The fog rolled into Portman Square like a woolen blanket at twilight. Michael blinked at the woman standing in the doorway, her tea-stained umbrella dripping with the scent of lavender and camomile. “Margaret? Margaret Hartley?” he stammered, his voice tangled in disbelief.
“Who else but your dear old mother-in-law?” she chuckled, brushing a strand of steel-gray hair from her face. The faint glow of streetlamps painted her cheeks the color of sour plums. “You do still owe me for that haunted house you bought in Notting Hill, dear boy.”
“But you wrote—postmarked—Lake District! Saying you despised London’s fogs and had found paradise in those hills,” Michael babbled, the words spilling out like liquid glass.
“Paradise is rent,” Margaret scoffed, hauling a trunk heavier than her frame through the threshold. “They eat shepherd’s pie with their fingers up there. Time to return to proper company.”
The apartment felt smaller in her presence, the walls constricting like winter lace. Emily, who had yet to return from her gallery job, left a note taped to the kettle: *”Bread + marmalade by midday, love. Grey skies scream for cucumber sandwiches.”*
Michael imagined a thousand ways to break the news. A voicemail? A telegram? But Margaret was spinning in the parlor, her eyes widening at the mismatched throw rugs. “Darling, you can’t call this *living*. Too many ghosts of minimalism. I’ll ring Harriet in Mayfair—she’ll lend you proper curtains.”
The days that followed dissolved into a haze of tea-stained disagreements. Margaret critiqued the rainwater tap, the timing of their stoves, and the “preposterous” choice of abstract wallpaper. “Even the soot used to be more predictable in the East End,” she muttered over a meal of underseasoned lentils, though Michael knew she’d mistaken the caster sugar for salt again.
Emily returned one midsummer morning to find their mother-in-law perched in the window seat, a moth perched on her shoulder. “Mother, what are you *doing*?” she gasped.
“Counting the stars you haven’t hanged in the chandelier yet,” Margaret replied, her voice light as a dandelion. “Visited the Lake District, yes, but the crows there—belligerent! Nothing like the camaraderie of your fog.”
The tension tightened like a string on a music box until Margaret stumbled outside, spraining an ankle on a cobblestone “as smooth as a poet’s promise.” The accident, it seemed, was fate’s second invitation. In the aftermath, the three whitespace figures (husband, wife, mother) circled each other like wary swans. “I suppose you won’t be haring off to Notting Hill again,” Michael sighed, adjusting the strap of her crutches.
But Margaret was already plotting. By week’s end, she’d scoured Rightmove for a one-bedroom flat two stops on the Circle Line. “I’ve learned the art of not smothering,” she declared, handing Emily a recipe for her grandmother’s scone, now annotated in red ink: *”No jam without clotted cream. Always.”*
The final day was a thicket of hugs and half-apologies. “Will you come for tea?” Emily asked, her voice cracking like a poorly tuned piano.
“Of course,” Margaret said, her eyes glinting like storm-lit windows. “But only if you promise to stop boiling the kettle twice. Drain the plants, too. Patients with ankles hate the wet.”
As the train pulled away, Margaret pressed a letter into Michael’s hand, her handwriting a spidery constellation. *”P.S. The Lake District was lovely—it snowed in July. But even crows miss their nests.”*
For weeks, the apartment echoed. Then came a postcard: Margaret and a tabby cat, sitting in a sunflower field beside a sign that read *”B&B Available.”* On the reverse: *”Your fog is prettier now. Come visit. Add corncakes in the oven, will you?”*
Michael and Emily exchanged a glance. The kettle whistled behind them, a soft, unfamiliar sound.