“You can live with uswhy bother getting a mortgage? You’ll inherit our house anyway!” my mother-in-law declared, her words swirling around me like mist.
She pleaded with us to forget about mortgages and move in with them, reminding my husband that, as their only child, he would naturally inherit their home. But her hands were youngshe was only forty-five, and my husbands father just forty-seven.
My husband and I, both twenty-five, are just starting out, earning enough to rent a small flat. I dont want the daily friction that would come from living under someone elses roof. Despite their insistence, I fear damaging our relationship over kettle boils and unspoken glances.
My parents have a three-bedroom house somewhere in the gentle hills of Surrey. Thered be space for all of us, yet I cant shake the feeling Id be a guest in my own life, tiptoeing around their routines and trinkets. Nor do I fancy moving into the shadow of my husbands childhood, with its peculiar creaks and immortal family portraits.
Just as lockdown swept across the land, our landlady asked us to leave. She needed the place for her niece and brood, who materialised, as dreams do, from nowhere. With little time to search, we drifted into my husbands parents home, shoeboxes and duvets trailing behind. They welcomed us with tea and open arms; my mother-in-law didnt swoop or scold. Still, she often quietly remarked on my many small errors. But her approach felt softer, stranger, like a spell you dont notice at first.
Before long, the idea of a mortgage crept back into our bedroom shadowswed always talked about it. The timing felt rightmaybe because time in a relatives house stretches oddly, like old elastic. It was practical: if we stayed, we could squirrel away pounds for our own place. Yet the urge to escape grew stronger with each passing kettle boil.
The house wasnt intrusive, but its rhythms and rituals ate away at my sense of self. Their customs, like invisible vines, curled around usFriday evenings were for deep cleaning. My husband and I would return late from work, dog-tired, longing for bed, only to find my mother-in-law dusting and vacuuming in a whirlwind. When I asked why not clean on Saturdays, she explained that weekends were for rest, not mops.
She had firm boundariesher kitchen was her dominion, guarded like a castle. She kindly forbade me from cooking, yet her food was an assault of spices and onions, tangible, like a lingering fog. It may seem a trivial problem, but when I tried to make my own meals, she took it as an insultas if Id stabbed at her heart, proclaiming her a poor hostess.
I held onto the thought that this was all temporary, a half-remembered scene, and that her habits were simply foreign spells cast upon us. My husband and I agreed not to mention our savings for a deposit. We paid half the utility bills, contributed to shopping, and hoarded the rest beneath our dreams.
One evening, over cups of tea and a discussion of his cousins shiny new car, the subject of our own future wheels arose. His father, half-vanished behind a newspaper, said we should consider getting one soon. My husband replied that securing a home was more important.
How many years will you need to save? his father asked. My husband explained we werent saving outright but planning for a mortgage deposit.
You can stay here. Why saddle yourself with the bank? This home will be yours, my mother-in-law intoned.
We tried to explain our yearning for something of our own, a space untouched by inherited routines. But they insisted we were being foolishliving with them meant more pennies in our pockets, less feeding the hungry jaws of Barclays.
Realising her persuasion wasnt working, my mother-in-law switched tactics, suggesting we focus on children, not on financial shackles.
Each day became a barrage of arguments: a chorus urging us into the comfort of their home. Her words bounced off me, but my husband began to absorb them. One night, he whispered:
We dont need a mortgage. Mums right. Life here is gentle. No rows. One day the house will be ours.
In fifty years? I snapped, frustration curling in my chest.
After that, his voice grew heavier, talking often of his aging parents who might soon need care, of mortgages being chains around our ankles, impossible to drag once I took maternity leave.
But I ache to be mistress of my own domainto hold the keys, to rearrange the furniture, to cook with soft flavours, to live as more than a ghost haunting someone elses halls. I do not wish to wait, watching the candles burn lower, hoping for the day I can truly call a house my home.
