**The Flat, or A Family’s Story**
Emily trudged home from school, her mind racing—how could she keep her mum from finding out about the failing grade? If only Mum weren’t home. Then she could just hide the report card and say she’d forgotten it at school. But what about tomorrow? She couldn’t “forget” it every day. Eventually, Mum would find out.
*Hide it today, fix the grade tomorrow. Then maybe she won’t be too angry,* Emily decided, quickening her step.
Mum constantly reminded her to study hard—first, so she wouldn’t disgrace her father’s name (he’d been a professor), and second, to keep her mind sharp. Some illnesses ran in families. Her grandmother had had Alzheimer’s and passed away when Emily was two.
She crept inside the flat, careful not to slam the door. Mum’s coat hung on the rack—she was home. Emily tiptoed to her room, stuffed the report card under her pillow, and sighed in relief. After changing, she dove into her homework, reading the history chapter twice. Oddly, Mum never checked on her. That wasn’t like her at all.
Emily cracked the door open and listened. Silence. Was Mum asleep? Their flat was spacious, with high ceilings and wide windows in the heart of London. The furniture was heavy, antique, and dark, their long hallway shadowed by towering wardrobes.
Then the grandfather clock in the living room chimed, startling her. She steadied herself—it was just the old clock. Venturing down the hall, she peeked into the kitchen. Mum sat slumped at the table, head resting on her folded arms.
“Mum?” Emily touched her shoulder.
Mum lifted her face, her eyes red and swollen. “Your father… he passed. Right in the middle of his lecture…” Her voice was hollow. She pulled Emily close and sobbed into her shoulder. Emily held on until she, too, dissolved into tears.
The next day, she skipped school—no time to fix the grade. They went to the hospital, then the mortuary, where Mum brought Dad’s best suit and nearly new shoes.
The funeral was crowded, mostly university staff where Dad had chaired the department. Emily barely recognised him—the man in the coffin was a stranger. But Mum wept over him, whispering, “How will we survive without you?”
Afterwards, Mum barely left her bed, crying and refusing to eat. Emily survived on pasta and frozen dumplings. When they ran out, she asked Mum for money.
“Take it,” Mum said flatly, no questions asked. Emily bought sausages, a loaf of bread, and two packs of pasta.
One evening, she came home to find Mum cooking soup. Emily was relieved.
“How’s school? What have you been eating?” Mum asked. Emily told her. Mum sighed. “Forgive me. I’ve neglected you. Tomorrow, I’ll go to the department—they’ll give me work, won’t they? We have to keep going.”
She looked gaunt and pale, nothing like when Dad was alive. But at least she wasn’t crying.
The new department head, Dad’s former student, hired Mum as a lab assistant. With no degree, she couldn’t teach. The pay was meagre, so she took a second job cleaning the offices after hours.
“The wife of a professor, scrubbing floors,” Mum muttered. Emily often helped.
Money was still tight. Mum sold her jewellery to colleagues for whatever they offered. Soon, even that was gone.
A neighbour offered to buy some furniture, but Mum refused.
“Without it, the flat won’t be the same,” she said.
“Suit yourself. If you change your mind, I won’t pay as much,” the neighbour sniffed before leaving.
Emily asked why the furniture mattered more than the jewellery.
“It’s antique. Museum-quality. Even in the war, they didn’t sell it.”
Then Mum told her how they’d come to own the flat.
She’d arrived from a tiny village to study at university, living in a dorm. Dad, a lecturer, was much older when she fell for him. They hid the affair until she got pregnant. His mother disapproved, nitpicking at Mum constantly.
“I nearly left, but your father stood by me. Then you were born, and his mother quieted. One day, she went shopping and never returned. A neighbour found her at the station—she’d forgotten they’d sold the country house. She’d leave the gas on, forget to turn off taps… It was two years of hell before she passed. We turned her room into your father’s study.”
She wiped her eyes. “He worked so hard, publishing papers. But in his last years… he forgot things, like his mother. Sometimes mid-lecture, he’d blank. His heart gave out.”
When Emily was in sixth form, Mum brought home Victor.
“Is *he* living with us now?” Emily scowled.
“He doesn’t drink, earns well. We’ll manage. I’ll stop cleaning,” Mum said.
Emily avoided him. Mum said he’d divorced, left his flat to his ex-wife and daughter.
Once, she caught Victor stroking the furniture. She tried warning Mum—*He’s after the flat*—but Mum brushed her off, talking about love and loneliness. Victor was younger than Dad, even Mum.
For months, things improved. Mum smiled again, dressed nicely. Then she caught a cold. The cough worsened. Emily begged her to see a doctor.
“I went. They gave me pills. No fever. It’ll pass.”
But she deteriorated—thin, pallid, wincing with each cough. Hospitalised, she didn’t improve.
Victor made broths, sent Emily to deliver them. One morning, the phone rang.
“I’m on my way,” Victor said.
“Who was that?” Emily asked.
He turned. “The hospital. It’s your mother.”
In the ward, they were told Mum had a heart attack overnight. The nurse had slept through her call.
“Just us now,” Victor slurred later, drunk on whiskey. Emily fled to her room, muffling sobs in her pillow.
Two days after the funeral, she overheard Victor on the phone: “Soon… too soon, they’ll suspect…”
When she confronted him, he spun a tale about debts—*borrowed for Mum’s treatment*. She almost believed him.
A year passed. Emily got into university, barely speaking to Victor. He drank more, sometimes rambling: “Your mother loved me. We’re family now.”
Autumn turned to winter. Emily fell ill—same cough, same decline. Victor brewed her a honey drink. She dumped it, unease gnawing at her.
At the hospital, they found nothing. Desperate, she went to the police.
“You need a doctor, not us,” the officer said.
But a young constable, Oliver, listened. “Don’t eat or drink at home. Fake nausea. Tomorrow, call me when he’s out.”
He searched the flat, sifted through rubbish. “Got it.”
He held an empty vial. “Who’s been injecting you?”
“No one.”
“The lab’ll test it. Stay safe.”
That night, Victor loomed by her bed. The next evening, police arrived.
“You killed Vickie Dobson. Now you’re poisoning her daughter,” Oliver said.
Victor was taken. Emily, hospitalised, recovered after treatment.
Oliver visited daily. “What now?”
“Sell the flat. Someone else might try to kill me.”
“Sell the antiques. Keep the flat. I’ll help.”
They sold most furniture. Oliver and friends repainted.
“You’re tired. I’ll go,” Oliver said.
“Where do you live?”
“Dorms.”
“Stay here. It’s safer.”
Six months later, they married, living happily in the old flat—minus the antiques.
Emily didn’t miss them. She’d found something better.
—
*”People are just people. They love money—always have, whether it’s leather or paper, bronze or gold. Just ordinary folk… It’s housing troubles that spoil them.”*
*”Life’s like a zebra, they say. Black stripes of bad luck, white of joy. But for poor Vickie, it was checkered—misery and happiness in chessboard squares.”*
