9
It was almost impossible for Toby to ascertain what all the disparate members of his household were up to at any given point of the day, so finding a moment when the house was empty so he could invite an estate agent in for a valuation was a challenge.
But a few days after his father’s letter arrived in the post he found himself unexpectedly in possession of the knowledge that Ruby was at rehearsals, Joanne and Con were at work and Melinda was ensconced in a salon in Crouch End having her highlights done.
The agent who arrived at his house five minutes later was called Walter. He had a moustache. ‘Well, I must say that this is a very exciting opportunity,’ were his first words upon entering the house and shaking Toby’s hand. ‘It’s not often that a property like this comes on to the market.’ He wiped a slick of sweat off his forehead with the back of a hairy hand and wrote something in an A5 notebook. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, gazing round the entrance hall. ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes. Quite magnificent. So, you are the owner, Mr Dobbs?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And you’ve owned the house for how long?’
‘Fifteen years. Almost.’ Toby gulped. The combination of Walter’s suit, moustache and notebook made him feel like he was being interrogated by a detective
from a 1970s TV drama.
Walter nodded approvingly.
‘I must warn you,’ said Toby, sensing that Walter was getting too excited, too soon, ‘I haven’t maintained the house particularly well. It’s in need of a fair bit of TLC.’
‘Ah, well, let’s see it, then.’
Toby led him through the house. Due to the short notice, he hadn’t had a chance to tidy or clean, and random items were strewn carelessly about the place: shoes, mugs, papers, hairbrushes, empty jiffy bags, CDs, old toast, a plant that was halfway through being re-potted on a sheet of newspaper on the dining-room table, the combined detritus of five people’s separate existences.
‘It’s a bit messy, I’m afraid. I live with quite a few people and they’re all out.’
‘Oh, so you don’t live alone?’
‘No. I live with some friends.’
‘I see. No family, children?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘just us grown-ups.’ He laughed nervously.
Walter didn’t say much as they moved round the house, just scratched notes into his notebook and made the occasional approving noise. Toby felt guilty as he opened the doors of his tenants’ rooms for Walter to peruse. He never, under any circumstances, went into his tenants’ rooms. He tried his hardest not to look at anything.
Ruby’s room, predictably, was the messiest. The windows were hung with silky lace-trimmed shawls and dusty strings of fairy lights. The floor was covered in clothes, books and CDs. Her bed was unmade and overloaded with cushions and discarded underwear. A full ashtray sat on her dressing table, surrounded by scruffy cosmetics and piles of jewellery. It looked like the bedroom of a student, of someone who’d just left home and didn’t know how to look after themselves. It smelled of forgotten sex and cigarettes.
Con and Melinda’s room was bare and minimal. Melinda’s bed was made with a neat crisp duvet and two fat pillows; Con’s mattress on the floor was unmade and messy. A wooden panel to the left of the window had been decorated with the word ‘Clarabel’ and a small black painting of a pretty girl wearing a hat and smoking a cigarette. Clarabel was a manic-depressive performance artist who’d lived here for six months in 1996 and left to marry a Russian gymnast and move to St Petersburg. It was strange to see her avant-garde and mildly disturbing self-portrait staring out at him from the midst of Con and Melinda’s bland possessions.
‘How many bathrooms do you have?’ said Walter, heading towards Joanne’s room.
‘Two,’ said Toby. ‘One on each floor.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Any en suite?’
‘No. I’m afraid not.’
Toby pushed down on the handle to Joanne’s door and realized with some surprise that it was locked. ‘Ah,’ he said, turning to face Walter. ‘Erm, it seems it’s locked.’
Walter nodded.
‘Joanne – very private girl,’ Toby offered, pointlessly.
Upstairs, Toby showed Walter his own overstuffed room and Gus’s garishly decorated room, apologizing for the smell of elderly cat and explaining that the cat’s owner had recently passed away. By the time he led Walter into the back garden and noticed for the first time the pile of compost that had been sitting on the lawn since the end of last summer and the weeds sprouting forth from every conceivable – and inconceivable – crack and crevice and the old bicycle tyres, the rusty treadmill and the aged fridge stained an unappetizing brown, Toby was feeling thoroughly depressed. There was so much to apologize for, so much to excuse. He couldn’t imagine that Walter would be prepared to put his house on the market for fifty pounds, let alone five hundred thousand pounds.
He offered him a cup of tea and sat down with him at the kitchen table.
‘Well,’ began Walter, ‘it’s a beautiful house.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Oh, undoubtedly. But, as you say, there are some maintenance issues. Not to mention some decorative issues and some lifestyle issues.’
‘Lifestyle?’
‘Yes. Because here’s the bottom line. I could put this property on the market for you tomorrow, as it is, and probably, if we could find a buyer or, more likely, a developer prepared to put in the work, to see beyond the aesthetic problems, we would probably be looking at something in the region of seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’
Toby stopped breathing.
‘But. If you were able to reconfigure the house, to replace the kitchen, the bathrooms, do some basic work in the garden and, more importantly, remove your house-mates and give the place the feel of a proper family home, we could be asking for considerably more.’
‘How much more?’
‘Oh, I would say that this house, redecorated, modernized, made fit for a family to move straight into, I could put it on the market for around nine hundred thousand pounds. Maybe even a million.’
‘No?’ Toby blinked. ‘Surely not that much.’
‘Oh, yes, definitely. Maybe more depending on the quality of the renovation.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Toby breathed in deeply and tugged at his sideburns.
‘This house is unique, Mr Dobbs. There’s nothing else like it in the area. People will pay a premium for unique.’
‘So, if I were to put it on the market now, what do you think would happen?’
‘I would expect to sell it to a developer. Maybe to be developed into two or three apartments. Or to a family with a fondness for home improvements.’
‘And if I were to make the improvements myself and evict my tenants … I mean, friends?’
‘Then you could command a much higher asking price and make a much bigger profit.’
‘And what would you do, if you were me?’
‘Well, if I had the cash at my disposal, I would go down the latter route. Most definitely.’
‘You would?’
Walter nodded, emphatically. ‘Without a doubt. But you’d need to get cracking on it. The market’s precarious right now. Get your tenants out, get your builders in, get the house on the market. Maximize your profit.’
‘Right,’ said Toby, staring through the kitchen window at the wilderness of the back garden and feeling a sense of unbridled panic galloping through his insides. ‘Right. Then, that’s what I’ll do.’
Toby did something he’d never done before after Walter left. He made a list.
Suddenly there was so much to consider, so much to do, and he thought that setting it down in writing might somehow make it easier to control.
Things To Do
1 Buy new sofas
2 Get hair cut
3 Buy new socks
4 Look at kitchens
5 Look at bathrooms
6 Get builder in to quote on works
7 Get plumber in to quote on works
8 Get decorator in to quote on works
10 Sell house
11 Move to Cornwall (?)
12 Get a publishing deal (?)
13 Get divorced
14 Stop being in love with Ruby
15 Find someone proper to be in love with
16 START LIVING