My parents barely lived together at all. When I was four, my father walked out of our terraced house and never came back. An accident Yet he left me a handful of photos from childhood and a considerable lump sum in a bank account under my name, which mysteriously grew each year.
A few years on, Mum remarried and gave birth to my brother. By that odd twist of fate peculiar only to dreams, I was willed into being the housemaid for my stepfather and mother, as well as my younger brothers nursemaid.
Whenever I caught sight of Mum with my brother, something ancient and cold in me melted into tears. She loved him in every small, aching way: kissing his forehead when tucking him in, doting hugs, reading him stories in the blue glow of nightlights, picking out toys and new jumpers for him.
My stepfather adored his only son in the same bone-deep way. No one ever loved me… and then, somehow, it all soured further. They started rowing, he took to drinking; the house curdled with their shouting, andodd logic of the dreamI always took the worst of it, because they had not a shred of care left for me. Several dream-years later, they divorced.
Afterwards, I drifted away to university in Bristol, leaving my brother and mother haunting the shadowy rooms of my late father’s flat. I visited home seldomworking half-time in a rain-soaked cafe took up all my hours.
When, eventually, I returned home after what felt like eons, I found strangers lurking in my old house. My mother slept curled like a cat on the forsaken kitchen settee, while unknown young men wandered in and outfriends of my brother, apparently. I tried to talk to her, but the dream slipped sideways: it always does.
One morning, I woke with sunlight combing my face to find them looming close, insisting I go to the bank and withdraw the inheritance my father had left mebecause my brother had lost an obscene sum betting at cards.
It was a perfect circlebeing the punished little girl, compelled to obey their wishes, trapped again.
The strangest thing was, Id come home to share my good newsmy pregnancyimagining, however foolishly, we might knit ourselves back into a family… But the dream twisted. I told them, calmly, to pack their things and move to Grans cottage in the countryside. The flat was mine, and I would not tolerate themnor the smirking strangersone moment longer.
Mum and my brother just laughed at me, nasty and mocking. Their laughter only steeled my resolve. I dialled the police, whodream-swiftarrived, supervised my family as they packed and went on their way. Afterwards, in that bright and peculiar English afternoon, my fiancé and I changed the locks. Were planning to sell the flat, buy a different one, somewhere far off, where the rain sounds different. I changed all my bank details, too; my mother had already tried to get her fingers into the accounts.
And in the logic ordinary only to dreams and daughters, I knew my father, somewhere out in that watery English dusk, would have nodded in quiet approvalhoping, all along, for something better for me.
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