My Mum Told Me Not to Tell My Friends That I Come from a Wealthy Family

I found myself at Emilys house, though it felt less like a real place and more like a maze woven from fog and strange furniture. Her father arrived, ghostly and towering, with a bag of groceries that clinked and creaked as if full of secrets. He caught us lounging in the living room, which was really a forest of half-finished paintings and odd, ticking clocks. His chin shot up like it was breaking free, and disapproval brooded across his face like thunder rolling through London.

Emily whisked him off to the kitchen, her footsteps echoing with the sound of rain on glass, but I still heard his voice, sharp and echoing with an odd sort of whisper. He called me a country lad in tones so bright they seemed to glow, insisting I was sneaking around his daughters house trying to steal a flat she barely owned. He muttered that hed seen me lurking near their home on more than one occasion, almost accusing me of being some spectre or stalker from a peculiar English folktale.

What struck me with the force of a cold wind was that Emily answered him with the same odd cadence, swearing we merely worked together at the university library once a month, which explained our frequent wanderings. In the dream logic, our relationship had lasted two months already, though Id only just begun to tell Emily that just because my parents own a house on the edge of the city doesnt mean Im country. We live very close to town, our semi-detached two-storey house standing among the hedges, and my father, a businessman, always has pockets lined with crisp pounds. No, I dont drive flashy foreign cars, nor do I shout from rooftops about coming from a wealthy familyeven if sometimes, in the misty evenings, it might be better to stay invisible. It keeps people like Emily and her family at arms length.

My mother had always quietly told me, as if speaking through a radio with scrambled signals, not to parade any wealth, because the person I love shouldnt be thinking about that first. And most certainly, neither of us should feel ashamedeven if I dont look rich on the surface, if you glance from the right angle. The dream swirled; there was nothing real about it, but the lesson floated by, wrapped in English drizzle, as if whispered by the wind in the citys labyrinthine streets.