Rich House, Poor House

Date: 11/12/2025

We inherit a house. Not just a house — a mansion. It rises before me like something half-remembered from a fever dream: Victorian, vast, ornate as a wedding cake left too long in the sun. Ivy clings to its face as though it loves it, or refuses to let it go. The windows glint like watchful eyes. Even the air around it smells different — thick with polish, damp stone, and old money. I don’t know who we inherit it from — some distant relative or divine clerical error — but I’m not asking questions. Gratitude is easier than disbelief. And already, I’m imagining the housewarming: champagne, candlelight, and the delicious smugness of ownership. So we throw one. Guests scatter across the lawn, drinking Pimm’s and nibbling canapés from a silver platter as if we've always lived this way. The garden alive with laughter — brittle, bright, and just a little desperate. Liz, perpetually overdressed and underwhelmed, flutters her eyelashes at the stone fountain. “Gosh! You’ve really fallen on your feet here, guys,” she gushes. Liz always measures happiness in square footage. Then — the doorbell. It echoes through the tiled hallway like a warning. “Wait a minute!” I call, abandoning a half-eaten vol-au-vent. I open the door, expecting another guest, another admirer. But two grinning strangers stand there, clutching a catalogue like it’s scripture. “I’m not interested in Bible bashers,” I sigh, too sharply. Their smiles falter. Their eyes sweep past me, over the gilt mirror and chandelier, measuring me against the décor. Their silence says what I hear too clearly: What’s someone like you doing in a place like this? “Actually,” one of them begins, “we’re here to renew your monthly subscription to Grazia Magazine.” “Grazia Magazine?!” I repeat, as though insulted. “I don’t read that shite.” They flinch, then rally. “We just need your signature on the dotted line and your account number here.” “I’m mid-housewarming,” I snap. “I haven’t got time for this.” “This is a pressing matter,” he insists, clipboard trembling slightly. Mum pootles over, glass of rosé in hand, her pearls gleaming under the chandelier. “What’s all this?” she asks, before recognising them. Her face drops like a curtain. “Amanda,” she says quietly, “I thought you knew better than to open the door to johos!” Something hot and reckless stirs in me — pride, perhaps. Or performance. I snatch the clipboard and scribble across the entire page — great looping swirls of rebellion. “There,” I say, handing it back. “Consider it abstract.” They stare, appalled. “Madam—” one starts. “Now get your arses off my property!” Their shoes crunch on the gravel as they retreat. The sound is delicious. From sprawling mansions to sleeping in cars. Funny, isn’t it? How quickly life collapses — not in flames, but in quiet, creeping decline. Now I’m curled in the backseat of my Kia Venga, duvet pulled up to my chin. The air smells of damp fabric and lost things. My breath paints ghosts on the glass. Outside, streetlights stutter across the rain. Then — tap tap tap. I jolt. It’s only Mum, her face pale through the window, framed by the orange glow of the lamppost. Theirs a pit in her smile, the kind that stings worse than cruelty. “Do you want some Jakemans?” she asks, holding up a crumpled bag of honey lozenges. I shrug — not yes, not no. She opens the door just enough to tip them into the side pocket. “That’ll keep you going,” she says, like she's done her part. Then she turns and disappears into the night. The silence she leaves behind feels enormous. I reach into the pocket, fingers closing around the packet. But when I pull it out, it’s not a lozenge at all — it’s a canapé, shrivelled and stale, still crowned with a wilted sprig of dill. For a moment, I just stare. Then I start to laugh — a full, ridiculous, belly laugh that fills the car, echoing off the steamed-up windows. It’s absurd. It’s tragic. It’s life. And for the first time in a long while, I feel something dangerously close to free.