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Aunt Rita: The Story of a 47-Year-Old Londoner, a Self-Confessed Cynic, Who Finds Unexpected Purpose and Family in Helping a Struggling Young Mother and Her Children in a Tower Block, Transforming Both Their Lives and Her Own
Aunt Rita
I am forty-seven years old. Just an ordinary womanone might say a bit of a plain Jane. Not particularly attractive, my figure nothing to write home about. Alone. Never married, nor do I desire to be. In my mind, men are much the same: creatures content to fill their bellies and sprawl on the sofa. Not that anyones ever offeredno proposals, no courtships, nothing. My parents, elderly now, live up in Newcastle.
Im an only child. No sisters, no brothers. There are some cousins, but I dont bother with them. Dont want to, really. For fifteen years, Ive lived and worked in London. Each day its the same routine: office, then home. I live in a typical block of flats, somewhere in a quiet suburb.
Im icy, bitter, and cynical; I don’t care for anyone, least of all children. Over New Year, I made my annual pilgrimage north to see the parents. This year, the same as alwaysthere and back, just the once. Returning home, I decided to clean out the fridge. Time to rid myself of ancient bags of frozen stuff: fish fingers, pies, what have you. Bought them once, didnt like them, and into the freezer they disappeared. I gathered everything into a box and set off to the bins. Called the lift, and there was a little boy inside, couldnt have been more than seven. Id noticed him before with his mother, sometimes carrying a baby. I remember thinking, What a messshes really landed herself in it! He stared at my box, eyes big as saucers. We stepped out; I headed to the big green bin, and he trailed behind. A timid voice: Can I have it? Its old, I replied. But then I thought, well, if he wants it, its not rotten at least. As I started to leave the bins, for some reason I turned back. He was carefully packing up the little food parcels, cradling them to his chest as if they were treasures. Wheres your mum? I asked. He told me she was ill, so was his sister. They couldnt even get up. I turned on my heel and went home.
Back in my flat, I put a lonely dinner on the hob. I sat and stared into space. I couldnt shake the image of that boy. I had never been one for pity or for helping others. But something compelled mequick as a flash, I gathered up whatever food I could find: some ham, cheese, a bottle of milk, biscuits, potatoes, onions, even cut a chunk of meat from the freezer. Out I went. By the lift, it struck meI had no idea which floor they lived on. Only that it was above mine. So I started at the top and worked my way down. Second try, the boy opened the door. At first, he looked puzzled, then, silently, stepped aside to let me in. The flat was incredibly sparse, but spotlessly clean.
His mother was curled up on the bed, baby beside her. On the table, a bowl of water with some old flannels. Clearly trying to bring down a fever. The little girl slept fitfully, her chest rattling. Medicine? I asked the boy. He showed me a battered tin of stale tablets, all out of date. I touched the womans headburning hot. Her eyes flickered open, blank. Suddenly she startled upright: Wheres Toby? I explained that I was a neighbour. I asked what was wrong with her and the baby, and then rang for an ambulance straightaway. While we waited, I gave her tea and ham. She ate greedily, not a word of protestshe must have been starving. How she managed to breastfeed was a mystery.
The medics arrived and examined them, scribbled out prescriptions aplenty for the little girljabs and all. I hurried to the chemist, bought everything on the list. Then a stop at the supermarketmilk, baby food, the works. On impulse, I picked up a ridiculous, lemon-yellow monkey toy. Id never bought a present for a child before.
Her name was Annie, twenty-six. Shed grown up in Readingwell, the edges really. Her mother and grandmother were both from London, but her mum married a man from Reading. Off they went. She worked in a small factory, he was a technician. When Annie was born, her father was killed in an accident at work, electrocuted. Her mum, left broke with a baby, lost her job. They started getting visitors, friends, and neighbours. Her mother spiraled into drinkingthree years and she was gone. The neighbours managed to track down Granny back in London, who took Annie in. At fifteen, when Annie was old enough, Granny told her everything. Mum dead from tuberculosis. Granny smoked like a chimney, spoke little, was stingy with affection.
At sixteen, Annie got a job at the local shopstocking shelves at first, cashier later on. A year later, Granny passed, and Annie was alone. When she was eighteen, she met a boy. He promised to marry her but bolted after she got pregnant. She worked up until she could no longer hide the bump, saving every penny she could, knowing there was no help from anyone. The baby came, and within a month, she was leaving him alone in the flat while she mopped stairwells for a bit of cash. Her daughter arrived in a terrible way. The shop owner, after Annie returned to work when her son got older, once raped her in the dark behind the shelvesand after that, again and again, threatening to sack her, saying shed never find another job. When he found out about the baby, he shoved £100 in her hand, told her not to come back.
Thats how it was. She told me all this on that very night. She thanked me, insisted shed repay me with cleaning or cooking. I waved it away and left. I didnt sleep at all. I lay there, turning things over in my mind. What was the point of lifemine especially? Why was I like this? I didnt visit my parents, rarely called them. Loved nobody. Felt pity for no one. Id squirreled away a tidy sum of money, yet there was no one to spend it on. And here, in the same building, lives torn up, children hungry, no money for medicine.
Next morning, little Toby turned up on my doorstep with a plate of piping hot crumpets and dashed off. I stood there, warmth seeping into my fingers, and felt as if something inside had begun to thaw. I suddenly wanted to cry, laugh, and eat, all at once.
Not far from the block is a little shopping precinct. The owner of the toy shop, after failing to muddle through my panicked requests for childrens clothes, agreed to walk home with me! I couldnt tell if she saw a chance for good sales or was moved by my sudden concern. Within an hour, we had four big bags crammed with clothes for both children. I threw in a duvet, pillows, sheets. I bought enough food to feed a small army. I even bought vitamins. I wanted to buy everything, anything. For once, I felt needed.
Its been ten days now. They call me Auntie Rita. Annie is handy with her handsthe flat now feels warm and homely. Ive started calling my parents. I text donations for sick children. I cant imagine living as I did before. Every day, after work, I dash home. I know someone is waiting for me. And this spring, were going up to Newcastleall of us, together. The train tickets are already booked.
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The Manor Smelled of French Perfume and Lovelessness. Little Lizzie Knew Only One Pair of Warm Hands—Those of the Housekeeper, Nora. But One Day Money Disappeared from the Safe, and Those Hands Were Gone Forever. Twenty Years Passed. Now Lizzie Stands on a Doorstep, Her Child in Her Arms and a Truth Burning in Her Throat… *** The Dough Smelled Like Home. Not the home with a marble staircase and three-tiered crystal chandelier where Lizzie grew up, but a real home—the kind she invented for herself, sitting on a kitchen stool, watching Nora’s hands, red from washing, knead springy dough. “Mum, why is dough alive?” she would ask at five years old. “Because it breathes,” Nora replied without looking up. “See how it bubbles? It’s happy—it knows it’ll soon be in the oven. Strange, isn’t it? To rejoice at fire.” Lizzie didn’t understand then. Now—she got it. She stood by the side of a battered country lane, clutching four-year-old Micky to her chest. The bus had spat them out into the grey February dusk; all around, just silence—the singular village quiet where you can hear snow creak under a stranger’s boots three houses away. Micky didn’t cry. He had almost stopped crying altogether in the last six months—he’d learned. He just looked at her with dark, uncannily grave eyes, and every time Lizzie flinched: her ex’s eyes. His chin. His silences—the kind that always hid something. Don’t think of him. Not now. “Mum, I’m cold.” “I know, sweetheart. We’ll find it soon.” She didn’t know the address. Didn’t even know if Nora was alive—twenty years had passed, a lifetime. All she remembered: “Pinewood, Oxfordshire.” And the scent of dough. The warmth of those hands—the only ones in that whole big house that ever stroked her hair just because. The lane led them past tilting fences; in some windows, lights glowed—dull yellow, but alive. Lizzie stopped at the last cottage, simply because her legs would go no further and Micky had grown too heavy. The gate creaked. Two snow-covered steps up to the porch. A weathered, peeling door. She knocked. Silence. Then—shuffling footsteps. The sound of a bolt dragging. And a voice—hoarse, aged, yet so unmistakable that Lizzie’s breath caught— “Who’s out in this darkness?” The door swung open. On the threshold was a tiny old lady in a knitted cardigan over her nightie. Her face—like a baked apple, a thousand wrinkles. But the eyes—the same. Faded, blue, still full of life. “Nora…” The old woman froze. Then slowly lifted the very same hand—knotted and work-worn—and touched Lizzie’s cheek. “Merciful heavens… Lissie?” Lizzie’s knees buckled. She stood there, clutching her son, unable to speak, tears streaming hot down her frozen cheeks. Nora asked nothing. Not “where from?” Not “why?” Not “what’s happened?” She simply unhooked her old wool coat and threw it round Lizzie’s shoulders. Then gently lifted Micky—he didn’t even flinch, only watched with those solemn eyes—and pulled him close. “Well, you’re home now, my darling,” Nora said. “Come in. Come in, love.” *** Twenty years. It’s enough time to build an empire and lose it. To forget your native tongue. To bury your parents—though Lizzie’s were still alive, just as distant as hired furniture. As a child, she thought their house was the whole world. Four storeys of happiness: a lounge with a fireplace, her father’s wood-panelled study, which smelled of cigars and sternness, her mother’s plush bedroom with velvet drapes, and—down in the basement—the kitchen. Nora’s kingdom. “Lizzie, don’t be in here,” nannies and tutors would chide. “You should be upstairs, with Mummy.” But Mummy was always on the phone. Always. With friends, with business partners, with lovers—Lizzie didn’t understand, but she sensed: something was wrong. Something not right in the way her mother laughed into the phone and how her face changed when Dad walked in. But in the kitchen, things were right. Nora taught her to pinch pierogis—crooked, lumpy, ragged seams. They watched the dough rise together—“Hush, Lizzie, don’t make a sound or you’ll upset it.” When shouts started upstairs, Nora would sit her on her knee and sing—something simple, wordless, just a melody. “Nora, are you my mother?” she once asked at six. “Of course not, miss. I’m just the help.” “Then why do I love you more than Mummy?” Nora fell silent, stroking Lizzie’s hair. Then she whispered, “Love doesn’t ask, see. It just comes, and that’s it. You love your mum, too—just different.” But Lizzie didn’t. She knew it, even then—with a child’s forbidden clarity. Mum was beautiful, Mum was important, Mum bought her dresses and took her to Paris. But Mum never sat up when Lizzie was ill. That was Nora—nights on end, her cool hand on Lizzie’s brow. Then came that night. *** “Eighty thousand,” Lizzie overheard from behind a half-closed door. “From the safe. I know I put it there.” “Maybe you spent it and forgot?” “Edward!” Her father’s voice was tired, flat, like everything about him in those years. “All right, all right. Who had access?” “Nora cleaned the study. She knows the code—I told her to dust.” A pause. Lizzie pressed herself to the wall, feeling something vital tear inside. “Her mother has cancer,” Dad said. “Treatment’s expensive. She asked for an advance last month.” “I didn’t give it.” “Why?” “Because she’s staff, Edward. If staff gets handouts for every mum, dad, brother—” “Harriet.” “What, Harriet? You can see for yourself. She needed the money. She had access—” “We don’t know for sure.” “Do you want the police? A scandal? For everyone to know we have thieves in our house?” More silence. Lizzie closed her eyes. She was nine—old enough to understand, too young to change a thing. Next morning, Nora packed her things. Lizzie watched from behind a door—a small girl in teddy bear pyjamas, barefoot on the cold floor. Nora folded her few possessions: a robe, slippers, a worn Saint Nicholas icon from her bedside. “Nora…” Nora turned. Calm face, just puffy, reddened eyes. “Lissie. Why aren’t you asleep?” “You’re leaving?” “I am, love. To my mother—she’s not well.” “What about me?” Nora knelt—so their eyes were level. She always smelled of dough—even when she hadn’t baked. “You’ll grow up, Lizzie. Grow into a good person. Maybe one day you’ll visit me in Pinewood. Remember?” “Pinewood.” “Good girl.” She kissed Lizzie’s forehead—quick, secretive—and left. The door closed. The lock clicked. That smell—the dough, the warmth, home—vanished forever. *** The cottage was tiny. One room, a stove in the corner, a table with an oilcloth, two beds behind a faded floral curtain. On the wall, that familiar Saint Nicholas icon, blackened by time and candle smoke. Nora bustled—putting the kettle on, fetching jam from the larder, making up the bed for Micky. “Sit, sit, Lissie. There’s no truth in tired feet. Warm up, we’ll talk after.” But Lizzie couldn’t sit. She stood in this poor, shabby hut—she, whose parents once owned a four-storey mansion—and felt something strange. Peace. For the first time in years—real, solid peace. As if something pulled tight within her had finally gone slack. “Nora,” she managed, voice cracking, “Nora, I’m sorry.” “For what, love?” “For not protecting you. For saying nothing for all these years. For…” She faltered. How to say it? How to explain? Micky was already asleep—gone the instant his head hit the pillow. Nora sat opposite her, tea cup in gnarled hands, waiting. So Lizzie told her. How after Nora left, the house became utterly foreign. Her parents divorced two years later—her father’s empire was a house of cards, lost in the crash, their flat, their cars, their country cottage vanished. Her mother fled to Germany with a new husband; her father drank himself to death in a bedsit when Lizzie was twenty-three. She was all alone. “Then there was Tom,” she said, staring at the table. “We knew each other since school. He used to visit us—you remember? Skinny, messy, always stealing sweets from the bowl.” Nora nodded. “I thought—this is it. Family, at last. Mine. But… he was a gambler, Nora. Cards, slots, you name it. I never knew. He hid it. By the time I found out—it was too late. Debts. Lenders. Micky…” She trailed off. Logs crackled in the stove. The candle-mote flickered against the icon, its shadow trembling up the wall. “When I said I was filing for divorce, he… he thought a confession would save him. That I’d forgive. Appreciate his honesty.” “Confess what, love?” Lizzie met her eyes. “He took the money. All those years ago. From the safe. Saw the code—peeked when visiting. He needed… I can’t even remember why. But yes—for his debts. And you were blamed.” Silence. Nora sat motionless. Her face unreadable. Only her hands around the mug whitened at the knuckles. “Nora, I’m sorry. I only found out last week. I didn’t know, I—” “Hush now.” Nora got up, slowly knelt—creaking with age—as she had twenty years before, meeting Lizzie eye to eye. “My darling. What are you guilty of?” “But your mother… You needed money for her treatment—” “She passed a year later, poor soul.” Nora crossed herself. “What of it? I live. Veg patch, goats. Good neighbours. I never needed much.” “They shoved you out—like a thief!” “Doesn’t life sometimes take us to the truth through a lie?” Nora whispered. “If I’d stayed, I’d have missed my mother’s last year. Being with her then—that was worth everything.” Lizzie was quiet. Her chest burned—shame, sorrow, relief, gratitude—all in a tangle. “I was angry,” said Nora. “Of course I was. I’d never so much as scuffed a penny in my life. Yet there I was—a common thief. But after a while… the anger faded. Not right away. Took years. But it did. Because if you carry bitterness, it eats you alive. I wanted to live.” She took Lizzie’s hands—cold, rough, knotted. “And here you are now. With your boy. At my old door. That means you remembered. Means you loved. And that’s worth more than any safeful of cash.” Lizzie cried. Not like adults do—quietly, to themselves. Like children. Sobbing, face pressed to Nora’s thin shoulder. *** In the morning, Lizzie woke to a smell. Dough. She opened her eyes. Micky snored beside her on the pillow. Behind the curtain, Nora clattered softly. “Nora?” “You’re up, sweetheart? Come, the pies will go cold.” Pies. Lizzie got up and, dream-like, stepped into the kitchen. On yesterday’s newspaper sat a tray of golden, misshapen pies, crimped at the edges just like when she was small. And they smelled—like home. “I was thinking,” said Nora, pouring tea into a chipped mug, “they need help at the village library. Pays little, but you don’t need much here. We’ll get Micky into nursery—Val’s in charge, she’s lovely. After that—we’ll see.” She said this so simply, as though everything was settled, everything perfectly natural. “Nora,” Lizzie faltered, “I’m… I’m nobody to you. All these years. Why did you—?” “Why what?” “Why take me in? No questions? Just like that?” Nora looked at her—that same childhood gaze. Clear, wise, kind. “Remember asking why dough is alive?” “Because it breathes.” “Exactly, love. And so does love. You can’t fire it, can’t dismiss it. If it settles in, it stays. Twenty years, thirty—you only have to wait.” She set a pie before Lizzie—warm, soft, filled with apple. “Come on. You’re skin and bone, dear.” Lizzie took a bite. For the first time in years—she smiled. The sky lightened. Snow shimmered under the first rays, and the world—vast, unfair, complicated—seemed briefly simple and kind. Like Nora’s pies. Like her hands. Like the quiet, steadfast love that cannot be sacked. Micky tumbled out, rubbing his eyes. “Mum, it smells yummy.” “Grandma Nora baked for us.” “Grand-ma?” He mouthed the word, studying Nora. She smiled—crinkles scattering, her eyes lighting up. “That’s right, love. Come eat.” And he joined them. For the first time in months, he laughed—when Nora showed him how to shape silly dough men. Lizzie watched—her son and the woman she once called mother—and understood: here was home. Not walls, marble, chandeliers. Just warm hands. Just the smell of dough. Just love—plain, earthy, unspoken. Love that can’t be bought or sold, that just is—while ever a single heart still beats. Funny thing, the memory of the heart. We forget dates, faces, whole eras, yet the aroma of mum’s pies lingers to our last breath. Maybe because love doesn’t live in the mind. It’s somewhere deeper, where neither hurt nor years can reach it. And sometimes you have to lose everything—status, money, pride—just to remember the way home. To the hands that wait.
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