“She told me she would kill me.”

I almost spat out my tea.

My grandmother looked at me with a glint in her eye, “Oh, she never liked me much.”

“Why—what? Why—” I spluttered.

My grandmother and I were sitting in the plush lobby of a Durham hotel waiting for a taxi to whisk us to the station. My father sat beside her with a bemused look on his face.

I turned to him with my best ‘WTF?’ face.

He shrugged; his parents were a mystery to him as much as they were to me.

Now was not the best time to get into family dramas and death threats, but the taxi was on its way and I’d just opened up a Pandora’s Box.

“I wasn’t good enough for her son,” she explained. “No one was.”

This was the first I’d heard her speak so openly about her marriage to my grandfather.

All I knew is that they hadn’t been happy and had divorced before I was born.

But today it all came tumbling out.

My grandmother had been the second choice for my grandfather’s hand, I discovered. The first choice got away. And my great-grandmother would find great joy in reminding her of this whenever possible.

I imagined myself in my grandmother’s shoes, moving to a remote Scottish village in the late fifties with her new husband, and an overbearing mother-in-law just a phone call away.

It wasn’t the ideal start to a marriage.

Being the wife of a priest meant the ladies of the parish avoided her. As they were intimidated or envious of her, my grandmother was never really sure.

My grandfather was a charmer and an academic, and my grandmother was in awe of him. But with such charm, came unpredictable mood swings that swung wildly; he’d lock himself away in his study for days, or be out all hours spending time with his gentleman friends.

“He and his mother were very close,” she continued, leaning back into the tartan-clad sofa for comfort. Her hands smoothed down her skirt absent-mindedly brushing off invisible cookie crumbs she’d never eaten. “He would phone her regularly, and I assume to talk about me.”

I sipped on what remained of my tea imagining how I’d react if my boyfriend’s mother threatened me. Would I flee? Would I argue back? How in the—

“He must have said something about me because one day when he was out, she called …”

She paused for dramatic effect, knowing full well she had my undivided attention.

“… and told me she would kill me if I didn’t make her son happy.”

I sat aghast, “What did you do?”

She laughed, “I said thank you, and put the phone down. What else could you say?”

Stunned, I couldn’t think of a response. What else did I not know?