Slowly, we managed to get running water into her house, and eventually even piped gas. After that, every convenience arrived as if by magic. Next, I stumbled upon my aunts cottage on a property website, shimmering like an odd apparition under a cloudless English sky.
My aunt, Edith, seventy-eight and wiry as an old willow, has two sisters. One of them is my mum. Edith was married at least ten times, according to the familys peculiar memory. Her last husband slipped away about a decade ago, leaving only echoes in the corridor. She never had children of her own. Edith and her husbands lived in a weathered cottage that had known neither comfort nor modernity. Just two rooms, with a toilet perched in the garden as though expecting tea.
Her last husband, Oliver, was the sort of man people called a real character around the village. We visited often, floating in and out like fog. Ediths younger sister, Ruth, lived in London and they kept in touch by telephone, voices drifting across counties like dandelion seeds.
After Oliver died, our journeys there grew more frequent. Out of our own pockets, we bought coal and logs, the smell of smoke threading through chilly afternoons. We helped her tend the unruly garden, wrestling brambles and coaxing roses. We never took a thing from Edith; every time, we urged her to move in with us, but shed only shake her head and mutter that she was never meant for city life.
Eventually, we brought water to her house, then installed gas. Every comfort appeared, reminiscent of a Sunday roast after a cold walk. Father built her a bathhouse at the back, and the roof was replaced with shiny slate. All for Ediths comfort amongst rolling fields. In gratitude, Edith declared she would leave the cottage to our children one day, her words floating in the air like a lullaby.
Whenever she called, wed hurry over. But one morning, news arrivedEdith had vanished to London, enveloped by the embrace of her younger sister Ruth. How was it that years of squabbles dissolved, and sisterly love blossomed so unexpectedly? And what of the little house? Edith said, Leave it be for now!
I wondered, drifting in and out of anxious sleep, if Edith would return. Ruth had her own familya husband and a grown-up daughter. They all lived together in a neat townhouse, windows flickering with yellow light.
We had keys to Ediths cottage, so we decided to visit that weekend to ensure all was well. But the key, once so familiar, no longer fit. The lock gleamednew and unyielding. On the garden gate, a bold message appeared in white paint: FOR SALE.
That evening, with rain tapping at the windows, I found Ediths cottage listed on a property website, nestled among other dreams. I rang the agents number. The cottage, it seemed, had already been soldfor nearly two hundred thousand pounds. I never rang Edith; my disappointment sat in my chest like a stone.
Were it not for the money and care wed poured into the place, it might have crumbled into dust. A month later, Edith phoned, her voice drifting across the wires. She had sold the house and given the money to her niece, Ruths daughter, as if passing a torch. And now, I dont know how to look my husband in the eye, because the money we fed into Ediths cottage was his toovanished, like so many things, into the fog.
