Get Down to Earth

“Mom, can you imagine if I got into Oxford?” Emily said, not missing a beat as she sliced the tomatoes. “There’s a linguistics department there; I’ve read on forums that graduates end up at the UN or in embassies…”

Irene put down the knife, glanced at her daughter as if she’d just suggested dancing on the kitchen table.

“Emily, what are you on about? Oxford?” she snorted, returning to the salad. “Where would you go? There are too many clever clogs there. Come down to earth! You’ll end up crawling back, and a proper spot at a decent college will be taken.”

“But my grades” Emily started.

“Grades, grades,” Irene waved the knife away. “Be glad there’s somewhere to go. You’ll be by my side, no need to scrape around in other people’s corners.”

Emily fell silent, staring out the window. Her mother had already warned her not to dream. She had checked her Alevel results behind the locked door of her bedroom. Ninetyfour in English, ninetyone in History, eightynine in Sociology.

She reread the numbers three times, disbelief written on her face. Then she sank back onto her pillow and stared at the crack in the ceiling, which looked like a map of some unknown country. Her mind felt oddly empty and ringing at once. She was one of the top leavers in the district; with scores like that she could get into anywhere.

Anywhere

That night she stayed up until three in the morning scrolling through university websites, leafing through programmes, reading reviews, comparing entry points. When she landed on the Oxford page, with its historic spires on the banner and a description of the modern languages faculty, something clicked inside hera lock finally turning.

“That’s it. That’s where I need to be.”

Her mother, however, dismissed the idea outright.

“Don’t even think about it!” Irene shrieked. “Oxford? You think you can just up and leave me here alone?”

Irene paced the kitchen, clutching the edge of the table, then the back of a chair.

“Mom, I’m not leaving” Emily began.

“Leaving! Traitor! I raised you, gave you my life, and you”

The drama replayed every day.

Emily stopped sleeping properly. Dark circles settled under her eyes, her appetite vanished. She moved through the flat like a ghost, trying not to be seen by her mother, but the twobed flat was too cramped to hide.

“Aunt Margaret,” Irene’s younger sister, arrived for the weekend and witnessed another episode. “The girl is bright. Let her go, let her study. It’s her future!”

“My future is to stay here alone?” Emily snapped.

“You’re fortythree, you still have a life ahead,” Margaret said, exasperated. “And Emilyshe’s not your caretaker! She has her own life!”

Grandma, stooped and quiet, rocked her head in the corner. “Irene, let the girl go. You’ll end up biting your own elbow for nothing.”

Irene didn’t listen. A plan formed in her mind.

A few days later Emily ransacked the kitchen cabinets, every drawer. Her passport, birth certificate, school diplomaeverything disappeared.

“Mom! Where are my papers?” she demanded.

Irene, perched before the telly with a triumphant grin, replied, “Where you can’t reach them. I won’t sign anything. You’re seventeen; without my permission you go nowhere.”

Emily sank onto a chair, one thought pounding in her head: the admissions deadline was a week away, and she now had neither documents nor her mother’s signature.

She called the university; a polite voice explained that undereighteen applicants need consent from a legal guardian. No exceptions.

She rang a legal helpline; the adviser confirmed that until she turned eighteen, her mother could dictate her life.

Aunt Margaret visited twice more, tried to reason with Irene, but it was useless. Irene clung to her daughter as if her own life depended on it.

Three days before the deadline, Emily gave up. She and her mother drove to the local college on the town’s edge, a bleak building with peeling plaster the colour of stale cheese and a crooked sign.

The admissions office smelled of dust and hopelessness. A woman at the desk took the papers without looking up, muttering about timetables.

Emily stepped out onto the gravel, staring at the grey pavement. Inside, there was nothingjust a void.

“See? Perfect!” Irene beamed. “You’ll stay right by me. No need to go anywhere. I told you, no point in showing off!”

The first months of study turned into a particular kind of torture. Lecturers read from yellowed notes from twenty years ago, students stared at their phones, and the firstfloor bathroom lock hadn’t worked in ages.

Emily attended classes by force, then began skipping.

“Where have you been?” asked Yvonne, the only classmate who ever exchanged a few words with her, catching up with her in the corridor.

“In the library,” Emily replied.

It was true. The town library became her sanctuary. She spent hours there, surrounded by textbooks on grammar, phonetics, cultural studies. She prepared. For what, she still hadn’t told herself.

Her eighteenth birthday fell on a bleak November Tuesday. Her mother baked a cake and invited the neighbour. Emily served her hour, blew out the candles, ate a slice, and retreated to her room.

The next morning she marched to the registrar.

“Statement of voluntary withdrawal,” she placed on the desk.

The secretary raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She’d seen worse.

At home, Emily dug out her hidden stash behind the wardrobeher passport, diploma, birth certificate. Irene had returned them straight after admission.

“What are you doing?” her mother shouted as she turned.

Irene froze in the doorway.

“I’m leaving. To Oxford.”

“What? Again, for yourself? I forbid it!”

“I’m eighteen. You no longer have the right to tell me how to live!”

Irene flushed with rage.

“Ungrateful! After everything I’ve done for you…”

“I’ll call when I’ve got a job,” Emily said, zipping her bag.

She walked out of the flat, leaving her cage behind.

Aunt Margaret waited at the bus station.

“Here,” she handed Emily an envelope. “I set it aside. It’ll get you started.”

Emily tried to argue, but Margaret waved her off.

“Keep quiet. You earned this.” She gave her a tight hug, the kind that makes ribs crack. “Don’t give up, you hear? Whatever happensdon’t give up.”

The bus to Oxford left at six a.m. Emily watched the grey terraced houses of her hometown melt into the morning mist. She didn’t cry. No tears felljust a strange, ringing feeling, like finally breathing fully.

The room in the student hall was tinybed, desk, chair, and nothing else.

She found work three days later as a waitress in a café. Twelvehour shifts left her legs aching by nightfall, and the smell of overfried onions seemed to cling to her hair forever. The wages barely covered the room, food, andmost importantlyher textbooks.

A year passed in a strained rhythm. Mornings spent sleeping till the last possible minute, afternoons and evenings at work, nights buried in notes, tests, listening exercises. She lived on the edge of hungerliterally. She ate leftovers from the café kitchen, tea with a crust of bread for dinner, and dropped six kilos. Once she nearly fainted in the dining room; the manager sent her home and demanded she eat properly.

But Emily kept moving forward. She had a dream and wouldn’t surrender.

In the summer she reapplied. The same university, the same department. The entry score was high, but her results were higher still.

The lists went up in August. Emily stood before the notice board, scanning for her surname, heart thudding in her throat.

She found it.

A funded place.

She collapsed onto the steps of the ancient building, vaulted ceilings and stainedglass windows surrounding her. People passed, some glanced back, but Emily didn’t care.

She’d done it.

Five years flew by like a single, intense day. She never returned to her hometown, ignored her mother’s pleas to come home for Christmas or birthdays.

Irene called less and less. Their conversations began with complaints and ended with accusations. Emily would nod, say, “Right, I get it, cheers, love you, bye,” and hang up.

She returned to her own life.

She received her red diploma on a June morning, walked out of the university clutching the certificate, and stopped on the riverbank.

A job offer already waited in the posta multinational translation firm, salary she had never dared to dream of.

Her phone buzzed. Her mother.

“Emily, when are you coming back? I’ve”

“Mom,” Emily cut in, gentle but firm. “I just got my degree. I have a job in Oxford. I’m not coming back.”

A pause, then a sob.

“You’ve abandoned me! I knew it! Ungrateful…”

“Bye, Mum. I’ll call in a couple of months.”

She hung up and looked at the grey water, its surface catching the light. Somewhere in the distance a riverboat chugged along.

Emily smiled to herself, quietly. She hadn’t let anyone break her. She’d achieved what she set out to do.