I once let my son and his family move in with me. Now I live in rented accommodation while my former daughter-in-law shares my flat with another man…
At the last meeting, the director didn’t even pretend. “Two pieces of advice,” he said. “Either find another job or pray for a miracle.” Emma sighed as she dropped her bag by the table. “I understand, but where am I supposed to find work now?”
She walked into the office with a stony face, though her heart twisted with dread. The company was sinking—everyone knew it—but she’d still hoped they might pull through somehow. Now, the final blow. Emma needed this job desperately: two children to feed, no support from their parents—just elderly grandparents who needed more help than they could give.
She sent out CVs like clockwork, rang every contact, scoured job listings day and night. Sometimes she laughed with colleagues—”Our only work worry is where to work next.” Some had already landed new positions; others had vanished into the unknown.
“If things get bad, come to the supermarket,” a friend from another department offered. “Decent wages, flexible hours. I’ll put in a word.”
Once, such a suggestion would’ve filled Emma with despair. Now? It was something.
A choked sob broke her thoughts. She turned—Margaret, the seasoned, stoic accountant, stood by the window, her usual composure shattered.
“Margaret, what’s wrong?” Emma sprang up. “Is it the layoffs? You’re retired—you’ve less to worry about than any of us. Let’s have tea. I’ve got scones left.”
“Seems I’ll be resting under a bridge,” the older woman muttered bitterly.
“Under a bridge? You’ve got a flat! Your son’s grown—you don’t even live together.”
“The flat’s still mine—just not for me. I’m renting now. Five hundred a month—and that’s a bargain.”
It turned out Margaret had always owned the two-bedroom she’d shared with her son since they bought it twenty years ago. When he married, she welcomed the young couple in—then everything unravelled. Her daughter-in-law was pregnant, then registered there, then the baby. Margaret endured the rows, the slammed doors, her son fleeing to friends’ sofas. They blamed hormones, growing pains.
A year later—another pregnancy.
“I couldn’t take it. I left.” Margaret sighed. “Rented a bedsit. Thought it’d be temporary.”
But “temporary” stretched into years. At Christmas, she arrived with gifts—only to see her name on a list of debtors. Three thousand pounds owed on her own flat.
“Why should we pay?” her daughter-in-law had scoffed. “Your flat, your bills!”
Her son just shrugged. “No money.” So Margaret signed an agreement—she’d clear the debt in four years.
“I never complained,” she said, turning back to the window. “Just called sometimes. Asked after the children. He always said they were fine. Then I ran into a neighbour. She told me—he’s divorced. A year now. And the ex is living there with some new man. Pregnant again.”
“And your son?”
“He said, ‘I’ve a new family. They’ve got children—I can’t kick them out.’ Can’t. But he could kick me out—easy as that.”
Now Margaret pays the bills for a flat she no longer lives in. Her ex-daughter-in-law and some stranger treat it like home, while she drifts between work and cheap lodgings. Her pension barely covers medicine and rent. No savings. No help.
“I know she’s got nowhere to go… but why must I be the one on the streets while she’s playing house with my flat?” Her voice trembled. “Why didn’t my son stand by me?”
Emma listened, wordless. What answer could there be when a mother becomes expendable in her own child’s life?
“Have you… spoken to a solicitor?” she asked carefully.
“What’s the use? She’s on the tenancy. And the children? Would the courts throw out a mother with kids? And the debt’s mine. It’s not a crime. All legal.”
And there lay the tragedy. All “legal”—and not a shred of decency.
That night, Emma lay awake, Margaret’s hunched figure haunting her. “I just want to live like a person, just once.”
Where is the line between family and betrayal? When does a son decide his mother is just some old woman who’ll “put up with anything”?
Is it when we stop calling? Stop asking? Or when it’s easier to pretend our parents are “fine” while it suits us?
Now Margaret pays not just for the flat. She pays for trust, for kindness, for wanting to help. And the question remains:
What do you do when a mother gives everything—and is left with nothing?
