Two weeks to pack up everything and find somewhere else to live. Daughters offended
Harriet had always felt like she was walking upside down through fog. Widowed young, she wandered old cobbled streets with her two English daughters, laughter sometimes echoing from memories instead of their lips. No one remembers her ever complaining. The girls grew some seasons fast, some slow and went off to respectable colleges, always pulled forward by their mothers efforts. Harriet worked two jobs in the swirling market square to keep them fed, pennies jingling in her apron as if caught in a dream, just enough for tuition and toast.
Then, her eldest, Imogen, trailed in one dusk holding a boy with hair like September wheat, introducing him quietly as her betrothed. Only, he seemed to have no address, just dreams folded under his arm. Soon after, a child like a cloud burst into the world, and suddenly Harriet was nudged out of her bedroom, watching her slippers collect dust under the stairs as she squeezed in with young Alice, her youngest, acerbic as a wind off the North Sea.
At first, Harriet told herself it was just until the skies cleared and Imogens little family could find their own placemaybe a terrace house along a canal, near somebody elses pub. But time melted dream logic into inertia; Imogen and her husband found it cozier to let life drift by under Harriets eaves. Why wouldnt they? There was always cheddar in the larder, and Harriets tea always steamed on the stove by twilight. She fed them all, watching plates disappear like playing cards.
Gratitude was as rare as sun on Christmas morning. Instead, quarrels seeped into the walls. Alice spat, Its not my job to scrub the bathroom after your layabout husband. Imogen countered, The toddlers got me run raggedI barely have time to blink. The son-in-law, eyelids heavy from staring at screens, just grunted, Men dont empty bins or wash dishes. The computers enough. No one bothered to ask Harriet if shed eaten, if her legs ached, if she dreamed dreams of her own.
The house sagged with tension. Harriet found herself dawdling by the swans on the river long after work, reluctant to step over her own threshold. When Harriet finally murmured, Perhaps you three should rent somewhere, Imogen bristled: Were saving for a deposit. Where do you expect us to conjure the pounds? And so, nothing changed, as if the clocks had stopped.
It all toppled when Alice dragged her new boyfriend, Oliver, through the front door one misty evening. Mum, hes come down from Manchester and has nowhere to stay. Hell move in. Where am I supposed to fit him, the airing cupboard? Harriet wondered. Alice, prepped with the logic of a dream, replied, Well, the kitchen isnt terribly cozy, but if you shifted into it, you could have some privacy in there.
That was the moment the surreal mist thickened. Harriet realised nobody could hear her anymoretheyd box her up and send her off to a care home with paperwork if it suited their scheme. So, she spoke clearly, as if her words might echo through the fields, Two weeks. Pack your things, find a roof elsewhere. The daughters sulked, voices dropping to threats: Youll never see the grandchildren again. Youll grow old and lonesome. Their words fluttered away like moths. Harriet didnt flinch. If this was her destiny, let it come. The children must learn to float on their own.
Her fiftieth birthday drifts closershe isnt sure if her offspring will cross her threshold with greetings or only send pale thoughts through the air. Did she do right, sending her daughters out into the English mist? What would you do, if the dream were yours?
