The smell of oil smoke soon drifted out.
Errol rarely cooked and he didn’t even know how to turn on the range hood.
I pushed open the old window and the cold wind swept in, dispelling the pungent smell and making my mind clearer.
There was a knock at the door and I knew it was Beata coming to collect the rent.
“I’m old, I don’t know how to use your mobile phone apps.” Beata kept mumbling and I stuffed the money I had prepared into her hand.
But she didn’t leave and poked her head into the house.
“Errol is cooking?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s hard to find a good man like him. You are lucky. Women in our time didn’t have such a good life. We had to do farm work, housework and take care of children. It was hard.”
I sneered in my heart and said perfunctorily, “You are lucky. You can also collect rent. People nowadays don’t have such a blessing.”
The neighbors always liked to say behind my back that I was lucky and had climbed up the ladder.
In their eyes, Errol was a cultured person, while I was a migrant worker from the mountain valley. I couldn’t read a few words, lonely and helpless.
Of course, they didn’t know that I worked hard in the store to support him in studying and taking exams.