My Sister Wants Me to Move Out of Our Shared Flat Because She’s Having a Baby—Is It Right to Be Aske…

A very long time ago, Mum and Dad bought a two-bedroom flat for me and my sister. They said one day, we could sell it and use the money to get two separate one-bedroom flats, so we’d each have a place of our own.

Years later, my sister met a man named Timothy and married him. She asked me if I’d mind if she and Timothy moved in with me in our flat. I said yes, thinking wed all muddle along together.

For a while, things were fine. Then my sister found out she was expecting a child. Thats when everything began to twist and change in that shadowy, curious way dreams do. Suddenly, my sister and her husband seemed to think I didnt belongand they wanted me to leave our flat so their baby could have my room. My sister spoke of this almost as if my presence was nothing but a vanished cloud. She began planning where to put the cot, kept debating paint colours for my bedroom, all while I was still there, rather lost in the middle of it all.

I wondered to myself: is this how things go? Why should I be the one to leave, especially since I’m rightful co-owner of the place? Im still a studentI only manage to scrape by on a scholarship and a little part-time work at the local café, barely enough for a ham sandwich, never mind rent in London.

At first, my sister dropped hints about me moving out; then she and Timothy began outright telling me that I should. It felt as if their voices trickled through the walls, echoing into my sleep. The dreams were muddledthey would talk about painting over my room, but their words would drip like rain into a quiet lake, leaving ripples I couldnt calm.

I did speak to my parents about it. My mother chuckled in that awkward, floating way English mothers sometimes do and said, Oh, thats just how expecting women are; itll pass, pet. Try not to let it trouble you. But how could I ignore it, tossed out of my own shared home nearly every day by the suggestion of it?

Now, in these dreamlike corridors of our flat, I drift like a stranger in my own houseeverything moving around me, unreal and translucent, my sister unmoved, as if I were a ghost at my own tea table. What am I meant to do now, when the furniture rearranges by itself and no one remembers I live here too?