The albino fox and me

PROPERTY 5

I answered an ad for houses in Crouch End for sale and it led to a bearded man with a plastered leg - not drunk, but broken! He had bought a piece of land off Haringey Park in Crouch End, N8 and built six houses. One was earmarked for him and the rest were for sale. I picked the one right at the end, with a rowan tree in the front garden and moved in as soon as the builders had left. The back garden was just bare earth but I looked forward to the challenge.

To go from a poky one-bed flat to a brand new three-bed house with its own car port and a utility room gave me a huge sense of freedom. I was literally dancing from room to room, crowing, "Mine, all mine!"

The tiled kitchen floor was a bit of a disaster. Two or three tiles soon developed cracks and of course anything you dropped, from an egg to a mug, promptly smashed. I was forever vacuuming up shards of glass and chunks of pottery and didn't dare walk around in bare feet in case I'd missed any.

When I moved in, the other houses were unoccupied. I was all alone in this small close with landscaped gardens in front of the houses. There was no street lighting and it was pitch dark at night. I used to leave the brightly lit street and dive into the darkness, running like hell for my front door, until the security light I'd had fitted over the car port came on and provided a blessed pool of light so I could see to get my key in the lock. But at night it was so quiet, you could, to quote a friend who stayed the night, 'hear the ants bonking at the bottom of the garden'.

I set to work creating a garden, but something kept digging a hole under the fence on one side. As fast as I blocked it up, it was dug out again. One Sunday afternoon I met the culprit. At first, I didn't know what kind of animal it was. It was curled up in the shrubbery at the front of the house like a large golden cat, but it had a big, bushy tail. I opened the front door and crept forwards. It didn't move. I thought it might be dead. Then it opened a golden eye, stood up and shook itself and I could see it was a fox, but I had never seen one that colour before. It was yellowish white, as if nicotine-stained.

It trotted right past me, squeezed under the side gate and I guessed from there, it went through the hole under the fence into one of the large, overgrown gardens at the back. I wish I had taken some photos of it. I saw it many times during the months I was in that house.

So, if it was such a peaceful, natural paradise, why did I leave? Blame the local council, who, a few months after I moved in, decided to house a problem family in a house that backed onto the close. They had seven feral brats, all boys aged from around 4 to 14 and they made my life hell. The parents would lock them out and they would come swarming over the fence, break branches off the trees, come into my garden and bash all my newly planted flowers to bits, moon in front of the windows, throw stuff, bang on the door and windows, any time from around 6.30 am on. I rang the police several times but they said they couldn't do anything unless they caught them at it, and of course the visitations and the damage were unpredictable and irregular.

I got so distressed that I started seeing a therapist to help me to cope. I was still the only person living in the close so I was a sitting duck. I loved that house. I had made it my home, filled it with lovely things, but I couldn't stay there. I couldn't relax as I never knew when the onslaught would commence. I couldn't play my piano or do any writing. I was shaking with nerves. I couldn't sleep. I cried all the time. Talk about a wreck!

I put the house up for sale and one couple seemed very interested but didn't make an offer. About ten months later, on a day when the mini marauders were thankfully nowhere in sight, they knocked on my door and asked if it was still for sale as they had just lost another house they were buying. I could have hugged and kissed them, I was so grateful. I just prayed they wouldn't want to come back for another look on a day when the kids were on the rampage.

The couple had nothing to sell so it all went through quickly. Three days after we exchanged contracts, a neighbour told me that the council had moved the problem family elsewhere. I could have stayed. I was heartbroken. But there was no going back.

This wasn't the end of my bad luck. I hadn't read the small print of my mortgage deal properly and wasn't aware that there was a penalty for paying it off early. Because I had had the mortgage for barely eighteen months, I had to pay almost £7,000 back to the Abbey National. I certainly didn't make a profit on that sale.