Two weeks to pack your things and find somewhere else to live. The daughters sulked.
Charlotte found herself widowed at a young age, left alone to bring up her two daughters in a pale-brick London terrace where the rooms echoed with old dreams. Through long years she worked two jobsstacking tinned soup in the morning, pouring pints for weary strangers at dusknever once uttering a complaint. Her daughters grew tall and clever, educated in schools with creaking floors and uniforms that always needed letting out, all paid for by their mothers endless graft.
One day, the eldest, Lily, brought home a boyfriend, a thin young man with a thumb-shaped nose and an accent from Manchester. Announcing hed soon be her husband, she sighed and said he had nowhere else to live. Then a child was borna sleepy baby with a squintand suddenly the couple needed their own room. Charlotte shuffled herself in with her younger daughter, Grace, scaling back her universe to a single wardrobe and a pile of aging library books.
At first, Charlotte thought it only temporary. Surely the young lovebirds would soon manage their own place, maybe somewhere out in Croydon or Lewisham, and life would return to its quiet rhythm. But neither showed any urgency. Why bother, when a warm roof hung over their heads and the fridge, as if by gentle magic, always brimmed with eggs, cheese, and loaves? Charlotte fed them allher purse draining quietly like a leaking kettle softening for tea.
But gratitude never floated up. Instead, the household pulsed with arguments. Grace whinged that scrubbing bleary rings from the loo, left by the son-in-law, wasnt her responsibility. Lily retorted she had a baby, barely time to brush her own hair, let alone scrub the cooker. The son-in-lawa shadow always crouched before glowing screensclaimed washing up and putting out rubbish wasnt really a mans job, as he let the bin overflow and plates crust. Tension tangled in the wallpaper; Charlotte found herself dawdling, not wanting to go home.
The day Charlotte suggested Lily and her little family try renting a flat, Lily just looked at her blankly. Were saving for a mortgage, Mum. And where are we supposed to get the money for that? So they stayed, day after bleeding day.
The last straw fell softly, strange as a dream. One evening, Grace ushered another young man through the door, his trainers leaving damp patches in the hall. Mum, hes from Newcastle. Hell need to stay with us a while, she declared as if she was inviting a stray fox in from the garden. Charlotte wondered, Where? In the kitchen, among the forgotten kettles and spice jars? Grace replied calmly, as though shed considered it carefully, “Well, the kitchens not ideal. But if you moved your things there, Mum, I could have a room for me and him.
Charlottes thoughts whirled, unsettled as a flock of startled pigeons. No one seemed to care what she wanted. If she left it to them, theyd probably have her sign up to a rest home, packed off with paperwork and hastily packed slippers.
She set down her mug of tea, steadied herself, and issued her decree: Youve got two weeks to pack and find a place of your own. The daughters gasped, wounded, threatening to bar their children from seeing their grandmother. Youll die alone in some cold bedsit, with only the EastEnders on telly for company, they warned. But Charlotte stood firm. If solitude was her fate, then so be it, she thought, gazing at the patchwork of London rain through her window. Perhaps it was time her daughters stood on their own legs.
Now, with her fiftieth birthday drifting closer, Charlotte wondered if theyd comewith cards or forgiveness or empty hands. Was she heartless, casting her daughters out? What would you have done, wandering through such a dream, if your own story blurred with hers?
