Finding Home

by Lauren Westwood

  It might be of some importance if we get killed, but it’s obvious that he’s not going to be put off. ‘Okay,’ I shrug, and knock hard on the door. No one answers, so I ring the bell. Nothing.

  ‘But you have the key?’ my client inquires.

  Unfortunately, yes. I fish out the envelope with the keys from my handbag. I unlock the door and shout hesitantly: ‘Hello, anybody home?’

  Mr Patel pushes past me. He pulls out a laser tape measure. He immediately starts zapping the walls with the little red light, tapping the measurements into his BlackBerry. Cosmetically, the place is trashed – grimy wallpaper hangs off the walls, the carpet is black and ripped, the walls and ceiling are covered with spray paint. I glance at Mr Patel. He’s making all sorts of satisfied noises. Surreptitiously, I rip up a tissue to make earplugs. They do nothing to drown out the din.

  Mr Patel finishes in the hallway and opens the door to the main reception room. The room has no floor, just joists with rubble beneath. Steadying himself against the wall, he steps out onto the joists. ‘Be careful,’ I plead, but he ignores me. He skips across the boards, laser measure poised and ready in his fist.

  ‘There are some fine features here that could be restored,’ I shout half-heartedly. ‘I’d say this house has loads of potential. The rooms are good-sized, and so is the garden. It could be a lovely family home – a real bargain at the price.’ It’s almost true. Beneath the graffiti, the room does have some nice crown mouldings and an original fireplace.

  A rat scurries between the floor joists. I let out a little yelp. Unfazed, Mr Patel keeps measuring. Beyond the remains of the kitchen is an overgrown garden. Rain is streaming in through a gaping diagonal crack in the exterior wall. Mr Patel zaps the crack.

  His phone rings and he proceeds to carry on a conversation for (yes, I time it) – seven minutes. Each moment ticking away increases the likelihood that I’ll be late for the Rosemont Hall viewing, not to mention the possibility of getting killed.

  Finally, Mr Patel puts the phone away. ‘Okay, now the upstairs,’ he directs.

  Clenching my teeth, I go first up the rickety stairs. A board gives way beneath my feet and I nearly tumble to the bottom. Mr Patel goes past me, brandishing his laser. At the top of the stairs there’s a bathroom caked with excrement, and two bedrooms filled with pipes and tubes that resemble a home laboratory. The Chip cottage looks positively pristine in comparison. ‘Lovely good-sized bedrooms,’ I say. Mr Patel responds by zapping them. He walks to the door of the main bedroom. The music hammers like a ravenous beast trying to escape.

  ‘I think we should skip that one,’ I say. ‘I can email you the dimensions from the office.’

  Mr Patel completely ignores me and throws open the door without knocking. For an instant, I’m terrified. Do I have some kind of liability if he gets murdered? He steps inside the room. I creep over to the door and look inside.

  Four very large, very tattooed and pierced men are lying on various filthy sofas and chairs. My heart is in my throat until I realise that their eyes are all closed – they’re drunk, or asleep, or stoned, or dead.

  I rush over to Mr Patel and grab his arm. ‘We need to go,’ I shout.

  He shakes his head.

  Unbelievably, he takes out his laser measure and starts doing his thing. He stands on a sofa next to one of the passed-out men and measures a ceiling rose. I’m feeling panicky and the smell in the room is making me gag – sweat and booze mixed with cigarette smoke and incense. Just then, the CD comes to an end and everything goes quiet. Mr Patel goes to the bay window and measures it, knocking a syringe off the sill in the process. It clatters to the floor and rolls to the feet of one of the men. The man groans and opens his eyes.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I hiss.

  Mr Patel calmly taps the keys of his BlackBerry.

  I grab his arm and pull him out of the room.

  ‘What the fuck!—’ a loud male voice—

  I slam the door and steer Mr Patel away. We successfully navigate a gaping hole in the floor. Mr Patel pauses at the top of the stairs. For an awful second I think he’s going to measure something else.

  Heavy footsteps; the door handle turns.

  ‘Come on!’

  We half tumble down the stairs together. I drag him through the hall and out the front door, slamming it behind us. I scramble for my key and lock the deadbolt from the outside. There’s a sudden commotion of voices from inside the upstairs bedroom. An angry face appears at the window.

  ‘Can I see the garden?’ Mr Patel stops me with a hand on my arm.

  ‘Ring the office,’ I shriek. ‘—Schedule a second viewing.’

  I drag him to the street and bundle him into his car. As the door to the house opens and four angry giants spill forth brandishing beer bottles, I jump back in my own car, shaking all over. I turn on the ignition and floor it.

  - 18 -

  I put some miles between me and Glastonbury and pull over in a lay-by to catch my breath. I feel like I’ve aged a hundred years in the last two hours. The last thing I want to do is another viewing. Even – and perhaps, especially – Rosemont Hall.

  Thanks to Mr Patel and his laser, I’m running late. The A39 is a red sea of brake lights. By the time I drive through the rickety gates and begin the ascent of the long, winding drive, my heart is in my throat.

  The towering monolith of Rosemont Hall, its four chimneys scraping the grey sky, looks forbidding – and lonely. The East Wing is like the skeleton of a vast, beached whale, the burnt rafters slicing the sky into jagged pieces.

  The clients should be here by now, but there’s no car in the drive. A knot of tension tightens in my shoulders. Are they late too, or have they already come and gone? Or just not bothered to turn up?

  I grab my papers and jump out of the car. After the events of the last few hours, I’m now desperate for the loo. I run up the stairs to the front door and wrench the key in the lock.

  According to David Waters’ report, there’s only one working loo in the house. For once, I don’t stop to say hello to the girl in the portrait as I dash up the stairs into the Rose Bedroom – which, I assume, was Mrs Windham’s.

  The bathroom has the same avocado green suite as my parents’ bungalow, which makes me feel right at home. But in this loo, the bath is grotty with soap scum, the tiles mildewed, and there’s a large hole next to the bath where the floor seems to have collapsed under years of wet feet.

  After using the loo, I go to the sink to wash my hands. There are slick strips of rust behind each of the taps, where water is slowly dripping like excruciatingly arrhythmic Chinese water torture. The first tap doesn’t turn, and the second tap lets out a trickle of water, and then won’t turn off. Worse, the drain seems to be blocked, and water slowly begins to pool in the basin.

  With a sigh, I wipe my hands on my trousers and go back out into the bedroom. Even if I tried, I couldn’t make it look more dated, faded, and dreary than it already does. The furnishings are a 70s mismatch except for the huge wooden canopy bed that takes up half the room, hung with curtains in a rose chintz pattern.

  On the bedside table is a tattered book and a box of tissues. Frowning, I peek at the title of the book. It’s one that I know well: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë. I’m almost positive that it wasn’t there on my previous visit. Then I notice that on the bed, the blankets and satin coverlet are rumpled. My skin crawls with the thought that someone might have been sleeping in a dead woman’s bed.

  As I’m about to leave the room, something else catches my eye: the door cut into the panelling. I remember David Waters saying that it was a closet of some kind. I walk over and pull on the door, wrinkling my nose at the anticipation of the smell of dead mouse or mothballs.

  Instead, to my surprise, when I open the door, the smell of potpourri wafts out. It’s strong, but not unpleasant. I flip the light switch and a bare bulb comes on.

  The closet goes back about fifteen feet. It’s completely filled
with clothing zipped in clear plastic bags, and there’s an upper shelf full of hats and even a few elaborately coiffed wigs. The clothing in the bags is like something out of a Victorian pantomime: flouncy gowns, a clown suit, a gentleman’s cloak and dagger, a pirate’s outfit. A huge spider scurries away from my feet. The whole thing is a bit creepy.

  Just as I’m about to switch off the light, I see it: a pink satin dress on a padded hanger; an exact replica of the dress in the portrait. I unzip the plastic and run my fingers over the pale, supple fabric that seems as fresh as the day it was made. The scene in Rebecca pops into my mind where Mrs Danvers tricks the second Mrs de Winter into dressing up like one of the paintings for a costume ball, in a similar costume to that worn by the ill-fated Rebecca. The whole party is sent into an embarrassing uproar. And as for Henry’s party – well, that ended in a tragic fire. Did the costumes belong to Arabella Windham? Why would Mrs Bradford keep them in such good order when the rest of the house is such a wreck? My neck crawls with goosebumps like I’m intruding on private memories and carefully kept secrets.

  I switch off the light and close the door.

  The tap is still dripping in the bathroom. I go back in and give it one last good twist to turn it off. As I do, it comes off in my hand. There’s a deep gurgling noise, and the next moment, the whole thing erupts and I’m doused head to toe with freezing brown water. I let out a little scream and frantically try to put the broken piece of metal back on. Luckily (if anything about it can be considered lucky) the water fizzles out quickly, and subsides to the original drip. If the house doesn’t want its plumbing disturbed, then who am I to argue?

  Just then, I hear the crunch of gravel. My clients! I’d practically forgotten about them.

  I rush to the window. A silver Aston Martin pulls up in front of the house.

  I spring into action, running down the stairs, rifling in my pocket for the paper with the client’s name – a Mr O’Brien – leaving a trail of water dripping behind me.

  As I reach the door, the car is moving again. It reverses in the drive, like they’ve taken one look and seen enough.

  I run towards the car, waving my arms. ‘Mr O’Brien,’ I shout. ‘Stop! I’m Amy Wood, the estate agent. Please don’t leave. I’m here!’

  The car stops. The driver door opens and a man gets out. He’s wearing a black hooded tracksuit and looks much younger than I expected – about my age, I would say. Other than that he’s fairly nondescript. But the woman who gets out of the passenger side is anything but. Tall and bleached blonde, she’s wearing a micro skirt, lace tights, and gold stiletto heels. On top, she has on a fitted leather jacket that augments her impressive, oversized chest. Everything about her – nails, make-up, lips drawn in a little red pout – seems in perfect fabricated order.

  ‘Hello Mr O’Brien,’ I say. ‘I’m really glad you came.’

  ‘It’s Ronan Keene, actually,’ the man says as we shake hands. ‘O’Brien’s my agent.’ The woman looks at me and sniffs.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ I say. Agent?

  ‘And this is my girlfriend, Crystal.’

  The woman looks at me with an irritated pout; like I’m a complete moron for not recognising her – or acting more impressed – or maybe it’s because I stopped them from leaving – or maybe it’s because I’m drenched and dripping from head to toe with rusty water. I rack my brain, trying to recall if I’ve seen either of them before. If the man is a celebrity, I definitely don’t recognise him. The woman looks like someone who could have graced page 3 of the Sun, or perhaps a Z-lister from Celebrity Love Island. I’m not awed, but I give her a friendly smile. ‘Nice to meet you,’ I say.

  Introductions complete (though I still can’t place either one of them), I run back to the car and grab my papers. As we walk to the door, I begin my spiel. ‘This house is truly special,’ I say. ‘It’s one of a kind. And with a little TLC, it could be amazing. Every feature is a piece of history.’ I point out some of the decorative plasterwork on the outside of the house. The woman wrinkles her nose.

  They step inside the front door and crane their necks looking around. I allow them a moment to be ‘awed’ by the faded grandeur of the main hall, and then enthusiastically launch into a brief history of the house. ‘Rosemont Hall was built in 1765,’ I say. ‘It’s one of the finest examples of Georgian Palladian architecture in the region – maybe even the whole country. It’s been in the Windham family for over 200 years. The first Windham won the house in a game of whist.’

  As we embark upon the ‘tour’, I watch them closely for any sign that they’re awed, overwhelmed or impressed – anything I can connect with. The woman, Crystal, takes out a handkerchief and puts it over her nose as we go through the ground floor rooms.

  ‘Cracking place,’ Ronan says. But if anything, he looks slightly puzzled by the surroundings.

  ‘We’ve had a quantity surveyor around,’ I say, persevering with my sales pitch. ‘He’s just doing a final report on how much the renovations are likely to cost. I know the house is in a bit of a state right now, but just think how much value you could add.’

  Ronan shrugs. ‘Money’s not really an issue, as long as we can do what we like, eh cupcake,’ he flaps his elbow at the woman. ‘We’d need to be able to put in a full-size swimming pool, sauna, and gym, and clear those fields to build tennis-courts and the football pitch, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ I echo half-heartedly.

  ‘And Crystal wants one of those big open-plan kitchen diners with bi-fold doors and a breakfast bar,’ he adds. ‘So we’d want to knock down some walls.’ He swings an imaginary sledgehammer.

  ‘The house is listed, so there’d be some restrictions.’ I say through my teeth. ‘But there’s still a lot of scope to put your own stamp on it without altering the basic structure…’

  ‘Is bulldozing it altering the structure?’ Crystal asks. She pulls out a compact mirror and reapplies her lipstick. ‘Because it’s so dark and draughty – it would never do at all.’

  ‘Crystal…’ Ronan says, ‘you said you’d keep an open mind.’

  ‘But why?’ She pouts. ‘You know how much I loved that new-build mansion in Gerrards Cross. That pink marble Turkish bath was to die for. And the cinema wing…’ She sighs. ‘I hate these horrible old houses. I mean – someone else has lived here.’

  My hand itches to tweak her surgically altered nose. I walk over to the window and look out at the parkland, trying to remain calm and professional.

  ‘Crystal, we’ve talked about this…’

  ‘Yah know, I mean, why did you have to sign with Rovers? I know the money wasn’t as good at Chelsea, but even Man City would have been better. Or Liverpool.’

  ‘Crystal—’

  ‘I’m sure there isn’t a nail salon or a decent boutique for miles.’

  It’s obviously a lost cause. I’m not proud to say it, but I allow a tiny little mean streak in me to come to the surface.

  ‘Would you like to see the kitchen?’ I ask, knowing that it’s old-fashioned grottiness will horrify her. ‘It’s in the basement – very spacious, if a little dated.’

  ‘Ugh,’ Crystal says. ‘No thanks. I’ll wait up here.’

  Too bad.

  I lead Ronan down the stairs. ‘It’s a big space,’ I say, ‘you could definitely do something with it.’

  He seems almost to prefer the subterranean damp – or maybe he’s just happy for a Crystal-free moment. ‘It’s a nice house,’ he says as we enter the first of the cavernous basement rooms. ‘It reminds me of my nan’s house in County Down. Only a lot bigger, of course. I see that it has lots of potential.’

  ‘Yes it does.’ I smile at him, grateful that someone finally seems to ‘get it’ – on some level, at least. ‘It will be a lovely family home once it’s restored. The previous owners who lived here were married for over forty years. It’s a “together house” – a house for life.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s not really what we want.’

  �
��Oh?’ my enthusiasm ebbs.

  ‘Yeah, because I’m never sure where I’ll be from one season to the next.’

  ‘Season?’

  ‘The Premiership. You know – football. I signed with Bristol Rovers. We’re newly promoted this season.’

  ‘Oh. Well, that is exciting. Maybe I’ve seen you when my dad… uhh… my boyfriend… watches Match of the Day.’ (No wonder I’ve no idea who they are).

  ‘Maybe.’ We check out the dank cave that houses the exploded boiler. I try not to picture this lovely house as a football party pad. Hot-tubs, WAGS, gym, football pitch, nail salon. With enough room left over for Crystal’s very own live-in plastic surgeon.

  Upstairs, Crystal is nowhere to be seen. ‘There’s two more floors up above,’ I tell him, as we make our way back to the entrance hall. ‘Would you like to see more?’

  ‘Sure,’ he says with more enthusiasm than I had expected.

  We start up the stairs, but he pauses on the landing in front of the portrait of the lady in pink.

  ‘Wow,’ he says, ‘she’s something.’

  Renewed hope flickers in my mind. Maybe Mr Ronan Keene, Premiership Footballer, is not an entirely lost cause.

  ‘Yes she is.’ I say. ‘I love the way she looks like she has a secret.’

  An annoyed female voice filters up the stairs. ‘Ronan, can we go? I want to buy some flowers for Mummy.’

  ‘In a few minutes,’ he shouts. ‘Okay,’ he says to me. ‘You heard that – I’ve got to leave soon. So, let’s see the bedrooms. I assume they’re all en-suite?’

  We move swiftly back in time through the bedrooms – some 70s decor, some 1950s, some 1930s or earlier. Although the proportions are lovely, I fear that the potential is lost on Ronan Keene. However, when we arrive back at the landing, I have a sudden flash of inspiration.

  ‘I know you need to go,’ I say, ‘but there’s one more room I want to show you – upstairs at the very top. I think it would make a great home cinema.’

  He immediately looks interested. ‘Okay, let’s see it.’

  I take him up to the cavernous attic room with the round window in the pitch of the eaves. ‘You could use this room for just about anything,’ I suggest. ‘A cinema, snooker room, a gym – or a pink marble Turkish bath.’