Page 90 of The Clifftop Cottage

She moved to the hallway cabinet, pulling it open to tuck a pile of mail inside. The envelope lay where she’d hidden it, beneath takeaway menus and unopened bills.

She knew the shape of it without looking.

Her mother’s handwriting slanted across the front. No return address. Just Leah.

She carried it upstairs and sat on the edge of the bed.

Nepal. A school in the mountains. A life described in careful, distant sentences.

I often think of you and your sister. I hope you are living fulfilling, nourishing lives. Look after each other.

Look after each other?

Leah’s jaw tightened.

In the hospital, nurses had asked gently, “Is your mum on her way?”

Leah had said yes. She had said it so many times it almost felt true.

The note had been short.

I can’t do this.

Leah had folded it away and carried on. The baths. The medication. The nights her father gripped her hand without knowing who she was.

She refolded the letter now with the same precision.

No address. No invitation.

Just words that didn’t ask for anything back.

Leah’s phone buzzed on the nightstand. A message from the school: parent-teacher evening next week.

She rubbed her eyes.

Downstairs, the floor creaked. Maisie’s soft footsteps heading to the kitchen.

Leah followed, finding her daughter half-heartedly poking through the fridge.

“Fancy the zoo tomorrow?” Leah asked. “Just us?”

Maisie didn’t turn. “I’m not five anymore, Mum.”

The fridge hummed between them.

“I know,” Leah said.

But Maisie was already walking away.

Leah stood still, the fridge door humming beside her. She watched the magnets, the crooked school photos, one of Maisie in a paper crown at age six. A world away. And yet her daughter was still a child. Just a child hurting.

Upstairs, she heard the soft click of Maisie’s door closing again.

Leah sat heavily on the sofa and stared at the envelope one more time, willing it to reveal something it never had before. An answer. A reason.

Dylan was still out. Erica was silent. And her mother was somewhere in the mountains.

Leah looked around the room and felt the same quiet she’d been living in for years. Motionless. Suspended between one obligation and the next.