Rod Was Right
I was in the kitchen at 17 Geoffrey Road when I first felt that spine-tickling, butterfly-inducing conviction that we had found the house of our dreams. It was a Hello editor’s fantasy: roomy and minimalist, with shimmeringly polished units, funky potplants and strategically positioned bowls of pot pourri and tomatoes on the vine.
My heart began dancing to a peculiar beat - a way it never had in the twenty-four previous properties we had surveyed. This was The One! This was meant to be our home.
The owners, a couple of thirty-year-old accountants and would-be yuppies, were relocating to London for work purposes, and sought a speedy sale.
‘I want that house!’ I yelped to my fiancé, Rod, in the car afterwards, half choked with excitement and already naively visualising our furniture in those immaculate rooms.
‘Well I hate it! I mean - that kitchen! Have you ever seen anything so soulless? No food has ever been within a mile of that cooker.’
I sulked. I pleaded. For a week. But Rod was resolute. ‘Sorry, Dawn, I could never live there. There’s just something about that place....’
It was not to be after all. I would not get my way on this one.
Six months later, a speeding stolen van careered off Geoffrey Road and smashed through the french window of that airy kitchen I had so coveted. The new owners - mercifully out at the time of the crime - were quoted in the Sutton Observer as being ‘devastated.’ Like their home.
An eerie chill prickled my skin. ‘That could have been us,’ I kept numbly repeating, the newspaper fluttering between my clammy fingers.
I never even heard Rod come in - until he asked solicitously, ‘What is it, sweetheart?’ In reply, I laid the open news article before him, kissed him and said, ‘Thank you!’
© Leigh Rowley, 2002
Inspiration...
A homework piece again, another one for which magazine pictures were our inspiration.
We were asked to choose from a selection of ‘room’ shots in home & garden style publications, and write a 300-word story explaining what had happened in this room and what was about to happen outside the door! Our brief was to ‘avoid predictable situations or outcomes.’
My picture was of an ultra modern, gleamingly clean kitchen in a ‘yuppie’ type house, and my story inspired by the often heartbreaking search Nathan and I embarked on for a home of our own back in 2001. Inevitably, he might take to a particular property which I hated, or I might fall in love with one and impetuously visualise our furniture inside its rooms, only to have my hopes dashed by him hating it.
I expanded this idea into a tale with an intriguing twist, whereby the one partner is ultimately relieved that the other talks them out of what they initially imagine to be their fantasy home. Something horrible had to happen to this house to show Dawn that ‘Rod Was Right.’ But I made sure the new owners were out at the time of the horror crash - because I didn’t want to start killing characters off. That would have been too heavy within the confines of a 300-word story!