Emily flinched as her phone shrieked with that familiar shrill ringtone. “Margaret Harrington” flashed on the screen – the third call from her mother-in-law that morning. Taking a steadying breath, she accepted the call.
“Yes, Margaret?”
“Emily, why on earth do you never answer your phone?” The sharp disapproval in Margaret’s voice needled at her. “I’ve been trying all morning!”
“I was making Lily’s breakfast – hands full,” Emily lied. In truth, she couldn’t face yet another lecture about her parenting failures.
“Porridge again? I’ve told you—children need proper protein! My Jonathan was raised on roast beef and potatoes—look how strong he grew! That girl of yours looks peaky as a ghost—one stiff breeze might carry her away.”
Emily counted to five behind closed eyelids. Their daughter was three, perfectly healthy according to the paediatrician—just slight like her father’s side.
“She has meat too, Margaret. We’re having meatballs for lunch.”
“Well! That’s what I’m calling about. I’ll pop round this afternoon—made a proper bone broth, just how Jonathan likes it. And proper steak-and-kidney pies—none of your modern nonsense.” The way Margaret said “meatballs” made it sound like rat poison.
“Really, there’s no need—we’re quite all right,” Emily protested weakly.
“No need? What sort of grandmother wouldn’t visit her own grandchild? You’re not forbidding me, are you?”
Classic Margaret—posing questions where anything but eager consent became monstrous rudeness.
“Of course not,” Emily surrendered.
Hanging up, she pressed her forehead against the cold windowpane. Outside, sparse snowflakes spiralled onto bare oak branches. November had draped London in damp grey wool.
“Mummy, who was that?” Lily peered from her room clutching a threadbare stuffed bear.
“Granny’s coming today,” Emily forced a smile.
Lily’s nose wrinkled. “Will she say I don’t eat proper again?”
The pang in Emily’s chest sharpened. Even a three-year-old noticed the constant criticism.
“Granny just loves you very much—wants you to grow strong.”
Unconvinced but obedient, Lily returned to her toys.
Emily began cleaning. Though she and Jon favoured comfortable clutter, the flat must gleam before Margaret’s arrival. Otherwise, it would be “no wonder the child’s always poorly in this pigsty.”
She scrubbed floors, dusted bookshelves, even baked an apple pie—the lone dish Margaret ever praised.
Jon was due back from his client meeting by lunch. Normally they both worked remotely—him coding, her designing—but today required office formality.
The doorbell chimed precisely at two. Margaret Harrington ran with Swiss-clock punctuality.
“There’s my favourite daughter-in-law!” Margaret bustled in, a stout woman with meticulously dyed auburn hair, arms laden with Tupperware. “Where’s my precious girl?”
Lily edged into view.
“Come give Granny proper kisses! Though really,” Margaret scolded lightly, “young ladies offer hands to gentlemen, not grandmothers. We’ll work on your manners.”
Emily rolled her eyes unnoticed. Margaret’s childrearing advice changed more often than the Tube timetables.
“Let me help with those,” Emily reached for the containers.
“Put the broth in the proper saucepan—no, not that flimsy thing! And bread in the fridge? Preposterous! It dries out!”
Emily passed utensils like a surgical nurse. Six years of marriage had taught her Margaret’s “proper way” was absolute law.
“Lily looks frightfully pale,” Margaret declared, unpacking jars of homemade chutneys. “Is she getting enough fresh air? Proper vitamins?”
“We walk daily when it’s not pouring. And she takes the vitamins Doctor Ellis recommended.”
“Doctor Ellis!” Margaret sniffed. “What do these young GPs know? In my day—”
Here we go, Emily thought.
“In my day, children played outside dawn till dusk! Jonathan went out in all weathers—built resilience! Never coddled.”
Emily bit her tongue rather than mention Jon’s childhood bronchitis and perpetual tonsillitis.
“I made pie—tea later?”
“Lunch first. Things in their proper order. Where is Jonathan? Late as usual?”
As if summoned, the front door clicked.
“Speak of the devil!” Margaret brightened.
Jon blinked at the shoe pile in their hallway. “Mum? You might’ve warned us you were coming.”
“I told Emily this morning! Repeatedly!” Margaret huffed.
Emily gave Jon an apologetic shrug—between chores, she’d forgotten to text him.
“Hello, Mum.” Jon kissed Margaret’s cheek. “You’re looking well.”
“Well? With my blood pressure and swollen ankles? Not that I complain—we old soldiers muddle through alone, don’t we?”
Another classic—”never complaining” while listing every ailment, and “not burdening anyone” while guilt-tripping about infrequent visits.
“Let me heat lunch—slaved over it all morning.”
Jon shot Emily a sympathetic glance. He knew these visits exhausted her.
Over steak-and-kidney pie, Margaret launched into Jonathan’s childhood triumphs.
“Reading at four! Could recite entire sonnets! Lily darling, do you learn poetry?”
Lily pushed peas around her plate.
“She knows loads,” Emily interjected. “Sweetheart, do ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’?”
“No,” Lily mumbled.
“There, you see?” Margaret clucked. “No social confidence. She needs nursery—mix with other children.”
“We agreed to wait until four,” Jon said. “No sense rushing—”
“Rushing? You started nursery at two and thrived! This one’s practically feral—won’t eat, won’t recite—”
Lily shoved her plate away.
“May I play?”
“Not until you finish,” Margaret decreed.
“Just two more bites, love,” Emily soothed, though her insides boiled.
Lily swallowed the demanded mouthful with visible effort.
“Better,” Margaret approved. “You spoil her—no structure. When Jonathan was small—”
Cue the monologue about Margaret’s parenting perfection.
Post-lunch, Margaret insisted on “proper naptime.”
“Children need daytime sleep! Essential for development!”
Emily bit back that Lily had outgrown naps—enforcing one now meant midnight wakefulness—but Jon subtly shook his head: easier to comply than argue.
“Just quiet time,” he whispered.
While Margaret “settled” their resistant daughter, Emily brewed tea and sliced pie.
“Hopeless,” Margaret reemerged thirty minutes later. “In my day, children obeyed their elders!”
In your day they beat children with canes, Emily nearly retorted.
“She’s just not tired yet,” Jon mediated. “Try the pie—Em made it specially.”
Margaret inspected her slice suspiciously.
“Not one of those ghastly ready-mixes, I hope?”
“All organic—even the apples from your garden,” Emily said.
This mollified Margaret slightly.
“You’ve improved. Remember your dreadful scrambled eggs newlywed?”
Emily said nothing, though she’d lived independently for a decade pre-marriage and cooked perfectly well—just not Margaret’s “proper” way.
“Jonathan dear,” Margaret leaned in, “could you pop by this week? The tap drips, and there’s a bulb out in the storage—I daren’t climb ladders at my age.”
Jon looked pained. “Wednesday?”
“Wednesday’s my bridge club… Perhaps Tuesday?”
“Client pitch on Tuesday.”
“Oh well, I’ll manage,” Margaret sighed theatrically.
Emily clenched her jaw. The same old passive-aggressive guilt trips.
“I’ll come tonight—check the tap,” Jon relented.
Margaret brightened instantly.
“Lovely! And perhaps the hallway wallpaper—five years is rather shameful…”
“Where’s Lily?” Emily interrupted.
“Reading quietly—I told her to tidy her toys.”
Emily entered the nursery and froze. Lily was carefully cutting pictures from the brand-new anthology Jon had special-ordered last week.
“Lily! What are you doing?”
Lily looked up innocently. “Granny said I could make a scrapbook. She gave me scissors.”
Emily gingerly lifted the ruined £45 book—beautifully illustrated, eagerly awaited.
“Darling, this was new! We hadn’t even finished it!”
Lily’s lip trembled.
“Granny said I could.”
Emily inhaled deeply.
“It’s alright, button. Next time just ask Mummy or Daddy first, yes?”
Returning to the kitchen where Margaret was gossiping about a neighbour’s hip operation, Emily fought to keep her voice even.
“Margaret, did you give Lily scissors?”
“Certainly—children need crafts! We were always glueing and cutting—not like today’s screen zombies.”
“She’s destroyed that expensive book we ordered.”
“Oh, fuss over nothing!” Margaret waved dismissively. “Now she’ll have a lovely scrapbook—stimulates creativity!”
“That was a collector’s edition! We wanted to read it together!”
“Jonathan, must your wife make mountains from molehills?” Margaret appealed to her son. “Books are meant to be used!”
Caught between them, Jon wavered.
“Mum, you might’ve asked us firstAs Jon glanced between his wife’s clenched jaw and his mother’s triumphant smirk, he realized—not for the first time—that some battles in this endless war of wills could never truly be won, only temporarily postponed until the next phone call would inevitably ring.
