A year ago, I was left completely alone. After my husbands wake in a chilly church hall in Oxford, I wandered through the days in a fog, gradually piecing together my thoughts. It dawned on me, with a cold, hollow realisation, that loneliness wasnt my only companion. Money had become an unrelenting spectre at my side. I lived with the utmost thriftno new comforts, and certainly nothing frivolousbut life is strange, tossing up sudden expenses like doctors appointments or prescription charges I hadnt seen coming.
My husband and I had carefully raised two children, always sacrificing, always scraping together what we could to help them along their way. Most of what we earned over the years quietly trickled down into our childrens homes: a deposit here, new appliances there. I dont know if fate intended for me to have anything left for myself, but whatever the case, this flat of mine in Reading will end up with my son and daughter, unless I defy tradition in my willnot that I intend to. Theyre educated, clever people. They know very well how much property is worth in this country, and they can see the future value with a calculating sort of glance.
Once or twice, I tried gently suggesting that Id fallen on hard times, hoping perhaps theyd take over the ever-climbing council tax and utility bills. That way, Id have enough left to get by until my next pension payment came fluttering through. My daughter, Helen, just smiled oddly and changed the subject, as if my words were smoke curled away by a draught. My sons wife, Charlotte, keeps a careful watch over every pound that enters their house, so my quiet pleas seemed to vanish into the walls, unheard and unacknowledged.
I have a fair idea of what both Helen and my son, Edward, earn these days. Im glad for them, trulyeven proudseeing them able to drive reliable cars, whisk themselves and their own children off to Majorca or the Lake District with easy, bright chatter. My grandchildren, Oliver and Poppy, seem never to want for pocket money, tossing it around on sweets and school trips as if it means nothing. Watching them spend in an afternoon what I get in a weeks pension, I sometimes wonder: did we somehow raise them to be so unseeing? So indifferent that they simply ignore the sight of their mother quietly struggling, never thinking to help? My husband and I always made an example, arriving at our own parents doors weighed down by shopping bags and medicine, slipping notes into tight, grateful hands.
A strange solution was offered by an old friend at the tea shopshe said I should just move in with one of my children entirely uninvited, and let some stranger rent this flat. I shuddered at the thought, but lately it seems I may have no other option. If my next conversation with Helen or Edward drifts once more into silence and polite distraction, Ill have no choice at all. My savings, all those careful pounds and pence, have melted away for their benefit. And my pension, stretched thin, grows more threadbare by the week. Its as if Im slipping from one empty room to the next, looking for warmth, collecting shadows.
