Property 7
My partner reckoned my flat in Dartmouth Park, London NW5 must have had elastic walls, so much came out of it. In fact, its deep under-eaves cupboards housed boxes of books (copies of my own and a collection of books penned by friends), paintings I'd bought here and there at private views and charity shops and my collection of Art Deco pots.
The day I collected the keys to my neat detached house in a tiny cul-de-sac in UB10, which seemed like the back of beyond to someone used to being able to get to the West End of London by bus in half an hour, I decided to explore. I crossed the front lawn and as I was about to walk up the side of the house, I noticed a black and white cat lying on the grass.
My boyfriend had two black and white cats at the time, called Bastard and Trollop. Tuxedo cats were my favourites. I stepped towards it and suddenly, my bloke grabbed my arm. "Leave it," he said. "Go back in the house."
Confused, I did as I was told. After a while, he came back in. "It was dead," he said. "I think it had been poisoned."
I gasped and tears sprang to my eyes. "I can't move in," I said. "I can't live here. A dead cat in the garden on my first day? It's a terrible omen." But it was too late. The removal van was just pulling up in the street.
It was the second time I had wanted to move out before I had even moved in. The last time was Property 3, the Belsize Park flat with the herd of elephants crashing around upstairs. So once again, I moved in with a heavy heart, feeling I had made a huge mistake.
There was nothing wrong with the house itself. It was a typical, solid 3-bed house built by local building firm W. E. Black. The room sizes were reasonable and the garden was manageable. I changed the brown swirly carpeting for equally ill-advised beige carpet with a navy pattern that looked like paw prints. It suited my animal-loving nature. But I couldn't get the image of that poor, dead cat out of my mind. It blighted the place for me. If only it had been there when I came to view the property, I would never have made the offer.
It wasn't just the cat that affected me, though. There was something deeply sad in the atmosphere of the house. Normally, I am quick to pick up on atmospheres but on my viewing, I had been distracted by my boyfriend's loud, cheerful conversation about local property with the estate agent. They were saying things like, "Houses coming up for sale in this street are as rare as hens' teeth," so I thought I was on to a good thing and my intuitive antennae were switched off.
I owned that house for a year and only ever spent one night in it, as the boyfriend lived just around the corner and he had the cats and the fabulous kitchen and we were still in the throws of passion. And that one night was because we'd had a row. But I had turned one room into a study and had a commission for a children's book, so I worked there every day. And every day without fail, I would burst into tears at some point, as the atmosphere got to me.
I had never lived in a small cul-de-sac before. It was twitching-curtain territory. No comings and goings went unnoticed. The couple opposite had a rocky marriage and the wife drank. Several times, there were screaming rows which ended with her running naked out of the house and hiding in the rhododendrons. God only knows what they had been doing before the argument started. Had she refused to put on the gimp mask?
On one memorable occasion, the husband was up a ladder, using a blow lamp to burn off the old paint on his garage. My boyfriend had just picked me up and we were sitting in the car, ready to leave, but found ourselves gazing open-mouthed in paralysed horror as sparks from the blow torch ignited the dust sheet he had placed on the ground and flames licked up the rungs and set his trouser bottoms on fire. We watched, still unable to move, as he performed a kind of war dance on the top step of the ladder, smacking his trouser legs with his hand. And then we laughed... and laughed.
Another day, I had been about to leave the house when I noticed a car parked by the fence with several bulky men in it. A closer inspection told me they were police officers in body armour - and then, when I noticed the weapons they were packing, I scuttled back indoors. I found out later that they were preparing to arrest someone in the next street who was apparently armed. It was very scary.
After a few months of unhappy living - I had no friends in the area and I felt cut-off and isolated, so far from the nearest station - I put the house on the market. First to view were the lovely Asian couple who ran the local post office. They liked the house but shook their heads over the garden. It was wedge shaped, wide at the front and tapering to a point at the end, and the wife told me that the shape was unlucky: it represented good luck and prosperity draining away.
At that point, my spirits were draining away, too. I thought I would be stuck with this unhappy home for ever. But eventually I sold it for the same amount I had paid for it. The costs of buying and selling meant I had lost money on property for the first time.
When I told my next-door neighbours that I was leaving, they asked why I was going so soon, only a year after I had moved in. I told them that I had felt miserable from Day One, and they fell silent for a moment. Then the wife told me the history of the house. Like them, the previous owners had moved in as soon as the houses were built. But both of them had met tragic ends. The husband had woken up one night, had a coughing fit and choked to death in the bedroom - the room I had only slept in once. The wife, distraught at the sudden death of her spouse, had fallen ill a year or so later with a particularly nasty and long-drawn-out form of cancer. She had passed away in the kitchen. No wonder there was a sad atmosphere.
I was so, so glad to leave that house - and even gladder to leave Hillingdon. It also meant leaving the boyfriend behind, though we would still continue to see each other. I was headed back to my old stomping ground of North London, to a tiny house at the foot of a steep road in Muswell Hill. I would be getting my old life back. Whoopee!
