In the grip of early grief, I still felt as though my parents? things kept me close to them How old were you when you moved out of your parents? house" That?s usually a simple question with a straightforward, numerical answer. Not for me.
My parents left the house before I did. I was 16 when my mum died, 19 when my dad did. Our home in Hornchurch, out in the east London suburbs, became a ghost house. Despite the unnerving quiet, the sparsely stocked kitchen, the two sets of keys hanging in the hallway rather than four, it was where I wanted to stay. It was the house in which I?d taken my first steps, spoken my first words, and had a million teenage sleepovers. It was the place where all my parents? possessions were.
But we had to sell the house to pay off the inheritance tax bill, which meant clearing out those things. Making big decisions about money and property is emotional at the best of times, and this was definitely the worst of times. My older brother hired a dumpster to keep in our driveway. Its sheer size forced me to face up to the enormity of the task ahead of us. Our parents had moved into this house in 1982, ahead of my birth the next year. Before that, they had lived in London for years, after moving halfway across the world from India. I thought of the decisions they must have made when choosing what to bring with them to live half a lifetime in England. Who was I to overrule them"
But when the time came to complete on the house sale, downs...