**Where the House Once Stood**
When Ella stepped onto the soil of her home village after twenty years, the first person she saw was old Frederick—once the postman, now just an old man with a vacant stare. He sat by the crumbling corner shop, perched on the same bench where life once hummed in the evenings: men arguing over pints, lads kicking a football about, women trading gossip instead of news. On his lap rested a battered plastic bag with a broken handle—inside, a loaf of bread, a jar of pickled onions, and a dog-eared newspaper. Frederick cracked sunflower seeds and spat the shells at his feet, squinting at the pale spring sun as though surprised it still shone over this forgotten corner, abandoned by everyone—even God.
He studied Ella closely. Not with surprise, not with joy—like he was looking through her, back to the days when she’d left, young and furious.
“Ella?” he muttered. “So you’re alive, then?”
“Did you think I wasn’t?” she gave a thin smile.
“Well, we reckoned you’d either made it big in London, married some foreign bloke, or—God forgive me—were six feet under by now…”
She didn’t answer. Just nodded. Yes, she was alive. But not the same.
Behind her stood the house. Crooked, grey, its walls cracked, the porch rotted through—the same porch where her mum used to greet her after work, before the silence took over. It looked smaller than in her memories. Weary. Hunched. Like an old man no one visited anymore. As if it was waiting—not for forgiveness, not for return—just for the end. Quiet and unnoticed, like its existence these past years.
That day, Ella walked around it. Not a step inside. Not a touch. She stared at it like a healed but itching scar. Everything in her was taut, a thread about to snap. Turning that doorknob might unravel it all.
She’d left at nineteen. After her mum died and her dad drank until he forgot her name, calling her strangers’ words, speaking to her like she was a ghost from old dreams. The house became unbearable—like a coat three sizes too small, impossible to wear but too painful to throw out. Fights erupted daily—over nothing, over silence, over every little thing. She’d shout; he’d hurl mugs at the wall. The last thing he ever said to her: “I don’t need you. Piss off.” So she did. Vanished. First to the city, then to London, then just… away.
She worked where she could: waitress, shopgirl, typist, scrubbing stairwells, living in rooms that smelled of other people. She sewed, wrote poetry—until words stopped saving her. Life moved like water through rusty pipes—gritty, noisy, sometimes foul. But it moved. And Ella moved with it.
She never wrote. Never called. Didn’t know if he was alive. Until the phone rang one day—a man from the council saying her dad had died. A week ago. Alone. No witnesses. Neighbours noticed when the smell got bad. Buried at the parish’s expense. The house remained.
And she came back. Not knowing why. To check? To forgive? To close the chapter? Or just to see for herself that he was really gone.
On the third day, she stepped inside. Forcing the door open, she inhaled the scent—mildew, tobacco, steeped in time. Everything was in place. The table where they’d once turned the mincer. The armchair he’d sat in. A newspaper on the windowsill. A chipped mug that read “World’s Best Dad”—absurd, bitter, almost a mockery. The house was silent, but the walls seemed to whisper: *remember?*
Standing in that quiet, she didn’t know what she was there for. To forgive? To be sure? Or just to draw the line?
For a week, she cleaned. Painted the sagging fence, patched the roof, scrubbed the windows until they squeaked. Not because she’d stay. Because someone had to remind this house it was still alive.
On the ninth day, she left. No keepsakes, no trinkets. Just a photo—her at eight, her mum still young, her dad smiling. Or pretending to. But there they were, together. She slipped it into her purse. Not to grieve. To remember.
The house stayed. Faded, peeling. But not empty. It held footsteps, voices, fights, laughter, the scent of jam, shadows of nights and people gone.
Sometimes pain doesn’t leave. You just learn to live with it.
Sometimes a house stops being a wound. Becomes ground. The very ground where you first learned to walk. And fall. And stand.
And that’s enough—to start again. Not from nothing. From what’s left. And what’s yours. For good.
