She picks up her phone and dials 101, bouncing through a series of call handlers and waiting to be connected to someone who can take the details.
While she’s stuck on hold, I go into the hall and call Jeremy Swann, the estate agent who handled the sale of this house, to ask whether he knows about any kind of CCTV system installed at the house or cameras in the garden.
“I believe there was a really old burglar alarm,” Jeremy says after a moment’s thought. It sounds like he’s driving. “But to the best of my knowledge it’s not worked for years. My recollection is that Mr. Hopkins let it lapse a long way back and it was never renewed. I’m not even sure the security company still exists. I’ll double-check for you, but I don’t recall any external cameras being on the fixtures and fittings list.”
Jeremy had been there for all three of our viewings at 91 Regency Place, quietly professional with a knowledgeable calm that inspired confidence. A contrast to the estate agency we’d used to sell our own house in Woodthorpe, particularly the junior staff sent to handle viewings—who were perfectly nice but often had no more idea about the selling points of the house than the average stranger off the street. Whereas Jeremy always seemed very well informed; he was a specialist who handled higher-end properties, most of them in The Park.
“Listen,” he says. “I’m actually in the area, just finished a viewing around the corner. I could pop in if you like? There’s some paperwork I was going to drop off anyway.”
His gleaming white Tesla rolls carefully onto the drive a couple of minutes later. He climbs from the driver’s seat and greets me with a wave and a smile, striding across the gravel in a darknavy three-piece suit. He’s a small, neat man, his dark hair cut short but nottooshort, always punctual and impeccably dressed.
He hands me a thick cream A4 envelope with “Welcome to Your New Home” in embossed gold lettering on the front, his estate agency’s discreet branding on the back. With his other hand, he proffers a bottle of Moët & Chandon champagne in a gift box. He reallywaskeen for us to use his agency in the future.
“To celebrate your arrival,” he says. “So how’s it all going, Adam?”
“Pretty hectic,” I say. “But we’re settling in. Actually, since you’re here, I wonder if I could ask you something else? When you draw up the floorplans for a new property you’re putting onto the market, who does that?”
“Typically that would be me.”
“And you calculate the square footage of each room?”
“With a laser measure.” He gestures vaguely at the house. “To be honest, I just hold it up and point, and it does all the rest. Calculates it automatically. I pass it on to Fliss in the office and she uploads it.”
“But those measurements wouldn’t include voids and storage spaces, rooms like that?”
“Not as a rule, only if they are potentially livable spaces accessible without a ladder. Although we’ll usually add the dimensions of cellars, outbuildings, and garages for completeness. It all has to be accurate for the Energy Performance Certificate.” He hesitates. “Is there a problem, Adam?”
“No, not at all. I’ve just discovered an extra bit of space next to one of the bedrooms. It’s not much, maybe an extra fifty square feet, but it definitely wasn’t on the plans on Rightmove.”
“Some of these older properties have all sorts of nooks and crannies,” he says, a wistful tone to his voice. “They can getoverlooked, particularly when you have a place that’s been extended or remodeled multiple times—things can sometimes get closed off and forgotten about. There are stories about old houses in the West Country that used to have secret chambers behind the fireplace so that when the Royal Navy came to press-gang the men into service on board warships, they’d have somewhere to hide.”
“A fair way from the sea here though, aren’t we?”
“But it wouldn’t be unheard of for some older parts of a property to be forgotten about. Particularly when a vendor is, shall we say, more elderly? Then other factors can come into play, of course.”
“Other factors?”
“A vendor’s… recollection,” he says carefully. “If you’re talking about a vendor who’s lived in a property for twenty, thirty, forty years, and that person is in their eighties or nineties when they move, you can see how it might happen.”
“Of course.”
“Things can get missed, forgotten about, or information not passed on to relatives. I had a client once who found six cases of wine hidden behind a false panel in a walk-in wardrobe, a few weeks after he moved in. Good stuff it was, too. The story was that the previous owner hadn’t wanted to declare them in his divorce settlement, but then he’d forgotten all about them.”
“And legally, that wine belonged to the new owner?”
He makes a non-committal sound in his throat. “Hmmm. It’s a gray area. To be honest, most of the time the things that get left behind,nobodywants. It’s old mattresses and broken garden furniture, or an old sofa the vendors can’t be bothered to dismantle. Then it becomes about whose responsibility it is, and you can get into legal wrangling and all sorts.”
“How about if something hadn’t been touched in twenty-plus years?”
“I suppose… if you’re going back to the owner before, then yes, it would probably default to the current owner due to passage of time.”
“The house remembers, even if the owner forgets?”
He’s silent for a moment. “That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.”
“The last owner, do you think he might know about this extra bedroom space?”
“Mr. Hopkins?” Jeremy sounds doubtful. “His son told me he found the stairs very difficult, hence the ground floor study at the back being converted into a little bedroom. He had a cleaner who came in once a week, but between you and me, I don’t think he’d been upstairs for years.”
