The Girl Before

Sometimes I pour myself a glass of wine and simply walk around, touching things, acclimating myself to the cool, expensive textures, adjusting the precise position of a chair or vase. Of course I was already familiar with that saying by Mies van der Rohe, Less is more, but I hadn’t appreciated before just how sensual less could be, how rich and voluptuous. The few pieces of furniture are design classics: Hans Wegner dining chairs in pale oak, white Nicolle stools, a sleek Lissoni sofa. And the house comes with a number of carefully curated but luxurious lesser props—thick white towels, bedsheets made of high-thread-count linen, handblown wineglasses with thermometer-thin stems. Every touch is a small surprise, a quiet appreciation of quality.

I feel like a character in a movie. Amid so much good taste the house somehow makes me walk more elegantly, stand in a more considered way, place myself within each vista for maximum effect. There’s no one to see me, of course, but One Folgate Street itself seems almost to become my audience, filling the sparse spaces with quiet, cinematic scores from Housekeeper’s automated playlist.

Your application is approved. That was all the email said. I’d been reading bad news into the fact the meeting was so short, but it seems Edward Monkford is inclined to brevity in all things. And I’m sure I wasn’t imagining that unspoken undercurrent, that tiny jolt you get when an attraction is reciprocated. Well, he knows where I am, I think. The waiting itself feels charged and sensual, a kind of silent foreplay.

And then there are the flowers. On the day I moved in, they were lying on the doorstep—a huge bouquet of lilies, still wrapped in plastic. No note, nothing to indicate whether this is something he does for all his new tenants or a special gesture just for me. I send him a polite thank-you anyway.

Two days later, another, identical bouquet arrives. And after a week, a third—exactly the same arrangement of lilies, left in exactly the same place beside the front door. Every corner of One Folgate Street is filled with their heavy scent. But really, this is getting to be too much.

When I find the fourth identical bouquet, I decide enough’s enough. There’s a florist’s name printed on the cellophane wrapper. I call them and ask if it’s possible to change the order for something else.

The woman on the other end comes back sounding puzzled. “I can’t find any order for One Folgate Street.”

“It may be under Edward Monkford? Or the Monkford Partnership?”

“There’s nothing like that. Nothing in your area, in fact. We’re based in Hammersmith—we wouldn’t deliver so far north.”

“I see,” I say, perplexed.

Next day, when yet more lilies arrive, I pick them up, intending to throw them in the bin.

And that’s when I see it—a card, the first time one’s been left, on which someone has written:

Emma, I will love you forever. Sleep well, my darling.

THEN: EMMA

It’s just as wonderful as we hoped. Well, as I hoped. Simon goes along with everything but I can tell he still has reservations. Or perhaps he doesn’t like feeling beholden to the architect for letting us live here cheap.

But even Simon is pretty amazed by a showerhead the size of a dinner plate that simply turns itself on when you open the cubicle door, that identifies each of us from the waterproof bracelet we’ve each been given to wear, and remembers the different water temperatures we like. We wake up on our first morning with the light in the bedroom slowly fading up—an electronic sunrise, the street noises muffled to silence by the thick walls and the glass—and I realize I’ve had my best night’s sleep in years.

Unpacking, of course, takes no time at all. One Folgate Street already has lots of nice things, so our old stuff simply joins The Collection in storage.

Sometimes I just sit on the stairs with a mug of coffee, my knees tucked under my chin, drinking in how nice it all is. Don’t spill the coffee, babe, Simon calls when he sees me. It’s become a standing joke. We’ve decided it must be because I spilled the coffee that we got the house.

We don’t ever mention Monkford calling Simon a prick, or Simon’s non-reaction.

Happy? Simon asks, coming to sit next to me on the stairs.

Happy, I agree. Buuuut…

You want to move out, he goes. Had enough already. I knew it.

It’s my birthday next week.

Is it, babe? I hadn’t remembered.

He’s joking, of course. Simon always goes way over the top for things like Valentine’s and my birthday.

Why don’t we invite a few people over?

A party, you mean?

I nod. On Saturday.

Simon looks worried. Are we even allowed parties here?

It won’t get messy, I say. Not like last time.

I say this because the last time we threw a party, three separate neighbors called the police.

Well, okay then, he says doubtfully. Saturday it is.

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