Chapter 17
Josh
On the night Rachel and I moved into our flat in Bedford, after nearly three years together, we lay down side by side on the living-room floor and stared up at the ceiling.
We were surrounded by piles and piles of my books, our clothes, and not a lot else. Because we didn’t have a lot else; we were only twenty-one years old. We didn’t even have a sofa.
Our friends had just left. We’d supplied the fish and chips, and corner-shop cava, as a thank-you for helping us save on a removals company.
‘Do you think they all hated it?’ I said, after we’d lain together in silence for a while, adjusting to the sensation of being somewhere new, the syncopation of an unfamiliar neighbourhood.
The tap and creak of the overgrown pear tree next door.
The sweep of passing cars on the road. Music thumping faintly from different open windows, a disparate, clashing melody.
Rachel smiled. ‘Yep. But they don’t see what we see.’
‘Are you still thinking about that new build? The two-up, two-down?’ During our search, Rachel had gravitated towards the many other, more sensible properties out there.
‘Nope,’ she said firmly, but I was worried she already felt wistful about those smooth walls and pristine carpets, sparkling bathrooms and double-glazing so new it still had the stickers on it.
But my mum had insisted property should be bought with your heart, not your head. Her first house with Dad had been a wreck, she said, and hadn’t that worked out all right in the end? (Of course, she skipped over the bit where the place nearly bankrupted them.)
‘This flat has character,’ Rachel murmured now. ‘That two-up, two-down was a beige little box with no soul.’
I smiled, trying not to focus too hard on the water marks streaking like tear stains down the length of the living-room wall. ‘Yeah, you can’t put a price on soul.’
‘We’ll make it beautiful,’ Rachel said, though admittedly it was hard to know how, given how recklessly we’d ended up stretching ourselves on the mortgage.
Rachel was working by then too, in human resources for a bank. It was an entry-level position, only marginally better paid than I was, when you worked out the equivalent hourly rate.
We lay in the gloom for a while, hand in hand. Our sellers had made the rather absurd move of taking all the light bulbs with them, and we didn’t own a lamp. Soon the darkness would swallow us whole.
‘We should go and get bulbs,’ Rachel said. ‘Before the shops shut.’
‘They took the curtains, though, too. It’ll be like we’re on stage.’
She thought for a moment. ‘We can put newspaper on the windows.’
I guess, having lived in eight different houses in as many years, she’d learned all the tricks.
‘So, how does it feel?’ I asked her. ‘Having a home of your own.’
I could just make out the shine of emotion in her eyes. ‘Unbelievable,’ she said.
I rolled over so I was lying above her, propped up on one elbow. ‘Hey, I’ve been thinking. I could get another job. While we’re doing this place up.’
Firmly, she shook her head. ‘You’re going to write a bestseller, remember?’
I smiled softly. ‘You always sound so sure.’
She blinked up at me. In the darkness, her eyes were tiny tidepools. ‘Some things you just know.’
I dipped my head to kiss her. Because she was definitely right about that.