” She glanced at the clock. A minute had grown into ten, and ten into an hour without warning.
Poppy’s brow furrowed. “D’you think he’ll remember? He forgot to take me to the pond to feed the koi again.”
“I’ll remind him,” Eleanor promised, scribbling a note in her diary in code—the same symbols she used to translate dreams.
But Charlie, when summoned, merely waved a hand. “I’ve got it, gran. Money sorted?”
“No, I only paid the deposit,” Eleanor said, her words unraveling like a loose thread.
Lucy emerged, clutching a card in her hand like a lifeline. “Take this, Charlie. You don’t want to owe another ‘favor’ to your in-laws, do you?”
The guests arrived as twilight bled through the ivy on the windowsill. Lucy’s brother and his wife, two old colleagues from Eleanor’s days as a literature teacher in Streatham, and a cousin from Wigan whose knitting needles clicked like old-timers. Laughter bloomed like gaslight, casting their faces in warm hues.
But Charlie vanished.
“Call him, will you?” Eleanor asked when the scones were cooling on the tray.
Lucy’s face crumpled. “He’s on his way, Granny. Said there was a queue at the shop.”
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. Queues in London were made of hours and apologies, not idle chats with blokes in pubs.
As the clock’s hands danced in circles, the flat began to shift. Dust motes hung in the air like fireflies, and the guests’ voices turned into a lullaby from a distant cathedral.
The doorbell rang. Lucy opened it to a man in a courier’s cap, his breath curling like smoke. “Ms. Whitmore? Your Victoria sponge from Sweet Hollow?”
Eleanor’s heart did a somersault. “Where’s Charlie?”
“Still here?” the man shrugged. “Closed for the night. I figured you’d need it for the party.”
A shadow passed over the room. Charlie was gone, swallowed by time’s endless corridor.
Later, as the guests crammed the living room like puppets in a parlour, Eleanor made her speech. “For ten years, I’ve tolerated much. But not tonight.” Her voice was a bell tolling midnight. “I’m giving you forty-eight hours to leave, Charlie. Forty-eight.”
The flat shuddered. Poppy sliced into the sponge, revealing a message written in jam: *This is how it ends*.
By morning, Charlie was gone. A clock on the wall ticked backward. Manicured hedges outside transformed into cherry blossoms, and the ivy withered into stars.
Lucy’s eyes were wide as she gazed at her mother. “You mean it?”
“Of course,” Eleanor said, stirring her tea. “Now, help me move in the new dresser. You’ve always loved the light here.”
And as the sun crept over Camberwell, Eleanor’s flat filled with the scent of jasmine and possibility—a beginning made from the dust of an ending.
