That’s something that happens to people, isn’t it? You get used to your own stink and then you walk around subjecting everyone to the smell of your clammy, crusty body, wondering why people avoid you or make those pained faces when you draw near. But they’re all too polite to tell you. People don’t usually walk up to someone and say, “Hey, you need to go to a doctor about your BO. You reek!” No one wants to make that kind of social sacrifice. So, they just avoid you instead and you’re left wondering, ‘Do I smell or is it something else?’
I’d often wondered if that was why I never got invited out to lunch at work. It would have been the easier fix.
The elm tree at the base of the drive swayed in the wind, shaking loose a fluttering shower of papery seeds.
I shook my head, as if my brain was an eight-ball I could rattle to get a better prediction, and pulled my suitcase up the steps in the hill to the front door—my front door.
When I first saw the picture of the house, I’d expected to open it with an old iron key, or at least one of those intricate brass ones, slightly tarnished by hands and time. Getting a standard, square-head Yale lock key had been a surprise I couldn’t verbalise to the estate agents. It had a metal ring attached, but no tag, not even one of those cheap plastic keyrings bearing the estate agent’s branding like a modern shield of arms. Just a bare key on a ring. I’d stared at it a moment too long. The receptionist had shifted uncomfortably in his seat on the other side of the high pine desk. “Is everything okay?” he’d asked, then quickly clarified, “With the key?”
“Of course,” I’d said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
It had been more to myself than him.
Why wouldn’t it be?
I looked at the chrome lock protruding slightly from the pine-green, gloss-painted door, clumsy and anachronistic in its shine among the weathered beams and the old brickwork. Like white slimline headphones sticking out of a gramophone.
But it wasn’t just new; it was brand new.
A new lock. Did estate agents usually change the locks when houses changed hands? It was my first home that wasn’t a rental. There had been a lot about the buying process that had surprised me. The extra fees, the affordability checks—I’d applied off the back of my full-time position; I hadn’t told them I’d recently gone freelance, and not exactly by choice. But it got me approved for the mortgage, and that was all that mattered.
I ran my hand over the surface of the door. They’d been careless placing the lock. Didn’t matter how much gloss paint they’d used; they’d failed to hide the deep scratches in the woodwork all around the edge. Maybe they’d had to pry it open after the last inhabitant. I peered through the small, mottled window in the door, slightly worried I might see said inhabitant staring back out.
Well, who cared? It was mine now. My anachronistic lock. My scratched door. My new life. My new neighbour hiding behind their curtains.
I put the key in the lock.
Next door, a movement.
My eyes flicked to the left.
I waited a moment, watching 1a’s downstairs window not more than a few yards away from me.
Nothing.
I swore I’d seen the ground floor curtain twitch, like the flickering of an eyelid about to wake.
I exhaled. Maybe the police were right. Maybe I was crazy.
I turned the key and headed inside.
CHAPTER 2
The front door opened straight into the main living space, with nothing but a thick musty curtain and a sunken tiled entryway to usher me between outside and in. A practical choice for farmhands, but something I’d need to sort before winter hit.
The ground floor was a single, open-plan room with warped wooden floorboards, blackened with age, and an unpainted, beamed ceiling. There was no furniture. On the left-hand side was a fireplace with a thick wooden mantel and a stone-clad chimney breast reaching up into the ceiling; on the far edge, a bank of yellowing cabinets made up the kitchen, complete with a small fridge-freezer, an electric stove, and an enamel sink with a faded gingham curtain hiding the space underneath it; then on the right there was a staircase leading up to the first floor. Under the stairs was a door, cut at an angle to fit the incline. Probably a cupboard. Extra storage.
I took in the alien, lived-in air. It was like going over to a friend’s house as a kid, and finding all the furniture smelled of unfamiliar cooking. It was small and wonky, and certainly nowhere near insulated enough, but it was a house. Not a flatshare, not a single-bed apartment close to a ring road. An actual house. With an upstairs and a downstairs and a garden.
And it was mine.
All the earlier exhaustion and disappointment melted away. I was here. I’d arrived. Home. My new home.
In the far corner I imagined a second-hand dining table. A round one. I’d put a vase on it and keep it filled with flowers. In the centre of the room, I saw a sofa, small but plush, covered with a handmade throw. I could get a TV. I could watch TV in a living room again, and not just on a laptop balanced on the end of my bed. I envisioned winter with a fire in the hearth and a Christmas tree by the window. I saw autumn with pinecones on the mantelpiece, a warm pot of tea on the table and golden foliage on the trees outside. Spring rain. Windows open in summer. The future felt inviting for once, and within my reach.
I left my suitcase in the tiled entrance, slipped off my boots and stepped up onto the floorboards.
And instantly onto something hard and sharp.
