her hand. She wore a ring on the third finger of her right hand (a solitaire diamond set in platinum) and a fine chain round her neck, but no other jewellery. She wore good perfume. Nathan thought of a department store.
He followed her through the back of the office, past the tiny, rather grubby kitchen where his tea had been made, and through a rear door that opened on to a muddy yard in which were parked a number of cars. Holly skipped along the edges of shallow puddles, making a disgusted face, saying, 'Icf'
Then she unlocked a black Volkswagen Golf and sat at the wheel.
Nathan buckled himself in the front passenger seat, saying, 'Nice car.'
Holly was looking over her shoulder, reversing into the road.
Concentrating, she said, 'It's a bit of an estate agent's car, really.'
'Isn't that what you are?'
With a few aggressive manoeuvres, passing the wheel through her hands like a rally driver, she nudged and lurched and then sped into the traffic. She held up a practised, dismissively regal hand to thank the van driver who'd been forced on pain of sudden death to let her in.
She turned on the radio. Nathan seldom listened to the radio any more - being able to imagine the psychopathology of the DJ always spoiled it for him. Then Holly's mobile phone went and she took the call - which consisted mainly of her saying: Yes. Yes. When? Not really.
Okay. Well, see if you can - while driving with one hand as speedily as the laws of physics, rather than the laws of the land, permitted.
Exactly as the details suggested, the first house fronted on to a 'quiet, tree-lined street'. But the details had neglected to mention that it stood next to an electricity substation that hummed in a feline and sinister fashion. Its garden backed, via a decrepit wooden fence, directly on to a railway line.
Holly led him through the front door. The house was dark. There was darkness at the top of the stairs, and darkness at the end of the hall. He pretended to examine the external door frame while she turned on the lights, saying: 'Those are new doors. Very solid. Very secure.'
'Right,' said Nathan, as if he cared, then stepped over the threshold.
The
empty house echoed with their footsteps. She led him to the through-lounge: a back and front parlour knocked into one long room, and into the galley kitchen. Its UPVC window overlooked the rear garden, which the developer hadn't got around to cleaning up; there was a rusty old wheelbarrow parked by a pile of bricks; a pile of wet sand on the patio.
The kitchen was newly fitted with cheap materials: maple-look veneer on chipboard. He opened a few cupboards, looked inside the oven. (An instruction booklet, still wrapped in plastic, lay in the spotless grill pan.) Even Nathan could tell this kitchen would begin to fall apart in a matter of months, if not weeks. But he stood and dusted sawdust from his trousers, saying, 'Yeah, I like it.'
He followed her upstairs.
The second house was similar but smaller; the 'office' was barely large enough to accommodate a small table and a laptop. But it stood on a nicer street, with better access to public transport and the local shops. The third house was the biggest of the three, but in spitting distance of a forbiddingly brutal-looking housing estate with whose reputation Nathan was well acquainted.
Outside the third house, they sat in her car. She put the heater on.
She said, 'No pressure. But what do you think? Are we on the right track ?'
'Oh, definitely. You've definitely given me a lot to think about.'
'I'm sure Mr Hinsliffe would take an offer,' said Holly. Mr Hinsliffe was the developer. 'Things are quite slow at the moment.'
'Okay,' said Nathan. 'I'll bear that in mind. Let me think about it.'
'Okay. What I'll do is this - I'll give you a call when a property comes on the market that you might be interested in. Things are coming in and going out all the time -- weekends, especially.
Something good can come on at nine and be sold by lunchtime.
Happens all the time. It's a solid market. But you're in a strong position to buy, mortgage agreed, no chain, so I can afford to give you priority treatment. How does that sound?'
He nodded, as if she had spoken with great wisdom and kindness and had not flatly contradicted her earlier claim that things were slow at the moment.
He thought, I left your sister alone in the dark.
He said, 'That sounds great.'
'Great.'
She dropped him off at the high street.
In no rush, he caught the bus home.
He got back to discover his flat had changed. The interior angles seemed more acute. The walls seemed to huddle over him.
He lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. In feverish half-dreams, it seemed the flat was two dimensional - a drawing on a scrap of paper that, with him still scribbled on it, was about to be squeezed into a ball by a giant hand, and thrown away.
15
Holly called him at home on Saturday morning. He knew as soon as the phone rang that it must be her; nobody ever called him at home unless there was a crisis at work - and if there was a crisis at work, he'd already know about it.
It had rained heavily that morning, but half an hour ago the sun had come out, to make mercury of the puddles in the empty nursery playground. He took the call from his bed, looking out the window.
He was wearing socks and boxer shorts and a rumpled white T-shirt, the one he'd slept in.
'Hello?'
'Is that Nathan?'
'Yeah.'
'It's Holly. From Morris Michael estate agents?'
'I recognized your voice.'
There was a pause - perhaps she was a little taken aback by his familiarity. He thought he detected a note of pleasure in the silence, but he couldn't be sure. Perhaps she was simply consulting her notes, reminding herself who exactly she was talking to. Or perhaps a colleague had handed her a Post-it note with an important phone number on it.
He met her at yet another of Mr Hinsliffe's houses. He parked outside, the A-Z unfolded, spine broken, in his lap. Holly was inside, waiting for him. Pulling up, he saw her face in the window. She darted away, and he began to doubt that he'd seen her at all.
But she was waiting for him at the door, wearing a blue-grey belted coat and a scarf and high, suede boots. The house still smelled of wood glue.
He thought, I'm really going to do this, and closed the door softly behind him.
They stood in the empty front room. He told her, 'It certainly catches the light.'
'It's south facing.'
'I like it.'
He walked through to the kitchen; it was very similar to the others.
'I'm still not sure about these kitchens, though.'
She squatted heel to haunch and experimentally opened the cupboard beneath the sink, telling him: 'Developers' kitchens. They buy them cheap, in bulk.'
He was pleased that she seemed to trust him.
'I expect that's reflected in the price though,' he said. 'The crappy kitchens.'
'Exactly. They're not really designed to last. They're more like a what do you call it? - a serving suggestion. Would you like to see upstairs?'
'Would you like to have lunch with me?'
There was an awkward moment. Holly looked at her suede boots and pursed her lips and he thought he'd
