9
‘This property,’ said the woman, ‘will be snapped up.’ She clicked her fingers expertly. Her name was Melinda. She had vermilion nails, thick peppery-blonde hair and natty brown boots, whose heels tapped briskly over the bare boards.
Sandy looked noncommittal.
‘Prime location. Recently renovated.’ Her voice followed them from room to room. ‘Double glazing. Concierge. En-suite bathroom. New boiler. No chain.’
Each room was bare and echoey, every wall freshly painted white. Frieda stood by the window, gazing out on to the street. It was drizzling, and people passed below under their umbrellas.
‘Are you buying together?’ asked Melinda.
‘No,’ Sandy and Frieda replied simultaneously.
‘It’s just me,’ added Sandy.
She looked uncertain, not knowing how to read the situation. Frieda saw her eye dart to her wedding finger, bare of rings. ‘Well, it’s perfect for one person. Do you have any questions?’
‘I can’t think of any,’ said Sandy. He put his hand on the small of Frieda’s back. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was like a hotel room,’ he said, when they were out in the street. ‘Where next?’
Next was Hampstead, and tiny. The pictures on the website were misleading. It was a bijou first-floor flat cleverly carved out of an inadequate space. There was a miniature kitchen, like a boat’s galley, and a shower room scarcely large enough to hold the shower. The chandelier of coloured glass and the capacious leather sofa gave the living room a claustrophobic feel. The bedroom was painted red and one wall was lined with mirrors.
‘Horrible,’ said Sandy, when the agent left them alone.
‘Creepy,’ said Frieda.
‘And expensive.’
‘It’s Hampstead. Look, you can see the Heath from here.’
‘Yes. You don’t need to look like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Anxious.’
‘Was I looking anxious?’
‘Yes.’
‘I love you for coming back like this.’
‘But?’
‘But it feels as if I’m being given no choice.’
‘You mean that you don’t want my sudden return to force you into a commitment you might not want to make.’
She didn’t reply, just stared out over the green wilderness in the distance.
‘I know what I’m doing, Frieda. This is what I want. You’re as free as you ever were. But this was my wake-up call.’
‘But your job …’
‘It’s not a problem. There are openings here. What was I doing, living on the other side of the Atlantic from you? I realized what I always should have known – that there’s no point being with you if I’m away from you. After all –’
‘Done?’ asked the agent cheerily, coming into the room.
‘Yes.’
‘Any questions?’
‘No.’
The big basement flat in Bermondsey was well within Sandy’s budget and, what was more, it had a garden that was large by London standards, with a little patio and a murky pond at the far end where they spotted a single mottled goldfish. But it smelt damp; the ceilings were high and the rooms dark, cold and comfortless.
‘I like the brickwork,’ said Frieda, trying to be upbeat.
‘Yes.’
‘And there’s a fireplace you could open up.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘It needs work, of course.’
‘It’s not right.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I was sure the moment I walked through the door. You can weigh up all the pros and cons and practicalities, but first you have to fall in love.’
‘I agree.’
‘We did, didn’t we?’
‘Yes. We did.’ Frieda touched him briefly on the cheek. ‘I’ve been wondering. Where are you going to live while you’re looking?’
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to move in with you. I’ll stay with my sister and spend time with you when I can. I’m going to buy a place, get a new job, and return to the life I shouldn’t have left in the first place.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Where next?’
The flat in Clerkenwell was on the ground floor of a beautiful late-Georgian house. It was flanked by a few similar buildings, a fragment of a street that had otherwise long ago been bombed or bulldozed. As the young man showing them round explained, the owners had separated in the midst of renovating it. It felt as if they had just walked out, leaving their broken life behind them. Units were ripped from the kitchen floor; a partition wall had been half demolished; a cracked marble fireplace had been removed and was leaning against the wall. There were paint pots and brushes on a trestle table; a ladder in the middle of the living room; clothes spilling out of drawers in the bedroom; books in piles waiting to be claimed. But the rooms were large and light, with windows running almost to the floor and exposed beams. The back door led out to a tiny walled garden with a fig tree in the corner where the city suddenly felt miles away.
‘It was their project,’ said the agent, dubiously. ‘It’s got great potential.’
‘I can see that,’ said Frieda, half in love with the place.
‘For someone else,’ said Sandy, firmly. ‘It would take years, and it’s not what I want to be doing with my time.’
‘What do you want to be doing with your time?’ asked Frieda, a little later, sitting in a café a few streets away, eating a hot buttered teacake and looking at the increasing rain outside, the leaves blown past the window like yellow rags.
‘Not plastering walls.’
‘Do you know how to plaster walls?’
‘I want to spend time with you.’
‘I suppose we could plaster the walls together,’ she said doubtfully.
‘No. Other things need our attention.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like you, Frieda.’
She winced. ‘That makes me sound like an emergency.’
They walked to the next property, which was between King’s Cross and Islington. Although it was only mid-afternoon, the light was beginning to fail. There were still weeks to go before the shortest day of the year, and Frieda thought of her own house waiting for her, the shutters she would close against the dying day and the fire she would light. They passed a busker, his hair wet and an open violin case containing just a few coins on the ground beside him. He wasn’t playing anything, but as they approached he passed his bow across the strings half-heartedly. Frieda threw in several more coins and he gave a small salute.
The property they were viewing – they’d unconsciously started to adopt estate-agent vocabulary – was tall and narrow, a green front door and steep stairs with a worn carpet. The flat was on the two top floors. The agent fumbled with the keys to open the door and Frieda and Sandy walked swiftly through the rooms; the owners would be coming back in a quarter of an hour and, anyway, they’d seen too much of other people’s homes for one day. There was a living room with two big windows, a narrow kitchen leading off it. A study, just big enough for a desk and chair, that looked out over someone else’s wet garden with a silver birch tree and a green bench in it. And upstairs, a bedroom with a roof terrace. Sandy and Frieda pushed open the warped door and stepped out on to it, the rain blowing in gusts against their faces. They gazed out across rooftops, cranes and spires, the glittering lights of the great city dissolving into a streaming grey sky.
‘That’s St Pancras.’ Frieda pointed.
‘This will do just fine,’ said Sandy. ‘We can drink coffee up here in the mornings. Now let’s go home.’