Her voice trembled as she clutched the faded teacup, its warmth long gone. The weight of betrayal pressed against her chest like a stone. Evelyn Hartford—once proud, now hollow—sat in her modest flat in the quiet town of Winterbourne, watching the rain streak down the window like tears.
For years, she had scraped savings from her pension to keep this place, her final refuge. But now, her son—her dear, devoted Henry—had married a woman whose eyes gleamed with calculation. Elizabeth. The name alone set Evelyn’s teeth on edge.
Henry had bought a plot in the Cotswolds years ago, dreaming of a grand country house where they’d all live together. At first, Evelyn had believed it—pictured herself in a sunlit parlour, grandchildren at her feet. But dreams crumbled faster than mortar. The foundation was laid, then abandoned. The skeleton of the house stood half-built, swallowing every spare penny.
Elizabeth had convinced Henry to sell their modest semi-detached, downsizing to a cramped one-bedroom flat to pour the difference into the project. Evelyn listened in silence as they spoke of timber frames and underfloor heating, their voices bright with delusion. Her arthritis, her loneliness—none of it registered.
Then came the ask.
*”Mum, we’ll all be together,”* Henry had said, squeezing her hand. *”You’ll have your own room—proper countryside air.”*
She’d swallowed hard. *”You want me to sell the flat?”*
Elizabeth’s smile was razor-thin. *”Oh, we’d never leave you without options. There’s always the cottage.”*
The *cottage*—a crumbling shepherd’s hut on the edge of a field, no plumbing, no heating. A place for summer picnics, not survival. *”People manage,”* Elizabeth had said airily, as if Evelyn were a stubborn child.
Then the phone call. The words that turned her blood to ice.
*”We’ll move Evelyn in with old Mr. Thompson next door. Then we’ll sell.”*
Mr. Thompson—a widower as solitary as she was. They shared tea on occasion, exchanged pleasantries over hedgerows. But to be *dumped* there?
The realisation cut deeper than the cold. Elizabeth’s plan wasn’t just about bricks and beams—it was about erasing her.
Nights bled into sleepless torment. Duty clawed at her: Henry was drowning in debt, in stress. But to surrender her flat meant surrendering her last shred of safety.
What if the money vanished into that skeletal house, leaving her with nothing? What if, one winter’s night, she collapsed in that hut, breath fogging in the frigid air, and no one came?
The fear was a vise around her throat. She loved Henry—God help her, she did. But love wasn’t worth annihilation.
The rain hammered harder. Evelyn set down the cup, her fingers gnarled but steady.
She would not die in the cold. Not for anyone.
