‘Horseradish,’ he says. ‘Delicious.’
The waiter looks confused. Cee has her eyes closed. Clara sits back in her chair, defeated. She was always getting into scrapes, Cee constantly having to peel her off the floors of house parties or hospital wards when they were younger. Right now, Clara looks as small as she did back then. Cee opens her eyes, snaps into older-sister mode. She changes the subject, leads their mother down a different path.
‘I should have cooked,’ she says to Kitty, prodding an anaemic-looking roast potato. ‘I wish you’d let me cook.’
‘Don’t frown,’ Kitty replies. ‘It’s not attractive.’
And so they eat in silence, Clara’s eyes trained on the door, Seb staring around the table like a deer in headlights, or a lamb on its way to the slaughter, or whatever metaphor Clara might use for an unprepared boyfriend being blooded into the brutal sport of a Cowan family lunch.
a smoker
He’s lighting up on the pavement opposite the pub when he sees the family leave.
First, an older woman, thin and cruel-looking, trailed by her adult offspring and their hangers-on. She doesn’t even glance behind her as she heads for the car. A clean-cut, apologetic-looking young man holds the rear door for her, then turns and waves timidly to the rest of the group before getting into the driver’s seat. A son-in-law, no doubt. That leaves three blond siblings and a Mediterranean-looking bloke. The eldest daughter leaves first, pursing her lips and nodding her head with averted eyes, as if cracking a smile might be a sign of weakness. A quick kiss on her sister’s cheek, then she’s getting into the passenger seat. The youngest stands with his hands in his long sleeves. He and his remaining sister look like they want to say something to one another, but it’s starting to rain, and the mother is calling impatiently from the car, so they almost smile, and she almost takes hold of his arm, but she doesn’t quite have the time to embrace him before he’s getting in the car, too.
Her family drives away, and one sister is left, her partnerlingering awkwardly behind her. The encounter seems to have raised her hackles, and the way in which the woman holds herself makes the smoker want to rub his own taut neck. He takes a drag of his cigarette. The woman opposite has her fists clenched, and it isn’t hard to tell what she’s saying, even from this distance. That’s it, she’s saying. I’m done, she’s saying. Never again. She looks like she might scream.
But as she turns, her boyfriend is already stepping towards her, already enclosing her in his arms. She resists at first. Then she gives way, relaxing into him, her legs buckling, her cheek pressed firmly into his chest. A cloud of smoke dissipates. He holds her for a long time, and her breathing slows, and the palpable way in which she loosens is like a break in the clouds above.
an estate agent
Set within a prime location just a stone’s throw from a thriving retail hub, this charming period property boasts a private terrace for entertaining al fresco.
The flat is small, there’s no denying that. And the noise is, for want of a better word, deafening. It rattles the single-glazed windows as the woman runs her gaze up and down the lengths of the mouldy curtains.
‘These come with the property,’ the estate agent says, making to touch the curtains. He’s worried they’ll crumble beneath his fingertips, though, so his hand only hovers near them. ‘The wardrobes, too.’
He does not mention the fact that one of the wardrobes is missing a door handle, and the other, a door. He does not mention the stain, either, though the boyfriend seems to have spotted it, stooping slightly to avoid contact with the brown cloud that spreads from one corniced corner of the ceiling to another. He pokes at it, clearly encountering more give than he would have liked. They’re compromising, this couple. His beard says Bethnal Green. Her accent says Notting Hill.They’re meeting somewhere in the middle. The estate agent could imagine them like old sailors drawing with compasses on a map, looking for that one Venn diagram segment of south London where their preferences might actually overlap. The girlfriend runs her fingers up and down her boyfriend’s arm, up and down, up and down, softly grazing his tattooed skin.
‘Shall we look at the garden?’
Three pairs of doubtful eyes travel towards the French doors and, beyond them, a square metre of weed-infested patio.
A modern second-floor flat within a safe and secure building, this well-proportioned property benefits from contemporary features, bright interiors and a smart bathroom.
Did they really have to put ‘safe and secure’ on the listing? The man is holding his girlfriend, long arms wrapped around her from behind, but not in a protective way. It’s just that they seem like they always have to be touching, which is not exactly ideal for a flat with corridors as narrow as this. They waddle forwards as one, from a bedroom with bars on the windows to a bathroom with no windows at all. The atmosphere is somehow both humid and frigid, as if the room is inhabited by a sweaty ghost.
‘Is that a mushroom?’ the woman says, from between her boyfriend’s arms.
The estate agent regrets telling them that they could ask him anything.
A roomy ground-floor flat with generous living space throughout. Fall in love with the semi-open-plan kitchen, well-proportioned bedrooms and communal garden.
Shunt. Shunt. Shunt.
He throws himself shoulder-first and with full force into a front door, which, he tells the unimpressed couple behind him, sometimes sticks a little. In a gloomy living room, they find the current tenants sitting on the sofa. One of them is playing on a Nintendo Wii; the other is clipping his toenails.
‘Did you not…?’ the estate agent begins.
The toenail tenant shoots him a disinterested look. The boyfriend has to duck under the doorframe to enter the living room, while the girlfriend is already looking disappointedly from the sofa, to the hobs, to the double bed that’s been squeezed into the room beyond the opposite door.
‘It’s compact,’ says the estate agent. ‘But it’s got a kind of cosy charm, don’t you think?’
No one seems to think so. The girlfriend is staring at a shelf lined with empty lager bottles, while the boyfriend is staring at his girlfriend, as if trying to imagine her here. The estate agent is silently fixated on the toilet situation, on the fact that the only bathroom is a small en suite off the main bedroom. Does one of the tenants walk through the other’s bedroom every time he needs to go to the toilet? Even in the middle of the night? What if they have someone staying over? The estate agent looks at the Wii, the mounting pile of toenail clippings, and decides that this probably isn’t a problem.
Though in need of modernisation, this unique property boasts plenty of character and is within walking distance of local amenities. No deposit required.
‘What’s that smell?’
