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mentioning these things, but I felt that someone had to be realistic.
    ‘Perhaps the damp and this are the worst faults,’ Midge remarked hopefully.
    I shrugged. We’d only seen the ground floor so far.
    One of those deep earthenware sinks stood under the window we’d peeked through earlier, the kind you could bath a Shetland pony in, and I wandered over to it and turned on the hot and cold taps. Both ran brown after several clunks from the pipes and sudden spats from the taps themselves. I let them run for a minute or so and the colour hardly changed at all.
    ‘Tank’s probably rusted through,’ I commented. ‘Or maybe that’s how they drink it around here.’ I was beginning to feel gloomy.
    Meanwhile, Midge was opening cupboards and drawers; the wooden units looking pretty early fare but none the less not in bad shape. I investigated another door, expecting to find a larder or broom-cupboard, but instead discovering a toilet with a high-mounted chain flush.
    ‘Least we don’t have to use a shed in the garden.’ I pulled the rusty chain and the system groaned loudly, the bowl flooding instantly with the not-unexpected brown water which seemed to take an unreasonably long time to gurgle away, burping and hiccuping as it went. ‘I think the leaflet said cesspit drainage,’ I said as I closed the door again. ‘I wonder when it was last emptied.’ I was wondering if it had ever been emptied.
    Midge was standing in the middle of the kitchen and I could tell that nothing I’d said so far had deterred her.
    ‘Can we go upstairs now?’ she asked.
    ‘I can’t wait,’ I answered.
    ‘Keep an open mind, Mike.’
    ‘Will you do the same?’
    There was no annoyance in our words; we trusted in one another too much for that kind of pettiness. I suppose you could say we were tinged with apprehension, both of us fearing that either one would be disappointed. I knew Midge really wanted me to want this place and I would have done almost anything to please her, but we were not just talking about a financial wrench here, but a social one too. If it was going to work, it had to be right .
    We mounted the stairs to the next level holding hands, Midge leading as if drawing me up with her.
    The stairway doubled round into a mini-hallway, the outside door I had first tried to our right and the doorway leading into the round room to our left. Sunshine hit us like a softly exploding shell and for an incredible instant I felt as though I were floating. So strong was the sensation that I became giddy, and only Midge clutching my hand and pulling firmly saved me from toppling back down the stairway. I blinked rapidly, blinded by the sudden dazzle, and Midge’s sweet image swept in and out before me as though I were in a dreamy, slow faint. I remember concern in her light eyes, yet warmth also, a confidence that encompassed and reassured me. My vision cleared and I was vaguely aware that although no more than a second or two had passed, a vast expanse of time had swayed before me.
    I found myself in the round room, although I couldn’t remember having entered. The sun blazed outside and the landscape through the large windows looked microcosmically clear, as though every leaf could be seen singly, every grass blade viewed as a separate entity. The sky around was of the cleanest, purest blue I had ever witnessed. Mistakenly, I thought I understood that abrupt and unnatural lucidity. I’d heard that the effects of certain drugs could spring back at you when you least expected it, even years after their original use, and I got no pleasure from that notion, only a withering sense of shame. I assumed that the sudden change from cool shade into dazzling light had triggered off lingering chemicals in my mind – strobe lighting can sometimes do the same thing – taking me on a short and confusing trip. That’s what I thought then, and I’m still not discounting that possibility.
    My eyes quickly refocused (perhaps it would be more