“Ye’re not even his wife!” Mabel Bridges hissed, her voice sharp enough to make Eliza’s tea tremble in its cup. “Not a real wife, mind! Just a lodger squabbling in someone else’s home, yet expecting claims you’ve no right to!”
Eliza set the teacup down with careful hands, their slight quake hidden from view. “Mabel, what are you saying?” she stammered, her voice quavering. “Thomas and I—”
“Fo’ four years together?” Mabel cut in, tucking a loose strand of stiff grey hair back under her beehive. “He’s never stamped your cheek with his ring, has he? No surname on your proper name! So you’ve no claim to his bed or his board. Now when my Margaret returns, that’s when we’ll see who runs this parlor!”
Eliza folded the dishes in silence, her hands steady only on the surface. Inside, the burn from Mabel’s words had settled into her chest. Four years of nursing Thomas through his illness, four years of withering glances and side comments, yet Mabel—forever the stickler for tradition—saw her as nothing more than a passing footstep.
“Margaret… his ex-wife, daeftly?” Eliza asked, unable to meet Mabel’s beady eyes.
“Good heavens, no! She never filed her papers. Just packed up that daft pink negligee and scarpered when th’ arguments turned bad. Now she’s come back to reclaim her rightful place—what with Thomas needing someone to mind him like a proper wife should!”
Th’ front door slammed, and the familiar creak of Thomas’s cane echoed through the hallway. Eliza wiped her hands on a dishcloth and hurried to greet him.
“How’s that limp today? Need a hand?” she asked, helping him off with his overcoat.
“Adequate,” Thomas muttered, his gaze fixed on the floor. “Mam, did ye speak to Eliza?”
Mabel gave a smug nod. “Aye. Let her know how it stands.”
Eliza felt the world tilt. “Thomas, what’s this about?”
He fidgeted with his collar, eyes darting about. “Eliza, Margaret phoned. She’s… returning. Wants to give things another try. We were married, after all.”
“Married?” Eliza repeated, her voice thin. “What am I then, Thomas? The ghost who walked you through clinic corridors, the hand that never missed a dose of your pills, the shoulder you soaked through when the guilt came? Who kept Mabel from packing your boxes?”
“Eliza, don’t—”
“Don’t what?” she snapped. “Shout it out like the truth it is? I gave four years of my life, quit my job at the infirmary, everything for you! And now? You’re casting me aside like yesterday’s newspapers?”
Mabel smirked. “Exactly! No one said to you to volunteer, love. Eliza, you threw yourself at this, and now—you choose to go.”
Thomas winced. “Mabel, she’s done so much for me. I’m not blind to that.”
“Blind to nothing! Just too proud to admit I was right all along,” Mabel cackled. “Now leave her be.”
Eliza collapsed onto the chequered armchair. “What a waste. All th’ sleepless nights when your blood pressure spiked. Every doctor’s bill, every meal prepared. All for nothing.”
A silence settled, thick with tension. Thomas stood frozen, caught between them both. Mabel perched on her knuckles, satisfied with Mabel’s triumph.
“Do I pack a case then?” Eliza asked.
“Not so fast,” Thomas mumbled. “Just… think it over. Find yourself a flat, take your time.”
“Take my time?” she shot back, rising. “When does your wife arrive?”
“Tomorrow,” he muttered.
“Ah. Then I’ve a single day to vanish from your life, it seems.”
She ascended to their bedroom—th’ room where they’d shared every night for all those years. From the wardrobe, she retrieved the old valise she’d once packed for their hilltop picnic. Back when dreams of a forever together seemed possible.
Eliza began folding clothes, her hands mechanical. One top. Another. Another.
“Eliza?” Thomas appeared in the doorway. “Don’t think I’ve no care for you…”
“Save it,” she cut in. “Just be honest. Did you ever love me?”
He stared at the floor, the silence thick as a noose.
“I thought I did,” he said at last. “But when Margaret called… I realized I’d just grown used to you. A housekeeper, that’s all.”
Eliza paused, clutching his favorite striped shirt.
“A housekeeper,” she repeated. “Then that’s how it is.”
“Don’t make me a villain,” he pleaded.
“I’m not. You made yourself one.”
She placed the shirt back in the wardrobe without a second glance. It wasn’t hers now. It never had been.
“I need to speak to your mother,” she said, stepping past him into the sitting room.
Mabel was leafing through a dog-eared fashion magazine, pretending not to listen.
“Mabel,” Eliza said coldly. “You’ve won. But mark my words—when Thomas’s health turns bad again, and the nights bring fever and pain, remember to call your beloved Margaret. If she comes, that is. She’s got her own life now, I suppose.”
“Mind your own business, you tart,” Mabel snarled.
“I made my bed. Now it’s your turn.” Eliza picked up the house keys. “These are yours now. I’ve nothing more to do here.”
Thomas emerged from the bedroom, hearing the clink of the keys.
“Eliza, where will you go? You’ve no place—”
“Find one,” she said, her tone icy. “It’s not your concern.”
She hoisted the valise and stepped out. At the door, she turned.
“You know, Thomas,” she said. “I don’t regret spending four years of my life on you. I regret not walking away the moment I realized you saw me as a convenience.”
The door shut with a soft click.
Eliza stood on the cobbled street, clutching her bag. The address across the way flared in the twilight—its glow warm, welcoming. Winnie Roberts, the next-door neighbor, stuck her head out.
“Eliza, dear! What’s amiss?”
“ Nothing, Winnie. Just moving on.”
Winnie’s brows furrowed. “Does it have to do with Thomas?”
Eliza sighed. “He’s back with his wife.”
Winnie gasped, thrusting the door wide. “Come in, come in. Tell me all.”
Inside, the scent of meat pies and Earl Grey wrapped around her like a shawl. Winnie motioned to a chair. “Tell me everything, child.”
And Eliza did. Every year spent nursing a man who never saw her as more than a paid companion. Every tear of loneliness. Every time Mabel’s sneers had cut deeper than she’d let on.
“I’m a fool,” she said, hugging herself.
“No,” Winnie said, placing a hand on her. “Too kind. Too much kind to your own soul.”
Winnie offered her a room above the garage. “Stay as long as you need. Don’t want you shivering on the street while you find your feet.”
The next morning, Eliza rose to the smell of fresh scones and jam. Winnie bustled about the kitchen, humming softly.
“We’ll find you a job today. Can’t have you loafing about the house.”
“Winnie, I can’t repay you—”
“Don’t dare,” she snapped. “Now eat up. Work calls.”
They sat at the kitchen table, tea at their sides, when the hallway erupted with thumping boots and shrill laughter.
“Here she is,” Eliza murmured. “His wife.”
Winnie nodded. “Go on then. Start your new chapter.”
But the words from the other room cut through the air like a knifelight.
“Thomas, good grief—this house is a tip! Who shoved the dishes in the sink?”
Eliza clenched her jaw. “That was me.”
“Ah. And where is she now?”
“Left yesterday.”
“Good! Like a lodger throwing her lot in with the family. Mabel, you were right to see her off!”
Eliza’s hands trembled, but she turned to Winnie and walked outside. The spring sunshine warmed her face as they strolled the park.
“Do you think about it often?” Winnie asked as they passed the duck pond. “If you’d never met Thomas?”
“Frequently,” Eliza admitted. “But I wonder now if I’d be better off. I had a job I loved, friends who loved me, my own place in Liverpool. I gave all for… a dream.”
“Not a dream,” Winnie said gently. “A love. A true one. Yours, anyway. His was never real.”
They passed a man walking his Springer Spaniel, polka-dotted coat flapping in the breeze.
“Pardon,” the man said to Eliza. “Do you know where the vet’s office is? Just moved in, can’t find no thing.”
Eliza pointed over her shoulder. “Third house on the left, just past the crooked oak.”
“Grateful! I’m Martin, by the way. And this is Sasha. We’re new in town.”
“Eliza,” she said, noting Winnie’s raised brow.
“And I’m Winnie,” Winnie chirped.
The trio chatted until Martin excused himself. “Shall we run into each other again? I walk Sasha every morn.”
“I expect so,” Eliza smiled.
As they walked home, Winnie winked. “A nice fella. And Sasha’s a topper.”
“Winnie, I’m not ready for that yet,” Eliza laughed, but the warmth of the dog’s nudge against her knee lingered.
That night, th’ argument next door escalated.
“I never said you had the coin to feed us!” Margaret was shrieking.
“Margaret, I’m on a fixed income. Eliza was working—”
“And she paid the bills? Well, I say, a right martyr! Why’d you throw her out? She was funding the lot of you!”
Silence. Then:
“Aye. She did.”
“Fool of a man! She could’ve been your wife instead of this squabbling!”
Eliza sat at the kitchen window, a strange sense of peace in her chest.
“I hear it from the room,” she said to Winnie. “And I… don’t feel a thing.”
Winnie took her hand. “Life moves on, love. You can’t stay rooted in yesterday’s pain.”
The next morning, Eliza found work at a hospice. “Helping people in their last days,” Winnie noted, “seems fitting.”
She moved in with Winnie for months, but the new job and the breeze of Sasha’s morning walks gradually filled her with hope. And though Thomas continued arguing with the wife who never stayed, Eliza found joy in the mornings that stretched out before her, no longer bound to a man who’d never seen her as anything more than a servant.