The flat was bought by my son: mother-in-laws declaration
It felt like a peculiar dream the night I remembered how I met my husband at university. We were two twenty-year-olds floating through classrooms, books balancing on our heads like hats that didnt quite fit. He was remarkable in that dreamlike wayclever and strong, but with this peculiar softness, almost as if he could melt like chocolate in your palm. First, we were friends wandering through the misty courtyards where time didnt quite hold still. Soon enough, it was obvious my feelings for Matthew were deeper than a foot-worn path on the village green.
After several months, we became an item, strolling through the campus as if marching in a May Day parade nobody had announced. That chapter lives in my memory with a strange golden glowthe years at university were tip-top, a stretch of days that seemed endlessly pleasant.
A year later, Matthew proposed to me with a peculiar sense of urgency, as if time itself wanted to knot our fates together. We married, not with fanfare or grand processions, but with a tight knot of relatives wedged around a kitchen table drinking cups of milky tea. Family games and laughter echoed off the old wallpaper.
By our second year together, Matthew had started working. We lived in a poky little bedsit that seemed straight out of a Dickens novel, our private flat a dream that hovered just out of reach. Then, after my dear grandmother passed away, I woke to find in my palm a cheque for £100,000, as if the numbers had fallen out of thin air. Matthew had tucked away some savings, too. With those odd sums gathered up, we approached the bank for a mortgage on a small two-bedroom flatwhispering hopes of children sneaking into our future like foxes through hedges.
Wed been wed for ten years, but children never arrived. Several years back, Matthews job turned terribly strange. The company tumbled into chaos and the owner laid the blame at Matthews door. He was the chief accountant, and suddenly it was as if the figures on the ledgerbook danced and led him astray. A bewildering court case later, and Matthew was sent to prison for four years, even though hed only ever followed his bosss orders.
I wanted nothing but the best for him
We struggled for what felt like endless months, seeking out solicitors in offices cluttered with dusty files. But nothing shiftedthe paperwork had conspired to show Matthew was at fault. I stayed by his side, pouring endless cups of tea and hope, but deep down I began to realise, a year on, that I too needed support
It was then that my mother-in-law arrived at my doorstep, her face sharp as a winter wind. She announced that I would no longer be living there. She blamed me for Matthews fate, claiming he had bought the flat with his own money and that I had no right to the keys or even the doormat. My words shrivelled up; I hadnt expected such coldness from a woman who once offered me sponge cake at Christmas.
It turned out Matthew, before the fiasco of the trial, had handed his mother power of attorney. With this mystical piece of paper, shed conjured up bank statements showing the mortgage payments came solely from Matthews account. She insists these pages of numbers prove that, in the eyes of the law, I was never part of the flats story.
Now I find myself drifting, weightless, confused, lostwandering through corridors lined with floral wallpaper that keeps shifting and meltingunsure how I got here, or how, in the end, Ill ever find my way out.
