It was there from the beginning, the day they first saw the house. Eleanor noticed the smell first. It wasn’t unpleasant, just strong: the smell of age, of yellowing, of brown-grey, of damp. It was persistent – not the kind of smell you could get rid of or, she thought, get used to.
It was early July, a heatwave. Everything was bleached and parched; the whole city drooped. Eleanor’s face was pulp, her neck and kneecaps slick and slippery, as she stood in the hallway, trying to imagine it as hers.
In the photographs, the house had looked grand: a Victorian terrace, steps up to the front door, huge bay windows. Close to, it was shabby. Chunks of plaster had come away from the front windowsill, and moss was starting to grow underneath, as though it was decaying from the inside. Paint was peeling off the window frames. The front door was an unsettling shade of yellow.
The estate agent, Michael, showed them into the living room at the front of the house. The vast window, which had seemed so luxurious from the outside, now felt exposing, vertiginous: just a membrane between them and the street. There was a fireplace surrounded by dark green tiles with an electric heater jammed in its centre, and elaborate cornicing edged the ceiling. ‘Really nice period features here,’ Michael said and Eleanor could sense Richard’s excitement.
The walls were pea green and the carpet a dense red. The colours were dull yet insistent; murky and bright. She could see the paint puckering near the skirting boards, in stiff peaks like blown flowers. By the window, it had formed a clean slit, as if someone had dragged a knife down the wall. ‘Of course, the decor’s getting a bit tired,’ Michael said. ‘It could do with some TLC.’
The sofas were ancient and large, covered in faded pastel blankets made of thin, used felt. Double doors led through to a kitchen looking out on a bare lawn. Baby-blue cupboards with red plastic handles in the shape of crosses, which made Eleanor think of hospitals. A side table draped in lace. We’d need to strip it bare, she thought.
They proceeded through the house. The basement, empty now, had been converted for a lodger – a bedroom, living room and a shower room under the stairs. It looked hasty and cheap, as though the shower might come away from the wall. ‘Can you imagine converting this into a kitchen/dining room?’ Michael asked. Richard could. ‘I don’t know if you guys like entertaining but imagine knocking all this through, dinner parties looking out onto the garden . . .’
They moved back upstairs. A greying bathtub. Heavy curtains. Everything – beds, armchairs, banisters – weighed down with blankets and quilts. Eleanor imagined touching them; they would be clammy. Four bedrooms. ‘So, the vendors are a family, a couple with a little girl, no onward chain. They want to move really quickly on this one, which I’m guessing is going to be good for you guys too. You’ve got kids, right? Two girls, lovely – a bedroom each for you and your little ladies and then you’ve got a spare room, or a study . . .’
They were on the top floor. Eleanor began to feel slightly peculiar here – it was almost airless, as if they were too far from the central nervous system of the house. There was only one room he hadn’t shown them. Michael stopped with his hand on the door and said, ‘OK, so you’re gonna need to use your imagination with this one.’ He stumbled; there seemed to be a little resistance from somewhere and then the door gave and swung open too fast.
Inside, the walls were covered in writing – a child’s writing. The name ‘EMILY’ appeared again and again in capitals, sometimes very small, sometimes huge, covering almost all of the white. There were frantic scribbles – large clouds of line – and faces: dwindling to pointy chins with tiny dashlike mouths and enormous eyes.
Despite the blaze of black ink on the walls, the rest of the room was curiously still. The bedspread – a cheerless shade of pink – was smooth as glass. A collection of toys, which struck Eleanor as vaguely old-fashioned, was arranged in a neat pile on the pillows. There was no other furniture, only a leather suitcase in the corner of the room.
Richard laughed uneasily; Michael was embarrassed. ‘Yeah, so this isn’t quite . . .’ he attempted. ‘You know what some kids are like.’
‘This isn’t normal though,’ Eleanor said. ‘Why didn’t someone stop her?’
‘Well, the vendors are a bit . . .’ He stretched his mouth out into a triangle. ‘But all you need is a coat of paint and that room’s as good as new.’
*
They were silent in the car. Eleanor was anticipating the argument they were going to have. She felt helpless, defeated before they’d even begun. The four bedrooms, the outside space. The area, the schools. Transport links. It didn’t feel right. What does that even mean? There’s a housing crisis. Prices are rising every month, every week: they’re rising right now. I just didn’t feel comfortable there. We’re running out of time. The smell. The upstairs room! You have to look at the potential. We could make a fortune on that place. Acquisitive, greedy. Irrational.
She felt empty. They were on the move now, however much she wished they weren’t. The house they’d moved to after they got engaged, where they’d brought their children home from hospital, was no longer theirs. The moment they’d given notice, it had lurched into the unfamiliar. Its flaws and eccentricities became unbearable when there was no point fixing or tolerating them. She had never felt less welcome than in the house they had seen that afternoon, but she was unwelcome in her own home now. And she knew their resources were slowly depleting – time, energy, childcare, love.
It was only when they were getting ready for bed that it surfaced, vivid and sharp: an image of the kitchen sink, surrounded by perfectly clear, sterile metal. She tried to picture the bathroom and was certain it was the same: she could see unbroken plains of enamel, unpunctuated by signs of life.
‘Think about it, Richard, there was nothing: no washing-up liquid, no toothbrushes, no soap. It was empty.’
Richard threw his shirt on the chair in their bedroom. ‘They were probably just tidying up before the viewing. Shoved it all in a cupboard.’
‘I don’t think they live there any more.’
‘He said they did, didn’t he? Michael, I mean.’ Richard got into bed. ‘If anything, it was too lived-in.’
As she brushed her teeth, Eleanor thought of those blank surface and the deep, dark paint colours. The feeling of compression on the top floor; the writing on the wall. There was something not quite right, awry. She just didn’t know how to articulate it. By the time she came back in the bedroom, Richard had already turned out the light.