The air in the kitchen was thick with the scent of frying beef when the doorbell rang. Emily, still wearing her apron, answered to find a young courier standing there.
“Good afternoon! Your parcel,” he announced cheerfully.
“What parcel? I haven’t ordered anything,” Emily replied, puzzled.
“Flat number ten?” he double-checked.
“Yes.”
“Then it’s definitely yours.”
Hesitantly, she signed the receipt and took the large box. The moment she opened it, her blood turned to ice. Inside lay a funeral wreath—not decorative, not festive, but real, with a black mourning ribbon bearing her name.
No sender was listed. Just the silent message: *Rest in peace, Emily.*
“Who could hate me enough to send a wreath to my home?” she whispered later, her voice trembling.
Her husband, James, dismissed her fears.
“Why would you think it’s my mother? She adores you!”
“Adores me? She’s never even said my name without sneering!” Emily shot back, pain lacing her words.
And it was true. His mother, Margaret, had disapproved of everything—Emily’s modest height, her receptionist job, her simple dresses. Emily had tried, sewing her own clothes, always polite, yet met only disdain and sharp remarks.
“Look at this hopeless girl,” Margaret would mutter to James. “Can’t string two words together!”
He stayed silent, pretending all was well. But his silence was complicity. His mother grew bolder, even though they lived in Emily’s flat.
When Emily suggested renting out the place to find somewhere Margaret would approve of, the older woman shot down every option—loudly, with accusations, with dramatics. And James? He sipped his tea and said nothing.
The wreath wasn’t enough. Next came the “gift” of a bucket of blackberries, handed over with a saccharine smile. “Vitamins! For my dear daughter-in-law!”
By morning, Emily found a live, half-frozen hedgehog inside. Thankfully, James was there to see it. Still, he brushed it off: “Must’ve crawled in by accident.”
Then came the doll under the bed—needles stabbed into its chest. The situation was spiralling into some cheap horror film. Yet Emily endured. Because she loved him. Because she believed the man beside her was her protector, not just his mother’s son.
The final straw came by chance. Emily returned from work early and caught James with another woman. In *her* flat.
She threw him out. Fast. Brutally. Left him standing in his socks, as the saying goes.
He stammered excuses: *”She just showed up! I didn’t plan this!”*
But Emily knew better. The “guest” turned out to be the niece of Margaret’s best friend. Too convenient.
Three years she’d tolerated it. Most wouldn’t last three months. But she’d hoped.
And James? He crawled back to his mother. Where else?
But even there, a twist awaited. Margaret had a new romance—a late-life passion fiercer than her first. Not in her own flat, but her lover’s cramped studio. Suddenly, *she* was the one without a home.
Irony?
The moral? Be careful what you wish for. Sometimes it comes true—just not how you imagined.
