PROPERTY 6
I moved into my capacious duplex in the summer of 1992. As I was within walking distance of two Northern line stations, I had an easy commute to Waterloo. I was editing extra fiction specials, earning enough for many jolly nights out in restaurants and wine bars and lots of holidays in Greece and Turkey.
Then, in 1994, I was made redundant when my title was sold off to another publisher, who gave his wife my job! I received a redundancy payout but, instead of going on a prolonged holiday, which is what I felt like doing after the stress of having my staff of 14 cut to five and having to come in on Sundays to read through heaps of submissions, I started applying for jobs and casting around for freelance work. I had a £60,000 mortgage to support, after all.
Almost immediately, I seemed to strike lucky when a Swedish publisher of a similar magazine asked me to put together a monthly short story magazine similar to the one I used to edit. The budget was tight and my fee was £2000 per issue. To save money, I wrote a lot of the stories myself but I also bought some from writers I knew. I sent off the first issue and waited for my payment to arrive. It never did. I rang, I wrote, but I could never get to speak to the man who had commissioned me. I consulted a solicitor who told me to put it down to experience as the costs of retrieving the money from Sweden would come to far more than what I was owed.
I was left way out of pocket as I still had to pay the writers. I had done a month's hard work for nothing - and there was nothing else in the pipeline. The redundancy money was slowly being spent... and then a miracle occurred. A publisher I had freelanced for in the past commissioned me to write four racy 85,000 word books at a flat fee of £4,500 each. I had a year to do them in. How I enjoyed that year!
Once the noisy bastard downstairs who left his telly blaring to keep his dog company had moved out, after giving me a year of hell when I had to sleep upstairs on the sofa, as the main bedroom downstairs was over his lounge, I had four wonderful years in that flat. It was in Croftdown Road, NW5, right next to Hampstead Heath, great for daily walks.
Of course, being so close to the Heath had its downside, too, in that friends would often drop in en route, oblivious to the fact that I was trying to keep office hours. It's the curse of being a freelancer. People think, 'She's bound to be at home, I'll just call in for a cuppa.' They never think I might be working to a 5 pm copy deadline, or right in the middle of a dramatic section of Chapter 15!
When I bought the flat, the vendor, who was a solicitor, told me that if I paid £3000 over what I had offered, he would throw in a share of the freehold. What I didn't bargain for was that every time anything needed doing, such as redecoration of the common parts, the onus was on me to organise it as he had moved out of London whilst hanging onto his part of the freehold.
Two of the flats were rented out, as the owners lived in Athens and New York respectively. You can imagine the difficulties involved in choosing a new stair carpet and deciding what shade to paint the walls and the woodwork whilst pinging emails back and forth. Even more difficult was extracting their share of the cash. Yet, when the tiles on the flat roof started to disintegrate, making me itch every time I sat up there, nobody would pay a share of the £3000 cost as they said only I had use of it as a roof terrace, so why should they pay? My wail of, 'Hey, the roof covers all of us, doesn't it?' cut no ice. I had to fork out.
When my mother passed away unexpectedly in 1996, I began to think of moving again. It's a habit of mine. If something awful happens while I am living somewhere, I instantly want a change of scene. Meeting a man from Hillingdon, who told me I could afford a wonderful detached house near him for less than I would get for the sale of the flat, was a catalyst.
I sold up - and later had a phone call from the woman who had bought the flat, telling me that my share of the freehold had never existed. The paperwork had never been signed. I had done all that organising for nothing and been conned out of the three grand for my supposed SOF. My lousy property luck had struck again!
