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after all.
    Martin’s face brightened up at once and he led us into the front room, where there was a white leather three-piece suite, a bright rag rug – red, orange and purple – and a fire licking at some damp logs in the grate. I noticed a copy of Lancashire Life left out on the coffee table. Martin’s wife – presumably he had one – was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if she was waiting upstairs or if she’d gone out and just left him to it. More likely, she was simply at work. I pictured her as a receptionist at the medical practice in the village. Her blonde hair was pulled back and her fingernails painted with an efficient, pearly sheen.
    What Martin did was hard to figure. Whatever he did, the house was their unfinished project. We’d seen a few of those, had almost got used to staring at half-built dreams. ‘It’s a nice property,’ (never merely a house) the estate agent would say, but it was another empty nest, another gloomy mausoleum where another old couple had gradually slipped away from half-life to death.
    This house had stripped floors and big bay windows. High ceilings with plaster mouldings. Lots of light. They’d even tried to retain or replace the original thirties features: panes of stained glass above the windows and heavy brass door handles. The kitchen still had the original green-painted cabinets and a solid fuel Rayburn. It looked like a lot of work to get hot water. Everything there was original from the pantry with its slate shelves to the downstairs toilet with its Royal Worcester hand basin and grubby roller towel.
    Carol was looking pale and impatient by now. Martin led us upstairs, limping ahead. In the smallest bedroom was Disneyland wallpaper and a miniature chest of drawers. A giant purple tortoise made of stuffed fabric lay on the bed; the kind you keep your nightdress or pyjamas in. The other medium-sized bedroom was full of boxes of books. A computer was still switched on at the small desk where he’d been working before we knocked. There were a couple of badminton rackets and what looked like a wetsuit hanging out of a tea chest. In the main bedroom, the iron-framed bed was tightly made up under a pink tasselled coverlet. Apart from one pair of men’s black shoes, an alarm clock and a box of tissues on the bedside cabinet, it was empty. There were a couple of freestanding, oak-veneered wardrobes, depressingly like the ones my parents had. We didn’t pry inside. The beige carpet was shiny and felt too soft, oddly furtive beneath our feet. Martin moved us on quickly, muttering something about the light coming in each morning.
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It was when he led us through the back door that my heart sank. We’d hoped for some garden space, but apart from the strip of rockery that wrapped round the front of the house, creating a barrier from the road, there was only a yard. The space to build the house had been hewn from the hillside and a fifteen-foot cliff of cement wept water a few feet from the back door. Lined up against the wall were a series of wire cages and some bags of sawdust. He must have seen us exchanging glances.
    â€˜Andorra rabbits… and guinea pigs. We used to breed them for shows.’
    I smiled in what I hoped was a fascinated way. It would be good to get away without doing him too much damage. The look on Carol’s face said RATS.
    â€˜Blimey, you must have had quite a few!’
    â€˜Yes, my daughter loved them…’
    A little twist came to the corner of his mouth and an awkward silence dropped on us like a butterfly net on something rare and free. Rain still fell in a fine drizzle. Water rippled slantwise across the yard to the drain. It was bloody cold. I watched a slug gliding at the rim of the grate and remembered how they mated, hanging from a twisted rope of slime. The female bit off the male’s penis after copulation. Or tried to. Which was nice. Martin turned to leave the yard.