A Desirable Residence - By Madeleine Wickham Page 0,2

there; people with Jacuzzi bathrooms; conservatories . . .’ He looked at her expectantly. ‘I don’t suppose you’d consider installing a power shower? It might help attract buyers.’

‘Instead of dropping the price?’ said Liz, in slight relief. ‘Well, I don’t see why not.’

‘As well as dropping the price, I meant,’ said the estate agent, in a tone of almost amusement. It was that tone which suddenly touched her on the raw.

‘You want us to drop the price and install a new shower?’ She heard her voice screech; felt her face adopt the expression of outrage which she usually reserved for her most thoughtless pupils. ‘Do you realize,’ she added, slowly and clearly, as though to a class of sulky sixthformers, ‘that we are selling our house because we actually need the money? That we haven’t decided to go and live in a tiny poky flat because we want to, but because we have to?’ She could feel herself gathering momentum. ‘And you’re telling me that because you haven’t been able to sell our house, we’ve got to put in a new shower at a cost of goodness knows how much, and then we’ve got to drop the price by—what was it?—fifty thousand? Fifty thousand pounds! Do you have any idea what our mortgage is?’

‘Yes, well, it’s quite a common situation you’re in,’ the young man said quickly. ‘The majority of our clients have found themselves to be in a negative equity situation.’

‘Well, I’m afraid I don’t give a toss about your other clients! Why on earth should I care about them?’ She wouldn’t, Liz decided as she listened to her own voice crescendo, let Jonathan know that she had yelled at the estate agent. He would only get cross and worry. Perhaps even phone up to apologize, for heaven’s sake. A spurt of indignation at her husband’s humility fuelled Liz further. ‘We put our house on the market nearly a year ago,’ she shouted. ‘Do you realize that? If you’d sold it then, like you were supposed to, we wouldn’t be talking about new showers. We wouldn’t be lowering the price by such ludicrous amounts. We’d have paid off the mortgage, we’d be fine.’

‘Mrs Chambers, the property market—’

‘Sod the property market!’

‘Hear, hear!’ A rich, easy, expensive voice joined the ensemble. The estate agent started, forced a smile onto his face and swivelled in his chair. Liz, who had been about to continue, took a deep, gasping breath and looked round instead. Standing in the doorway of the office was a man in a tweed jacket, with dark brown eyes and crow’s-feet and an amused grin. As Liz watched, he took a couple of steps into the room and then leaned casually back against the door frame. He looked at ease; urbane and confident, unlike the young estate agent, who had begun twitchily rearranging the papers on his desk. The man in the tweed jacket ignored him.

‘Do carry on,’ he said to Liz, giving her a quizzical smile. ‘I didn’t want to stop you. You were saying something—about the property market?’

Jonathan Chambers was sitting by the window in the grim little office of the Silchester Tutorial College, going through the last year’s business accounts. Miss Hapland, the former owner of the tutorial college, had done the books herself for thirty years in a manner which had become more and more idiosyncratic as the years progressed. In the months since her death, a nephew had perfunctorily taken care of the business side of things until the place was sold, and now the books looked even more confused than before.

Jonathan frowned as he turned a page, and involuntarily wrinkled his nose at the rows of figures before him. It was a dull and wearisome job, this, which he had been tackling methodically at intervals since they had finally taken over the tutorial college that summer. He peered at the column headings and tried to ignore the odd ray of sunlight which played alluringly on the paper in front of him. This was the perfect afternoon for a walk or bicycle ride—and the temptation to give up and go outside for some fresh air was tremendous. But he had told Liz he was going to spend the day sorting things out, and it wouldn’t be fair to let her down. Not when she was out doing a day’s dreary shopping and tackling Witherstone’s about the house.

He paused in his thoughts, pen poised over a column of figures, and wondered how she was getting on.