My Daughter-in-Law Turned My Son Against Me Over the Flat – Now She Claims I Don’t Care About Their …

Last night, I wandered through a string of strange English villages, where homes hovered mid-air and roads curled into the endless sky. My daughter-in-law, a woman named Felicity, seemed to float past in a cloud of lavender perfume, her eyes icy as the surface of the Thames in February. Shed taken offence at me over the matter of the flat, and now she was painting my only son, Oliver, against me with strokes of cold blue.

Oliver, my pride since he first toddled across the garden at our old terraced house in Reading, had recently fallen under the spell of a young woman who led him in peculiar dances through corridors made of fog and mirrors. Felicity, the name of many proper English girls, whispered daily into his ears that my only concern was my own comfortthat I cared not for their happiness, but only for the warmth of my own living room.

She drew these lines of division because I refused to swap flats with them, a suggestion that arrived one afternoon like a swarm of white moths through my open window. My husband left this world some years ago, his walking stick left behind by the fireplace, and I poured all my care and Devonshire puddings into Oliver. Raised him on stories and tea, on grammar school hopes and Sunday walks. When he finished at university, working nights at Sainsburys as a student, he was barely home before landing a respectable job in finance.

Wed always lived modestly, my husband and I. Scrimping and saving, paying rent in a sleepy Dorset village until, at forty, we finally managed to buy our very own two-room flatmodest, but ours. Thered never been a question of another place for Oliver; we assumed, as did everyone we knew, that a young man could earn his own patch of land, just as we had, penny by penny and pound by pound.

When Oliver told me he’d met a girl, I was delighted beyond words. I invited Felicity round for tea, served crumpets on the best china. I never criticized, never pried. I didnt care who he married so long as he smiled the way his father once did. At first, Felicity was all polite laughter and tender scones, but after the wedding, a different woman appeared, like someone stepping through the wrong door of a dream.

After their honeyed weeks in Cornwall, Felicity quit her job, claiming bosses who nipped at her heels and an office full of sour faces. She declared she must find something better, but settled instead into two years of mornings that smelled only of nail varnish and expensive perfume bought with Olivers earnings. Shed spend afternoons in the silk-wrapped chairs of beauty salons and returned with more shopping bags than stories.

Their flata cramped single in the shadow of Londons greyest tower blocksfelt too small, Felicity claimed, for even the thought of a child. But to save up for a new place? No hope of that, they told me in unison, nor any coin left at the end of each month. I bit my tongue when I wanted to scold; if theyd made the smallest attempt to save, Id have topped up their savings with the little nest egg Id scraped together. But to encourage Felicitys taste for waste? Id sooner lock my purse with seven padlocks.

Recently, Felicitys tune shifted. Now, she gasped that times ticking clock would deny her motherhood and pressed Oliver to demand what she called a fair arrangement. One evening, as the sun poured gold over the citys rooftops, Oliver begged me to swap flatsmy comfortable two bedrooms for their cupboard under the eaves. No paperwork, no fuss, just a trade for the sake of family.

His words stung like nettles on bare skin. Hed never have suggested such a thing on his own, and I told him gently, Old oaks do not move for a gust of wind, Oliver. This is my home. Felicity just smiled with sharp teeth, promising me grandchildren if only Id be reasonable and move on.

After my refusal, Oliver tried again and again, each question sharper, and each time I felt the ground slipping beneath my feethis wife turning him into someone I scarcely recognized. The last time they visited, Felicity turned to Oliver as they closed the door. See? Your mum couldnt care less if we ever have children. She’d never lift a finger to help us! Her words floated after them, black crows in the empty hallway.

Now, Oliver doesnt answer when I call, the silence in my little flat stretching long as the English winter. I walk through rooms where chairs float and paintings weep, trying to understand how my clever, gentle boy became so lost whenever Felicity draws close, as if all the old logic of the world is gently dissolving around him.