30. Which statement best describes your most recent personal relationship?
❍ More like friends than lovers
❍ Easy and comfortable
❍ Soulful and intense
❍ Tempestuous and explosive
❍ Perfect but short-lived
The questions on the application form seem to get odder and odder. To begin with I try to give each one careful consideration, but there are so many that by the end I’m hardly even thinking about my answers, I’m just dashing them off on instinct.
They want three recent photographs. I choose one taken at a friend’s wedding, a selfie of me and Mia climbing Snowdon a couple of years back, and a formal portrait I had done for work. And then it’s done. I write a covering letter, nothing over-the-top, just a polite note emphasizing how much I like One Folgate Street and how I will strive to live there with the integrity it deserves. Even though it’s just a few lines, I redraft it half a dozen times before I’m happy with it. The agent said not to get my hopes up, that most applicants never get past this stage, but I go to bed really hoping I will. A new beginning. A fresh start. And as I drift off to sleep another word floats into my brain as well. A rebirth.