“Emily, stop sulking and get up, will you? This has gone on long enough! Look at you—still wrapped in that filthy throw blanket, scrolling like the world’s ended. I’m not your maid, girl,” barked Val Thompson, slapping a breakfast tray onto the coffee table with such force that the porridge slopped over the edge.
The bowl thumped onto the worn oak surface. Emily barely stirred beneath the tangled quilt, her shoulder-length hair lank and frayed at the roots, a faded band of a silk blouse the only fashion statement on her mottled gray jumper.
“You think I’m a bloody servant? I’ve had enough of doing your laundry and feeding you scrapes. We’re not Florence Nightingale anymore, missy!” Val jabbed a finger at the cold porridge, her voice cracking like a whip. “You’re wasting time cooling down while the world moves on. Three months, Emily. Bloody three. Let. It. Go.”
Emily dropped her phone under the pillow with a slow, almost reverent motion, her eyes never meeting hers. She sat up with a groan, grasping the spoon as if it were a lifeline. Her movements were leaden, each bite chewed like it burned.
“Do you remember when you were one of the best in your year at Queen Margaret’s?” Val’s tone softened, but the thorn of frustration remained. “You worked your way through university, Em. Waitressed at the pub, then an administrative role with the architects. You were the brightest spark in a room full of candles!”
Emily’s jaw tightened, the porridge smearing her chin. Once, she might have snapped back with a quip about her mother’s parochial pride. Now, she just stared at the wall, the spoon dragging across the dish.
The first was Liam, the wiry second-year she’d met during placement week. To Val, he was “a poor but nice boy.” To reality, he was an unreliable dreamer living off his sister’s largesse. Emily spoiled him with takeaway coffees and odd cash advances, only to be met with accusations of suffocating love. “You’re all I’ve got in this lousy world, Em,” he’d weep, before disappearing for months.
Then came Sebastian, a law student with crisp linen shirts and books that cost more than her council flat. But his “I need to breathe” monologues and timed callbacks left her feeling like a malfunctioning appliance. She’d filed for divorce after his third “Let’s just take a break.”
And Daniel. Oh, Daniel. The one who made it all seem purposeful, what with his Range Rover and private apartment in Kensington. Their wedding in the chapel at St. Paul’s was minimalist, cheap even. Val had sulked for days. “She probably wants to make him a present of the damn ring,” her husband muttered at the kitchen table.
It ended like all the others. After five months, Daniel left the house late every night, and finally, he left it altogether. In her inbox, a text message read: “You’ve gone serious, Em. I like the light ones. I’m sorry.”
Val said nothing when Emily returned—just handed her a cold cup of tea and a wipe. “I told you,” she said quietly that night in the kitchen. “He never saw you. You’re not that kind of girl.”
Now, with Val’s ultimatum hanging in the air—no more groceries, no more data packs—Emily sat rigidly, the silence in her mother’s flat more suffocating than the late summer heat.
“Go on,” Val growled, slamming the door behind her. “Back to your own flat, I imagine. You know the address.”
The tiny flat reeked of stale milk. Emily stared at the unpackaged tins of Heinz soup in the fridge for days. Then, one morning, she walked into Southgate Town Centre and took a job at the Amazon locker hub. The manager hired her on the spot.
Weeks later, she returned to the Thompson home with a bag of Finnsbury chocolate and fresh blackberries from Tesco.
“I… I think I’m ready to work full-time,” she said, her voice trembling. Val didn’t speak. She just pulled her into a hug, the smell of lavender soap and her daughter’s shampoo flooding back like a memory she’d thought lost.
That night, Emily sat at her laptop, a job ad staring back: Marketing Executive at a loss-making startup. She opened a new document and typed “Application” at the top. Then she typed “You did it, Em.”