The Girl Before

“That’s the last one.” The agent, whose name is Camilla, drums her fingers on the steering wheel of her Smart car. “So really, it’s time to make up our minds.”

I sigh. The flat we’ve just viewed, in a run-down mansion block off West End Lane, is the only one in my price range. And I’d just about persuaded myself it was all right—ignoring the peeling wallpaper, the faint smell of someone else’s cooking seeping up from the flat below, the poky bedroom and the mold spattered across the unventilated bathroom—until I’d heard a bell being rung nearby, an old-fashioned hand bell, and the place was suddenly filled with the noise of children. Going to the window, I found myself looking down at a school. I could see into a room being used by a toddler group, the windows hung with cutouts of paper bunnies and geese. Pain tugged at my insides.

“I think I’ll pass on this one,” I managed to say.

“Really?” Camilla seemed surprised. “Is it the school? The previous tenants said they rather liked the sound of children playing.”

“Though not so much they decided to stay.” I turned away. “Shall we go?”

Now Camilla leaves a long, tactical silence as she drives us back to her office. Eventually she says, “If nothing we saw today took your fancy, we might have to think about upping your budget.”

“Unfortunately, my budget can’t budge,” I say drily, looking out the window.

“Then you might have to be a bit less picky,” she says tartly.

“About that last one. There are…personal reasons why I can’t live next to a school. Not right now.”

I see her eyes going to my stomach, still a little flabby from my pregnancy, and her eyes widen as she makes the connection. “Oh,” she says. Camilla isn’t quite as dim as she looks, for which I’m grateful. She doesn’t need me to spell it out.

Instead, she seems to come to a decision.

“Look, there is one other place. We’re not really meant to show it without the owner’s express permission, but occasionally we do anyway. It freaks some people out, but personally I think it’s amazing.”

“An amazing property on my budget? We’re not talking about a houseboat, are we?”

“God, no. Almost the opposite. A modern building in Hendon. A whole house—only one bedroom, but loads of space. The owner is the architect who built it. He’s actually really famous. Do you ever buy clothes at Wanderer?”

“Wanderer…” In my previous life, when I had money and a proper, well-paid job, I did sometimes go into the Wanderer shop on Bond Street, a terrifyingly minimalist space where a handful of eye-wateringly expensive dresses were laid out on thick stone slabs like sacrificial virgins, and the sales assistants dressed in black kimonos. “Occasionally. Why?”

“The Monkford Partnership designs all their stores. He’s what they call a techno-minimalist or something. Lots of hidden gadgetry, but otherwise everything’s completely bare.” She shoots me a look. “I should warn you, some people find his style a bit…austere.”

“I can cope with that.”

“And…”

“Yes?” I prompt, when she doesn’t go on.

“It’s not a straightforward landlord–tenant agreement,” she says hesitantly.

“Meaning?”

“I think,” she says, flicking down her indicator and moving into the left-hand lane, “we should take a look at the property first, see if you fall in love with it. Then I’ll explain the drawbacks.”

THEN: EMMA

Okay, so the house is extraordinary. Amazing, breathtaking, incredible. Words can’t do it justice.

The street outside had given no clue. Two rows of big, nondescript houses, with that familiar Victorian red-brick/sash-window combo you see all over north London, marched up the hill toward Cricklewood like a chain of figures cut from newspaper, each one an exact copy of the next. Only the front doors and the little colored windows above them were different.

At the end, on the corner, was a fence. Beyond it I could see a low, small construction, a compact cube of pale stone. A few horizontal slits of glass, scattered apparently at random, were the only indication that it really was a house and not some giant paperweight.

Wow, Simon says doubtfully. Is this really it?

Certainly is, the agent says cheerfully. One Folgate Street.

He takes us around the side, where a door is fitted into the wall, perfectly flush. There doesn’t seem to be a bell—in fact, I can’t see a handle or a letter box either; no nameplate, nothing to indicate human occupation at all. The agent pushes the door, which swings open.

Who lives here now? I ask.

No one at the moment, he says, standing aside for us to go in.