Chapter 4
Delaney Row is easy to miss. At first glance, it looks like no more than a gap between the buildings on Main Street, an alleyway that can’t lead anywhere except to the rear of other places – and I bet most people don’t give it a second one.
But if they turned and walked a ways up the lane, they’d find the terrace of three red-brick Victorian cottages it’s been hiding.
I steer my suitcase around a puddle of muddy rainwater and pause outside number one to catch my breath.
I’m flushed and sweating from the effort of dragging it uphill from the bus stop, a situation exacerbated by the fact that my cheap raincoat feels like it’s been woven out of plastic bags.
Despite the October cold, it’s trapped a layer of clingy wetness between my forearms and its sleeves.
This is not how I pictured moving into the first home I’ve ever owned.
I’m not how I pictured, either – alone, in the waning months of being able to claim that I’m in my early forties, and able to fit everything else I own into a single suitcase.
Or that I’d be dragging it to this house.
The FOR SALE sign is still bolted to the brickwork, which gives me an uneasy feeling, as if all this hasn’t been decided yet and might still come undone.
Everything happened so fast, it’s still hard to believe that it did at all.
I fish out the key and slide it into the lock, afraid at first that it won’t fit and then, when it does, afraid it won’t turn.
But it turns easily, opening the door with a comforting click.
I half lift, half kick the case across the threshold. I peel off my coat, wincing as it tries to stay stuck to my skin. I turn around to close the door behind me, pressing both hands against its solidness, touching my clammy forehead to the cold pane of frosted glass in its upper centre.
It’s really there.
I’m really here.
There’s a rush of feeling then, twisting and tumbling like the place where three rivers meet. I have this house, yes. But I’ve lost so much time. So many irretrievable years of my one wild and precious life. How did I let that happen? Why did it happen to me? What did I do to deserve it?
I tell myself to stop, that what-ifs are pointless. What matters is that I survived, that I’ve made it here.
And besides, I know full well what I did.
It seems colder in here than it did outside; a chill is already teasing goosepimples out of my bare skin.
I feel the feathery touch of a draught, as if, somewhere, a window has been left open.
I turn to face the narrow hallway that runs to the back of the house, its old chequerboard tiles a mouth of stained enamel and missing teeth.
I leave the suitcase by the door and wander from room to room, taking stock, trying not to panic about how much it’s going to take to turn this from a house into a home.
It occurs to me that this is the very first time I’ve been completely alone in here.
In the kitchen, there’s a yellowing fridge-freezer, a rusting microwave and a washing machine with every symbol around its controls rubbed clean off.
An unpleasant smell hangs in the air by the sink, as if food has been pushed down the plughole and left to rot.
The ancient linoleum feels sticky underfoot.
I open every cabinet and drawer but find nothing left behind.
Across the room is the only furniture that’s come with the house: a pockmarked dining table and six mismatched chairs.
They sit in front of a pair of grimy, sliding glass doors, perfectly framing a small yard of weeds and uneven paving slabs.
Around it is a low brick wall with a wooden gate, rotten and hanging from its hinges at an angle.
I try to imagine this space on some sunny morning in the future, but all I can think about is what this glass will look like in a few hours, after dark, when I have a light on: a black mirror that will show me only my own reflection, but through which anyone outside will be able to see in.
Next to the kitchen is a dreary room with a brown water stain spreading out in concentric circles from the centre of its popcorn ceiling, like rings in a tree trunk.
The walls are covered in floral wallpaper and not very well; there are numerous creases and air bubbles, and the design doesn’t line up.
The agent claimed it was a double bedroom, but you’d do well to get a double bed in here.
The view out the window is of the back wall of another building, looking close enough to touch.
I retreat into the hall and pull the door shut.
The next door is tucked under the stairs.
When I open it, I’m hit by a solid cloud of stale, foul smell.
I clamp a hand over my nose and mouth, and quickly survey the interior: a toilet and tiny sink, no window.
There’s an ancient extractor fan, furry with dust. Nothing happens when I pull on its cord.
I’ll need an electrician to fix it, I suspect.
And towels, I think, seeing the empty rail.
Air freshener. Toilet paper. Soap.
But what I need the most is the money to buy the things I need. There’s a bundle of fourteen twenties in my pocket, plus one ten, one five and some change. Three hundred euro, give or take. It’s all I have until I figure things out.
Well, that and the house.
Across the hall, the living room is better but worse than I remember.
What must have been the original red brick of the chimney breast has been painted white.
Built-in mahogany shelves fill the alcoves.
The carpet is at least forty years old, going by the design – swirls of blue and yellow paisley – and more of the same floral wallpaper adorns the walls.
The view out the window is obscured by condensation.
The sill is littered with a confetti of dead flies.
But it’s mine.
That’s what’s important.
I heave the suitcase upstairs and leave it on the landing, outside the bedroom.
There’s not much to see in there. A peeling radiator fixed to the far wall under the window, and a light pendant hanging from the ceiling with no shade and no bulb.
The carpet is the colour of oat milk and stained, dirty, heinous.
Yet more floral wallpaper; they must have been giving the stuff away.
The same person who did a bad job of hanging it downstairs has struck up here too, I see.
This level is even colder than it was downstairs.
I should turn on the heating, but I’m afraid to until I figure out how I’m going to pay the bill when it arrives.
I cross the landing and enter what the estate agent called a home office, but really, it’s just a tiny space clawed back from the eaves that the attic did its best to hang on to.
The ceiling is so sharply slanted they’ve had to install a pocket door, and the room is exceptionally narrow.
I can easily touch both sides at the same time.
It’s also unfinished. The floor is bare, untreated wood. The skylight still has an opaque plastic film on it. Bouquets of bluntly cut electrical wires stick out of holes in the plasterboard walls where light switches and plug sockets should be.
It doesn’t make sense as anything except maybe a walk-in wardrobe and, even then, it seems like a huge amount of effort for very little return.
But I’m not complaining. It doesn’t have the uncomfortable chill that seems to permeate the rest of the house, and the door has a lock that works.
I’ll sleep in here, for those reasons.
Plus some other ones, too.
I turn away from that thought and go into the bathroom. It looks brand new, barely used and, unlike virtually every other space in this house, it’s full of good decisions: spa-like, sand-coloured tiles; pristine porcelain fixtures; matte-black fittings.
A full renovation had been planned, the agent said. Room by room, starting at the top of the house and working down. But they only managed the bathroom and some of the office before the work came to a stop.
I wonder when that happened, and why it did.
As I admire the large bath, a memory slips its weights and floats to the surface.
A woman who, every Saturday night, took a long, hot soak infused with expensive lotions and potions, while drinking a glass of something fizzy and leafing through a glossy magazine.
She’d been doing it for years. When she was young and preparing to go out-out.
When she wasn’t as young and couldn’t afford to go anywhere.
When, having finally found her way, it became her reward for living another week of a life she loved and a moment to pause and reflect before she launched herself headfirst into another one.
Over time, the fizz got better but the ritual always stayed the same.
Now, as I turn back and face my reflection in the mirrored cabinet above the sink, I can’t find any trace of her.
The loss tightens my throat.
Downstairs, the doorbell blares, piercing the air like a siren.
I freeze.
It’s been so long since I’ve lived somewhere with a door that opens directly to the world, I’ve forgotten how intrusive it feels to know that someone is standing right on the other side of it, demanding a breach.
I know what I’m supposed to do – casually skip down the stairs, open the door, raise my eyebrows in pleasant questioning – but the list of people who know I’m here is vanishingly small and none of them are also on a list of people I want to see.
So I stay in the bathroom, bolted in place, holding my breath and ferociously willing whoever it is down there to go away.
I count off the seconds.
I get to five.
Ten.
The bell sounds again, three times in quick succession. Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong. The sustain transforms the summons into something more aggressive, as if they know I’m home and won’t stand for being ignored.
There’s no way to surreptitiously check who’s outside. The front door has no peephole or safety chain and, if I go to it, whoever is out there will see me through the frosted glass.
I’ve no choice but to wait this out.