The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

“Stop. This far and no further.” “Seriously,” she began, “I know you love her and everything. But I don’t. I didn’t choose her, you did. And I don’t want to live with her anymore. And if you want to carry on living with her, that’s fine, but I don’t want to. And I need you”—she paused and stared at her fingers, before bringing her gaze back to Vicky’s—“to let me go.”

This is the real world. We are real people. This is real life. And things sometimes happen that don’t fit in with how we think the story should go, but we just have to take a deep breath and get on with it, not sit there in the corner sulking because it’s not what we were hoping for.

I know as well as you do that only the individual has the key to change themselves. It’s buried deep inside each and every one of us and although someone else can help us to find the key, we’re the only ones who can use it. And there, of course, is the pathetic irony that in order for me to come to you and help you find your key I’d have to find my own first. It’s all just a series of tightly wound threads.

Is it any wonder, really, that some of us can’t cope with being grown-ups when adults treated us the way they did? If an adult cannot do a simple thing like take care of a child… well, it’s just an endless cycle.

You see the same woman with the same bouquet on

Valentine’s and you just get the feeling that someone was going through the motions.