‘So, it’s a semi, is that right?’
I swallow hard. Am I speaking Martian here? Because this man – with his pinstriped suit and stick-up gelled hair – is not understanding what I’m saying. Of course, the fact that just being here is tearing me in two probably means that the problem lies with me.
I look around. There are three other estate agents at their desks talking on the phone, and a nervous-looking couple sitting in a small waiting area flanked by potted palms. The office is so clean; so white. I suppose most of the people who come in here are looking for a blank canvas; a new start. And as much as I’d like a new start too, I just wish it could be in my own house – Tanglewild – the quirky old place I fell in love with the first time I saw it; amazed that we might ever be able to afford to buy it. The house where I’d hoped my kids would grow up. The house that became our family home eight years ago when we moved here from just outside London. The house that I am now about to lose.
‘No, I mean, not really…’ I try again. ‘The house was built in 1602. It was a Tudor manor house. But in 1908 the old servants’ annex was partitioned off into a separate residence. The other house has its own drive and is completely separate.’
‘So it shares a wall with another house?’
‘Well, yes, but…’
‘Uh-huh.’ He writes down the word in capital letters on the form: SEMI.
I sigh. ‘OK.’
‘And how many acres are there?’
‘Ten. But two acres are the lake. And two acres are in the middle of the land that belongs to the other house. So there’s no access. It’s complicated.’
He taps the silver pen on the clipboard. ‘Lake,’ he repeats. ‘No access.’
He makes a note on the pad: Problem Property?
I can’t bear it – the questions, the facts and figures on paper that don’t tell the whole story – or even close. They don’t tell the story of a house that was built more than 400 years ago – the beauty of its original features; the things it’s seen; the things it’s survived. Or about the people who’ve lived there – people like me and my family. As desperate as I’ve been feeling in the last ten months, the one thing that I clung to was the fact that I hadn’t had to uproot my children, make them leave the only home they’ve ever known. In the absence of a miracle, though, I always suspected that this day might come, and I feel powerless to stop it.
‘So when can you come and do the valuation?’ I say. ‘I need to get it on the market soon – this week if possible.’
‘Overstretched yourself on the mortgage, did you?’ When he smiles, his teeth are straight, white and wolfish.
‘Actually, it was my husband.’ I decide right then and there that I’m going to wipe the smarmy grin off his face. ‘Dave had debts, a bolthole in London, credit card bills up to here.’ I tap my forehead. ‘All those nights “working late”,’ I wiggle exaggerated air quotes with my fingers. ‘Getting up to – well – just let your imagination run wild about what some men do, and you’ll probably hit the mark. And then he died.’
When I say the final words, the syllables echo off the glass front, the white walls, the smooth, polished floor. I feel a tiny moment of satisfaction when my estate agent turns an unflattering shade of pink, starts to splutter that he’s ‘sorry for my loss’, then seems to think better of it and instead asks me if I’m ‘doing OK’. Even the other agents pause in their phone conversations and glance over furtively. The nervous couple look ready to stand up and bolt.
‘I’m not sorry, and no – I’m not OK,’ I say, addressing everyone. ‘I can’t keep up with the mortgage payments, I can’t find a job, and I have two kids to support. And as you’ve already noted…’ I point to the paper in front of my agent, ‘my home is a problem property and might take a while to sell. I need to get it on the market. There’s no other choice.’ I cross my arms defiantly. ‘So when can you come round and do the valuation?’
‘Um, how about on Friday?’
‘See you then.’
The sense of relief around the office is palpable as I get up from the chair and walk to the door. I’m out of there so fast that I almost convince myself that the whole thing is just another part of the nightmare, and any second now, I’m going to wake up.
Back on the high street, I collapse against the wall of the family butcher a few doors down, and try to keep from hyperventilating. I have to stop feeling sorry for myself; ‘keep calm and carry on’ – words that look good on a mug or a tote bag but are tosh in real life. I did what I had to do. I’ve put the wheels in motion.
I catch my breath, get in my car and drive to the big supermarket at the edge of the village. Gone are the days when it was normal for me to nip into Tesco on the way home from the school run – I haven’t set foot in there since the night it happened.
I stock up on baked beans, tuna, potatoes, soup, and the mini-chocolates that make good homework bribes. In the pet food aisle, I blanch at the cost of the Senior Dog Food tins – Jammie’s favourite brand is never on special. I put a few tins in the trolley and take out the bottle of bubble bath I’d put in as a treat to myself, planning to leave it there among the kibble, but then feel guilty and go all the way back across the store to put it back on the proper shelf. Not that the saved cost will offset the dog food, but it makes me feel frugal. In the old days, I used to fill up an entire jumbo-sized trolley every week – sometimes twice a week – without worrying about credit card balances or e-vouchers. Those days are gone, and it strikes me that maybe that’s a good thing. Life was too soft then, and might be too hard now, but somewhere there’s a happy medium. I just have to find it.
The traffic has subsided a little by the time I drive back through the village. Just past the train station there’s a gravel road with a sign nailed onto a tall pine tree. It says Tanglewild in bold black letters. The gravel road twists on for a quarter mile, past two barn conversions, one of which is occupied by an elderly couple, the other by a family with two teenage children. Occasionally I’ll run into one of the neighbours and have a conversation about tree-trimming, rubbish vs recycling weeks, filling potholes, or the best way to keep out rabbits. But for the most part, we all keep to ourselves.
The road forks at the end. The right fork continues round to the old servants’ annex, now a separate residence, which shares a wall with my house. The couple who own it are retired and like to travel, so it’s empty most of the time. I take the left fork through a pair of large wrought-iron gates, the paint flecked and flaking off the twists of metal. Through the gates, there’s a carport with a wonky tiled roof that was once part of the old stables. I squeeze the car in between an overflowing pile of firewood and a pile of old junk and tools.
Outside the car, I breathe in the smell of old wood, damp soil, and decaying leaves. It smells homely and familiar. As I’m unloading my shopping, Jammie ambles up to the arched gate in the high stone wall that surrounds the house and the front garden, her tail wagging slowly.
‘Hi girl,’ I say. ‘I’ve brought breakfast.’
I carry the bags inside to the gate and set them down, kneeling next to the dog and burying my face in her thick silver-grey fur. When I raise my head, I look at the house, my beloved home, trying to take in every detail like I’m seeing it for the first time – or the last. I feel a deep ache of sadness and regret.
The oldest part of the original manor house was built in the Elizabethan period. The bottom half is red-brick, and the top half is wattle and daub. There are three twisted brick chimneys on the roof, and the windows have hundreds of diamond-shaped panes. The stone wall continues along the path and dead-ends at the front corner. On the other side of the wall is the servants’ annex. From the front, you’d never know the building is technically a semi (as the estate agent so deftly pointed out), though, the fact that it’s a problem property on paper was the only reason that Dave and I could ever afford to buy it.
Although the frost is gone from the lawn, there’s still a thin coating of white on the roof – testament to the fact that I only heat the house for two hours a day – one in the morning when the kids are having breakfast, and one in the evening when they’re having their tea. As the house is grade II listed with single-glazed windows, it’s cold even at the height of summer.
‘You’re lucky to have such lovely warm fur,’ I say, shivering a little. Jammie thumps her tail. Dave never used to allow the dog in the house, but since the onset of winter, I’ve let her come inside – I love it when she lies on my feet and keeps them warm.
I pick up the bags to go inside. I’m expecting Jammie to follow, but instead she goes off towards the left side of the house where there’s another gate in the stone wall, and beyond that, the old kitchen garden, a rose garden, and then the lake. Her gait is awkward and arthritic. As I watch her go, I catch sight of the peaked roof of the old dovecote, which sits at the far tip of the lake. The building might have been quaint at one time, but now it’s fallen to ruin. When we moved into the house eight years ago, the estate agent told us that someone drowned in the lake out there. Though it happened a long time ago and I don’t know – or want to know – any of the details, the place gives me the creeps. Dave and I had vague plans to fix it up to use as a studio or an office, but it never happened. He did, however, put a brand new lock on the door so that the kids couldn’t go there exploring and end up getting hurt.
Now, I suppose, the whole thing will be someone else’s problem. Some other family; some other person who will buy Tanglewild. They’ll get used to the house’s quirks and rough edges, the bone-chilling cold and the fickle plumbing. They’ll arrive with their own things and their own history, and make their own memories here. Our memories will be little more than names on a deed of sale; clutter thrown into moving crates. Crates to be unpacked somewhere else, where my children and I will start our own new life…
Tears sting my eyes as I open the front door. I try to memorise every detail. The door is made of ancient oak timbers that came from old ships. When the house was built, the lake was actually a wide bend in an unnamed tributary of the River Arun, and regularly navigated by boats. Now, though, the flow of the river is only a trickle in and out of the lake through a small weir.
Inside, the house is silent and freezing. There’s a small alcove where we keep our coats and shoes and beyond that the so-called great hall. Small but perfectly formed, the room is two stories high, the walls covered halfway up with dark oak panelling, the ceiling an intricate pattern of ribbed plaster in the Jacobean style. At the centre of one wall is a huge brick fireplace almost as tall as I am. Opposite the fireplace, a carved wooden staircase goes up to a small minstrel’s gallery and the two wings on either side that make up the first floor. When we bought the house, neither Dave nor I had the money – or the talent – to tackle updating the decoration of the house, so it’s just as well that the previous owners left their heavy damask curtains on the windows. They’re dusty and moth-eaten now, but at least they help keep out the cold.
When I step into the great hall there’s a snap. Under my foot is a plastic Power Ranger Dino Supercharge action figure. Strong enough to face intergalactic monsters and save the world – but not strong enough to withstand an air assault from my trainer. I bend down and pick it up. His arm is snapped off. I toss him onto the old green sofa by the window, his fall broken by a pile of laundry and some of Katie’s music books scattered next to the piano.
It strikes me that maybe I’ve stopped appreciating the house – that I can’t really see past the kids’ clutter, the muddy shoes, the dog hair, the untidy toys. Over the years I’ve forgotten to look at the beauty and craftsmanship, the sheer age of everything around me. I have a pet theory that the house’s original features have survived intact because it’s always been a family home – inhabited by stressed-out mums, hard-working dads, and messy kids – everyone too busy to notice the décor. Now, though, I wish I’d tried a lot harder.
I take the shopping to the kitchen and put the kettle on. The kitchen is a vast open space with dark wood panelling, a long oak refectory table, and a row of tired units along one side. When Katie first started at the junior school, I went along to a couple of coffee mornings hosted by other mums. I remember how I used to gape at the pristine units, shiny work surfaces, comfortably warm AGAs, and the de rigueur island breakfast bars, and feel a jealous, green-eyed monster emerge from inside me. At the time, I thought I’d kill for new appliances, underfloor heating, and a double-wide refrigerator. Back then, those things mattered to me.
I’m ashamed now of how entitled and materialistic I was in those days. I’m just grateful that we’ve got a roof over our heads with a kitchen that, for the most part, functions. I’m glad that, for however short a time, we still have this special old house. It may be cluttered, and a little bit shabby. It may be cold, and it is definitely a money pit when something goes wrong. It may be a problem property in the eyes of some slick estate agent. But it’s my home and I don’t want to lose it.
I put the shopping away and make myself a cup of tea. Even if I get the house on the market this week, the estate agent told me not to expect a quick sale. Secretly, I’m glad of it. There’s still time to save my home. Still time for a miracle to happen.