Iris didn’t see her mother again until three months after her funeral. 

            She was at the computer in her spare room, searching Freecycle for a sugar spoon. Beside her, steam spiraled from a cream china cup with a delicate pattern of pink roses and crisp green leaves. It belonged to the tea set Iris had retrieved from her mother’s bungalow before the auction: a teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl, five cups, and six saucers. 

            Iris had coveted the tea set since she was a girl, nearly sixty years ago. The china was so fine that the cups floated on her soapy dishwater like paper boats, and when she held one up to the window the sun glowed through it. It had been her mother’s most prized possession. More prized, she knew, than herself. She had never managed to be so dainty, so fine, so useful, and uncomplaining. Lord knows she’d tried. But one day— much too late—she’d realized that the tea set was an invincible rival, the symbol of the life her mother should have had, before Iris came along and ruined it all. 

            Now it was hers, and her mother was dead. 

            She sipped her tea and placed the cup neatly back in its saucer. Shutting down the computer, she gazed at the black reflection of herself in the colorless room, with its pale watercolor prints and neat bookshelves. She smoothed her blouse. When she tilted her head, she saw her mother sitting behind her in the old wicker chair by the door. 

            Even in the shadow world of the screen her shape was unmistakable. Rounded shoulders, chin jutting forward, hands folded in her lap in genteel despair. Her glasses glinting bitterly in the dark. Iris froze, unable to look away. When she blinked her mother vanished, and she turned around, trembling. The wicker chair was empty. Her heart fluttered in her chest like a moth in a jar. 

***

            It was after her mother’s second visit that Iris made the connection with the tea set. 

            She was in the kitchen. She’d just put the kettle down after filling the elegant rose-wreathed teapot and stood breathing in the sweet, tan smell when her favorite mug slid off the draining board barely two feet away from her. It hung unsteadily in the air for a moment, as if held just long enough for someone to be sure that she had seen it, when it was dropped. She reached out, pathetically grasping at the empty air as it bounced on the tiles, losing its handle, and finally breaking in two. 

            Iris leaned on the counter and waited for her pulse to stop dancing. She understood the message written in pieces at her feet. She didn’t know exactly how old she had been at the time but guessed around eight. In the memory she was sporting both the pudding bowl haircut that she hated and the pale blue dress that she loved, the one with soaring, red-breasted swallows embroidered on the collar. Her mother’s anger had been crackling over their small home all weekend. Iris had been hiding, waiting, keeping out of her way. When the clouds showed no signs of lifting, she decided to act. By making her mother a cup of tea, she would show that she was helpful and good and encourage the lightning of her rage to strike somewhere else when it was finally unleashed. 

            As quietly as possible, Iris dragged a chair across the tiles. She climbed up and opened the cabinet where the tea set was stored, taking out a cup and a saucer one at a time and placing them on the counter beside the tea caddy. On tiptoe she filled up the kettle at the sink, then lit the stove, and lifted the swaying kettle on to the flame. She waited until just before the whistle, then hefted the kettle up again with her hands wrapped in a tea towel, as she had watched her mother do, so many times. She was afraid but thrilled too, to be making a real cup of tea like a grown up. She imagined her mother smiling at her. 

            In the sitting room her mother was in her usual chair by the window, mending something with a radio play murmuring beside her. Iris walked in, clutching the saucer with both small hands, not taking her eyes from the wobbling cup. The dark shape that was her mother looked up just at the moment that Iris tripped on the corner of the hearth and the cup slithered off the saucer to smash on the blue slate surround. Hot tea splashed her legs and soaked into her white ankle socks. Her mother reached her in two brisk steps, crushing pink and green fragments into the rug under her feet. She grabbed Iris’s shoulder in one hand and slapped her hard across the face with the other. 

            Standing in her own kitchen more than half a century later, Iris touched her cheek softly. She remembered the force of it, the blaze of pain, the hot tears that sprang to her eyes, and her mother’s blurred, furious face. 

***

            The third time Iris encountered her mother’s ghost it was because Iris summoned her. She set out the teapot, milk jug, sugar bowl, and two cups and saucers on a white tablecloth. She poured a cup for herself and a cup for her mother, swirling in the milk until the shade was exactly correct. After she’d dropped the cup she was never allowed to touch the tea set again, but she’d made her mother many more cups of tea. As she sipped and waited, she thought of all the rejected tea she’d poured away into their brushed steel sink. The memory clung to her teeth like tannin.

            Her mother arrived gradually. At first she was a blur, just a smudge on Iris’ glasses, then a kind of fog hovering over the chair. Slowly she took form, until she was sitting there, translucent, but exactly as Iris knew her. The scratchy gray cardigan with the pearl buttons, the owlish varifocals. Hands folded, lips pursed, shoulders heavy, sagging under the weight of the world and all its disappointments. 

            Iris was afraid, but she’d been afraid of her mother all her life and she knew how to press her fear deep down inside her and fasten it shut. To her relief she felt quite numb. 

            “Leave me alone,” she said, quietly. 

The dead eyes shone with contempt. 

            “It’s mine now. I’ll take care of it.”

The ghost looked at her with scorn. Iris held her fists neatly in her lap and dug her fingernails into her palms.

            “What do you want me to do? Bring it to the cemetery?”

Her mother looked away and vanished. For a few minutes, Iris sat in silence. She had always believed—naively, she now realized—that when her mother died she would be free.

            “Fine,” she said to the empty room. “I give up.”

***

            Once she’d made the decision, Iris wanted the tea set gone as fast as possible. When she posted a photo of the set on Freecycle it was just 16 minutes before it was claimed by someone called aniela325 who signed off her email with a smiley face. 

            As Iris carefully wrapped each cup and placed them in a box, she wondered if her mother would follow them to their new home. Should she warn Aniela? What could she say? She pushed the thought out of her mind. She pushed the box into the corner of the living room, then moved it to the corridor, and finally placed it right beside the door. 

            When the doorbell rang, she jumped. Opening the door, she saw a tall woman in her early thirties clutching an orange bicycle, with a mass of thick black curls set to escape at any moment from beneath her neon green helmet. 

            “Oh hello. Are you…?”

            “I’m Aniela, I am here for your teapot!” She grinned breathlessly and began to speak in an almost unbroken rush of words while struggling to fit the box into one of her panniers.

            “I’m so pleased you offered this! My daughter has a school project, she’s supposed to do something nice for someone, and she decided she’s gonna make me afternoon tea. How cute is that? We saw an afternoon tea in a café, but it was like £25 a person so we thought, no way! So she’s gonna do her own, but we don’t know anyone who has teacups with saucers. No one uses saucers anymore, do they? I mean what are they for?”

Iris didn’t know so she nodded and smiled. 

            “So when I saw your post I thought, wow that’s perfect! It’s just the two of us now. It’s gonna be so nice.” She paused, having successfully attached the box to her bike. 

            “I’m on there all the time right now because I just got out of a bad relationship. A real bad one. I’m getting rid of all the old stuff, you know, the things with the memories attached. The saucepans that got thrown at my head!” She laughed, but they’d both felt the tremor of truth. “I’m moving on now. We’re moving on. I’m looking for new things! Not better things, just, you know…” 

She trailed off.

            “Different things,” Iris said, feeling something pressing inside her chest.

            “Exactly! Exactly. So you know, this is perfect. Thank you! Thank you so much.”

            “You’re very welcome. I hope you enjoy your afternoon tea,” Iris said, wishing she could say other things.

As Aniela wheeled her bike through the gate she called back, “Hey if you ever want to visit your teapot, come and see us. We’re on Selby Road, number 22. Bye!” 

Iris watched her cycle away. 

***

            It was three days before the guilt became too much and Iris found herself pulling on her coat and walking round to number 22 to ask for the tea set back. She was tormented by visions of Aniela and her daughter slowly soured by the spirit. They wouldn’t know why, of course, wouldn’t understand that she had cursed them. Or more accurately, that she had transferred her curse to them. She should never have let Aniela take it. 

            When Aniela opened the door she said, “I thought we might be seeing you.” 

Iris covered her face with her hands. 

            “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I should have warned you!”

            “I think you’d better come in. Dani’s serving tea so you’re just in time.”

From the doorway of their bright, messy living room, Iris saw Dani, and the tea set, and the ghost sitting beside her. But it wasn’t her mother. It was a little girl with a pudding bowl haircut and a blue dress with swallows embroidered on the collar. She was swinging her legs and laughing and chattering to Dani, who giggled as she put four lumps of sugar in each dainty cup. 

            Iris watched them in astonishment until behind her Aniela said softly, “She’s no trouble. No trouble at all.”

            Iris turned and walked stiffly back into the corridor, limbs hollow as a doll’s. If she spoke, she would break apart. She felt Aniela’s hand on her arm, and all the pins and fastenings she held herself together with gave way at once. She fell into Aniela’s arms and sobbed. 

            “Oh dear,” Iris said eventually, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. “Oh dear, I’m so sorry.”

Aniela smiled. “It’s all right. You’re no trouble either.”

Iris smiled back at her. She felt loose, like a breeze was blowing through her. She was a tree beside a sparkling ocean, an ancient temple on a sandy hillside. An idea bloomed inside her like a chorus of sea pinks and she clasped Aniela’s hands excitedly.

            “Do you still have those saucepans?”

Sarah Jackson (she/they) writes gently unsettling stories. Her short fiction has appeared in Translunar Travelers Lounge, Electric Spec, and Wyldblood Magazine. She's a member of SFWA and HWA and co-editor of The Fantastic Other magazine. She lives in east London UK and has a green tricycle called Ivy. Her website is sarah-i-jackson.ghost.io and you can find her on Mastodon as @sarahijackson@wandering.shop