by Jared Shurin
The Cave House
Sturdy roof and walls. Open aspect to the front, interior fully open-plan. Easily maintained. Free food and water sources in the form of lichens, mosses and a nearby stream. A fixer-upper, ideal for an enthusiastic and motivated buyer.
Richard’s notes: It’s a cave. Literally a cave. And I don’t know what she wants, but to be honest I’ll stay in any godforsaken hole that pleases her as long as she can be happy with me and our child. She’s grown so much bigger over the past few months, and the baby will be here before we know it. Even she must see that modern people don’t raise babies in caves. A fucking cave! She can’t possibly want this.
Carolyn’s notes: This is better than the others. Fewer distractions. There are horses in the field nearby, which I like. One of my chapters is about Icelanders’ conversion to Christianity in the year 1000. They had to follow the religion, obviously, but they were allowed three exceptions. One was the eating of horsemeat – luckily for those horses, we’re not Icelandic. The other exceptions were ritual scarification carried out in secret, and bera út, abandoning a child in nature to die of exposure. I’ve tried to tell Richard so many times but he doesn’t think it’s interesting. Anyway, I don’t think this is the right house for us.
The Bird House
Spacious and airy, complete with open skylight. Fantastic views. Comes as seen, trunk and all attached branches included, as well as any feathers. Birds may return to lay eggs, meaning an environmentally friendly and organic food source for owners.
Richard’s notes: This is getting ridiculous. We’re eight months in and she’s enormous, almost past walking. How is she supposed to get up and down a tree? It would be impossible to attach any sort of decent ladder to the trunk, it’s so spindly. And that’s not even mentioning a child who’ll be crawling in no time – right off the branch, no doubt, and what then? And what are we supposed to do when it rains? I need to put my foot down. Or at least, I would if it wouldn’t snap the branch we’re standing on.
Carolyn’s notes: This is closer. This is better. I need light and air and space and solitude. I need to be able to move, to think. It’s not just for me, it’s not selfishness. We won’t get any more of my advance money until I finish the book. I have to support us all, and I can’t do that in the dark and the earth and the foetid heat. This is nice – open, airy. The twigs are a bit scratchy but there are plenty of feathers and they’re very soft. Of course they’re soft; that’s what people stuff duvets and cushions with. The baby will soon need a home that isn’t me, and here’s a literal feather bed. But still… We’re not quite there, but we’re near.
The Island House
This cosy and charming wooden structure is set on its own island. Structure in fact covers the whole island, which is compact and ideally situated in a peaceful and secluded part of the ocean. Perfect for the homeowner who likes their own space.
Richard’s notes: Look, I’ll admit that it sounded good when the estate agent said we could live on our own island. But when I imagined island life, I did imagine that I’d be able to actually walk on the island. You know what I’m picturing: a beach, some trees, maybe some green patches for chickens or sheep. This one is so tiny that you can’t leave the house without stepping into the ocean. It’s not even a calm, blue, tropical sort of ocean – it’s grey and choppy and every other wave crashes into the outer walls. I can’t believe this is what she wants. The baby is only a few weeks old, and as we’re looking around the house I swear she’s eyeing up places she could put him down.
Carolyn’s notes: What was my life before? What was it like to arrange my time the way I chose? What was it like to be able to hear my own breathing? Three weeks, and I can barely remember. It needs so much. It wants so much. I thought if I could go away, away, away – to an island, no one else there – then I could work. But there will never again be a place with no one else there. I could be on the other side of the world and I would still hear him cry for me in the night. His tiny mouth, never full, never silent.
The Glacier House
A spacious, secluded, one-of-a-kind property created from a much-sought-after glacier. Fully open-plan with far-reaching views to all sides: front, back, top, and bottom (when over deep water). Currently three bedrooms, though further rooms can be carved out.
Richard’s notes: Why on Earth would she even consider this? Dragging us up to the hinterlands, so far fucking north I feel like we’re about to tip off the map. I get that her book is on northern cultures, but come on! She wants to go from a northern country, to a further northern country, and then when she’s in that country she wants to go even further? I mean, Christ, why don’t we just move to the middle of the Arctic and call it quits? Not only is this house on the ice; it’s made of ice, with beds and sofas and tables and chairs made of ice. There are no walls. There is no roof. I can’t believe she’d even suggest bringing our child here. The wee guy will freeze to death in about three seconds. I’m freezing to death in about three seconds, and I’m a bloody adult, with enough body fat to shame a seal. I can’t live here. He can’t live here. God, I miss the mushrooms.
Carolyn’s notes: The first step I took into this house, I felt my mind flash clear. It’s perfection. I can work here, I know it. I love this glacier: the chill, the cleanse of it. We’re taking this house. It’s everything I need. I think of the horses, of the ritual scarring, of the cold. There are rules to the world, I know. But perhaps there can be exceptions. I don’t need three, only one. We’ll take it. Are you listening? I’ll take it.
Boys
Lizzie Hudson
When they first move into the house, it feels obvious to Laura that it loves her more than Tim. It wants her to be there and doesn’t mind that Tim is an addition. It’s as if the rooms warm themselves up slightly in the few seconds before she walks into them. The orange light that comes through the big front windows in the afternoon might shine right on her face and miss him entirely. Sometimes the water in the shower warms up straight away for her, but is a bit faulty for Tim.
Here, she thinks, she is the most beloved one. The house loves her more than it loves Tim and Tim loves her more than almost anything. She loves both the house and Tim, and in time she will get them to love each other. But she is, still, the most loved one. It feels like having two best friends, but knowing that she is both of their only best friend.
Before they moved here Laura and Tim lived at the adventure holiday camp where Tim worked. Tim instructs groups of children/families on tree climbing/zipwire courses. They had a flat in a small building where all the instructors lived with quite a lot of their girlfriends and even some children. It was in Kendal in the Lake District.
But because they were unhappy there, Laura started to act stressed and strange. Tim noticed this. So when Laura inherited some money because somebody died, they decided to buy a barn conversion closer to the town that they both came from. Tim would still work for the same company but, instead, he would commute and travel over the country to assist at different adventure holidays.
This is where they have come to live now.
Laura first sees the prince in a nearby stately home on a Saturday afternoon.
It said on the website that the stately home is an iconic 18th Century house with a notable art collection.
The biggest painting is entitled The Prince and his Retinue Hunt Game in the State Park. The prince is wearing a long ruffled frock coat and his hand is on the head of one of his pointy-faced hounds. A foxhound. The prince’s hair is brown. Laura does not have to read the plaque at the side of the painting to know that he is the one who is the prince, even with his whole hunting troupe around him. His face is horse-like and shimmery, regal.
In the gift shop they sell small fridge magnets with the picture of the prince and his retinue hunting game in the forest. Laura buys one and puts it on the fridge and uses it to hold up a photo of her and Tim from Prague last year.
When they get back from the stately home trip, the woo
d of the front door has swollen again so they can’t get it open for ages and have to kick it until it opens and then they have to arrange for someone to come round and shave the wood down so that it won’t happen again. Tim gets stressed about it and wonders if it was a bad idea to move somewhere where they have to arrange for everything to be fixed themselves instead of renting and just getting a landlord to do it. His voice goes annoying in that way she hates.
Laura is fairly sure she could have figured out how to do it by herself, but Tim is worried about what will happen when he has to go away with work and she’s there alone. They have an argument in which Tim implies Laura lives in some sort of fantasy/dreamworld and never has to deal with anything real/tangible and Laura implies Tim does not respect her independence and competency because he hates women. Laura sleeps in the spare room that night.
To be honest, Laura rarely feels hugely unhappy or frightened or stressed any more. If something bad happens it is like a soft weight that sort of rolls over her. She doesn’t cry unless she is really drunk. She has accepted that for life to be good and exciting sometimes, bad things have to happen too, to have something to compare the better things to so that happy and sad are contradictions of each other.
When Laura is in the spare room she is reminded of how she felt when she was a teenager. She used to imagine sex with men and she used to imagine saying this thing to them in a moment of climax. She used to think it was the most outrageous thing someone could say. She can’t even remember where she got it from now. It might have been from porn or from something someone at her school had heard in porn. She used to think these words almost every night.
Tim has to go away to Ireland with work. He is supervisor for a two week adventure holiday with a group of Scouts.
Laura has to get a taxi to Morrisons to do the food shop because Tim has taken the car.
On the third night that Tim is away the prince from the painting appears to her after she has got out of the bath.
Except, if she is honest, she wishes him to. It is not a huge surprise. If she is honest, she gets out of the bath and brushes her hair and puts on her pyjamas and waits for him in the dark. He takes her hand and squeezes it gently and she says, “I knew that you were going to come eventually,” and she feels his breath on her hair.
When they have sex there is a heaviness to his weightlessness on top of her body.
He is gone in the morning and when she wakes up she goes back into her and Tim’s room and puts on the TV and cries and goes back to sleep until eleven AM.
But Laura knows that the prince will come back the next night, and he does. He is just like a real boy/man. She wanders around the kitchen and spends the whole day making loads and loads of tiny biscuits and cakes and tarts. It feels as if her heart is in a perpetual state of clicking.
When the lights are out, she imagines him in full shape; she knows if she turns the light on that she might catch a glimpse of him and that he will disappear forever. So she never does.
Sometimes she will find him waiting for her in the hall, where he is slightly more visible when the sun is setting and comes musky through the windows, she can see the bits of dust it reveals settling on his shoulders. But in a way he is less present there. She feels like he is making himself appear for the sake of it, as if he thinks that she wants that. It is the spare room where he is really present.
By the time they have been fucking for a week she has already whispered the words that she used to imagine to him at least three times. Then one night, when they are holding hands in the dark and watching an episode of Masterchef on her laptop, she confesses to him that she has always wanted to say it but that she knew if she said it to Tim he would feel weird about it and other men she had slept with had known her friends, and if Laura’s friends found out she said that then they might think that she wasn’t a feminist anymore.
The prince tells Laura that she can always tell him anything that he wants and he won’t judge her or tell anyone.
In the morning he is always gone. It’s okay. Laura reads in bed then makes herself massive breakfasts in the kitchen, like fry-ups and batches of Welsh cakes and popovers with a lot of fruit on the side.
Sometimes she puts photos of her breakfast on Instagram and Tim likes them or comments saying he misses her, so Laura feels bad, but sometimes he forgets and then she feels angry again.
In the afternoons she goes out in town or to the cinema or to the garden centre. Sometimes she goes to look at the prince in the stately home, very much there with all of his dogs.
At night she makes big dinners and puts on the new Ed Sheeran album and pours herself a glass of wine. And this is the only time she feels a sense of fear, her heart going click, click, click. Some time around now she knows he has come into the room, feels a warmth and a fullness. Sometimes he will touch her slightly or move the door so she knows that he is there. She always sets two places at the table even though he doesn’t eat.
Then she gets the text from Tim. Tim is like: Back tomorrow I can’t wait to see you I’ve bought you a bracelet and two different types of wine. Laura has to tell the prince that she can’t sleep with him for a while and she promises to talk to him when she can but she just has to figure out what is going on because all of this is fucking with her head. He understands and to say goodbye he plays her a short song he has written on the mandolin.
She sleeps back in her and Tim’s room, cold and too spacious. When she wakes up, Tim is not next to her in the bed as she’d thought he might be.
She wonders if his flight might have been delayed, but when she looks out of the window, Tim’s Nissan is back on the drive. Tim is waiting at the kitchen table.
He says that he saw that guy through the window and at first he kicks off and nearly throws a cup of coffee and he even calls her a slut and a whore and then he says sorry and she says sorry and they both are on the floor on their knees kissing and crying. The day after Tim packs most of his stuff in a suitcase and goes to stay at his mum’s.
When Tim is gone, things between Laura and the prince change. She isn’t sure if it was the limitation of their time together that made her think she was in love with the prince instead of Tim, that its rushed and forbidden nature made it feel exciting and glamorous and that these endless days without talk make her feel tired and nervous, or just that now it has got boring and she has started to see him like all other boys.
The sex stops being good. He stops coming every night, and she doesn’t ask him why. If she is honest she feels a bit angry towards the prince that he would appear in physical form for Tim and not her, but she doesn’t bring this up.
One night she realises it has not just been an entire week since she saw the prince, but since she saw literally anyone. She goes to the shop to buy some wine and ready meals and feels surprised when the teenage boy in Morrisons appears to be able to see her.
That night when she is about to fall asleep she starts to hear the noises again.
When the door opens she thinks it might be the prince. But it is someone else, or something else. His body is heavier. When they have sex he grips her thigh harder and he does not like it when she talks to him. Laura is glad of that.
Now, it is somebody different almost every night. Laura is in full acceptance of the fleeting nature of their visits, has stopped trying to understand them like she used to but is used to their bad timekeeping, how some of them wake her up in her sleep with their elbows, some of them like her to make loud noises, some of them want her to whisper secrets after sex or put the radio on quietly. Often she recognises someone she has slept with before but more in a way that a bird in the garden might be the same bird that comes into the garden every day or it might be a completely different bird, and how that’s okay.
She always makes them dinner even though sometimes they don’t come until later.
Laura still finds herself saying that thing all the time. She isn’t even really into the stuff it connotes any more or doesn’t find it novel, she j
ust feels that she owes it to this thirteen year old version of herself who she thinks about quite often, who wouldn’t believe that Laura gets the opportunity to say it so often.
She often says things in other languages (she has started doing French online in the afternoons) or things in made-up languages. Sometimes she’ll experiment by saying what someone else has said to her before, often feeling like it would always make them come anyway; it wouldn’t matter if all that she was whispering in their ears was words and more words and more words.
Tim texts her to ask how she is. He asks if and when she is planning on moving out of the house or if she’d consider paying him rent seeing as she is living there for free and he isn’t living there at all. She doesn’t get it for almost a week because the signal is not good and also because she doesn’t charge or turn on her phone that much these days.
That night Laura cooks a huge dinner. She lights candles and sets out all the plates. She summons every ghost and makes them promise they will come with her wherever she goes even if it means having to leave here. Every single one of them says yes, of course, they will stay forever.
The Farm at the World’s End
Helen McClory
You are not here.
A cat yowls in the wildflowers, birds twitter, the sun rises and falls, then there is a dead mouse curled up grey in the road, and a dead dog grey also, and one morning after that the starlings lie around, a sprinkling of sharp angles and dusty feathers. I knew it would happen, eventually. The birds begin to fall daily, amassing beneath the trees or under the eaves, going until there are no birds left alive. The radio no longer plays its terrible love songs. Softly I hear the insects at night talk to me about their cousins overseas, still healthy, a fecund lot clattering amongst glossy, riverine trees. There’s nothing coy about the insects; they make their desires quite apparent. At least they are still trying. They are in pieces but they do not stop singing. Perhaps they simply don’t know how to. I find cricket legs and wings all over, and collect them like charms to hang around my neck.
