Home Sick

Chapter 1

The symmetry should? have tipped me off. Two sets of windows, two arched eaves like eyebrows raised in surprise, or in the voyeuristic glee of watching a couple fight in public.

And two front doors.

I sat in the driver’s seat of my car staring up at the house, hoping some new detail might surface and prove me wrong. But the longer I looked the more I saw it: the subtle line between the two properties.

The small stone cottage was perched on a grassy mound.

Its own private, tiny hill. Flat slabs of stone cut into the curve of the mound, providing steps up from the gravel driveway, where I was parked, to the gabled awning where the two front doors sat side by side, just over a foot apart.

In the middle of the slate-tiled roof a single chimney stuck out against the sky.

I dug out my copy of the paperwork from the glove box.

The photo in the listing could have folded in half perfectly, like a book, or two slices of sandwich bread, or two palms pressed together.

Looking closely at the pixelated image now, I could just about make out the two doors, barely visible in the shade of the awning.

When I saw the 1b on the form, I’d assumed it was a contract thing.

Clause 1a, 1b, 2ai, 2aii. I just assumed.

That’s what I get for refusing a viewing.

That’s what I get for rushing things. But I had wanted the house.

I’d needed the house. So, I signed without reading it properly.

Move in when you’re ready. Perfect. No wonder it was so cheap.

I thought it was because of the remote location, clearly a limiting factor for the more socially inclined.

But I didn’t mind. I was ready for a slower pace of life.

The quiet. The trees. The copse of Douglas fir.

The rounded peak of Ben Ledi. The forested Trossachs all around.

The shade. The wind. The rain. The hour’s drive from the nearest city.

The scenic walk to the nearest village, a tiny tourist stop decked out in pretty flowers, no doubt.

The short gravel driveway branching off a slim country road.

The gate overgrown with grass until it was almost invisible. The peace.

I didn’t realise 1b was the address.

I thought I’d bought Sgàthan Sìth, far-flung cottage with a proper Gaelic name, right on the boundary fault where the Lowlands met the Highlands. My retreat. My recuperation. My rebirth. A place to grow flowers, wear cotton aprons and let my hair hang loose. A chance for a new way of life.

No, I’d bought 1b Sgàthan Sìth. A semi-detached. The right half of a stone cottage in the middle of nowhere. To intimately share my rural dreams with a complete stranger.

At least it made sense now, the rhyme the estate agent had made when I’d asked how to pronounce the name of the place.

“One-two, buckle my shoe. One-bee, Skah-than Shee.”

I got out of the car and looked again. No, still two properties.

I looked at the documents. There was no mention of it being semi-detached. I was sure that was something they were supposed to mention.

There were no other cars on the driveway when I arrived and the lawn on 1a’s side of the mound was wildly overgrown.

On 1b’s side it had been cut, quickly and lazily, perhaps by an estate agent getting the place ready for photos for the listing.

There had been a few weeks’ growth on top, but nowhere near as overgrown as on 1a’s side.

Thistles towered through long, yellow tufts of grass and the odd patch of bramble.

It was practically humming with insects at this time of year.

I supposed they weren’t selling 1a so why bother to mow it?

Or maybe 1a was empty.

My heart lifted. I’d have preferred the whole building, but living next to an empty one would do. I could possibly even put up with a holiday let, occasional tourists coming and going during the summer, keeping to themselves. They could be ignored, as long as their stay was short.

A flicker of movement drew my eyes up and to the left, to the top window of 1a. A pale, patterned curtain was suddenly pulled tight. It couldn’t have been the wind. The movement; the shape of the pinch in the fabric. It could only have been a hand.

I froze with the feeling of being unexpectedly observed, like I’d been caught absentmindedly picking my nose. I watched the window for more movement.

The curtains in the upstairs room stayed still. Were they hiding from me? Maybe they were wondering if I’d seen them, feeling the same sense of awkwardness. Oh no, now you know I exist.

Or maybe they were just as put out by having a neighbour as I was.

A high-pitched note whined in my ears.

A sudden pain in my hand forced me to look away. I’d scrunched the listing into a tight ball, my knuckles white, and now the sharp folds were pressing into my palms.

I shook out my hand, took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

No, I told myself. You’re fine, Tamsin. This is fine. The house is fine.

After the incident at work, the police contact had signed me up for a course of counselling.

They’d made it very clear that it wasn’t a suggestion.

But I didn’t need counselling. I wasn’t crazy.

I just needed some time and space to sort myself out.

A fresh start. Not someone nosing into my business.

I trudged back down the gravel driveway to the back of the car and threw open the boot.

I dragged out my single suitcase—everything I’d managed to pack in the time I’d given myself; the rest I’d left behind—and let it crunch down onto the ground.

I slammed the boot shut loud enough to produce an echo on the walls of the house.

My own frustration, magnified, projected back at me. Petulant and ugly. I cringed.

But the upstairs window showed no acknowledgement of my presence, my noise. The curtains remained pulled tight.

I frowned. They hadn’t come out to meet me. I thought that was something that happened in places like this, coming out to meet your new neighbours. Lonely, rural places with no one else around.

Admittedly, the thought of it made my skin crawl. And I wasn’t about to knock on their door to introduce myself either. I was tired and I couldn’t think when I’d last showered. I probably smelled and couldn’t tell.

That’s something that happens to people, isn’t it?

You get used to your own stink and then you walk around subjecting everyone to the smell of your clammy, crusty body, wondering why people avoid you or make those pained faces when you draw near.

But they’re all too polite to tell you. People don’t usually walk up to someone and say, “Hey, you need to go to a doctor about your BO. You reek!” No one wants to make that kind of social sacrifice.

So, they just avoid you instead and you’re left wondering, ‘Do I smell or is it something else?’

I’d often wondered if that was why I never got invited out to lunch at work. It would have been the easier fix.

The elm tree at the base of the drive swayed in the wind, shaking loose a fluttering shower of papery seeds.

I shook my head, as if my brain was an eight-ball I could rattle to get a better prediction, and pulled my suitcase up the steps in the hill to the front door—my front door.

When I first saw the picture of the house, I’d expected to open it with an old iron key, or at least one of those intricate brass ones, slightly tarnished by hands and time.

Getting a standard, square-head Yale lock key had been a surprise I couldn’t verbalise to the estate agents.

It had a metal ring attached, but no tag, not even one of those cheap plastic keyrings bearing the estate agent’s branding like a modern shield of arms. Just a bare key on a ring.

I’d stared at it a moment too long. The receptionist had shifted uncomfortably in his seat on the other side of the high pine desk.

“Is everything okay?” he’d asked, then quickly clarified, “With the key?”

“Of course,” I’d said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

It had been more to myself than him.

Why wouldn’t it be?

I looked at the chrome lock protruding slightly from the pine-green, gloss-painted door, clumsy and anachronistic in its shine among the weathered beams and the old brickwork. Like white slimline headphones sticking out of a gramophone.

But it wasn’t just new; it was brand new.

A new lock. Did estate agents usually change the locks when houses changed hands?

It was my first home that wasn’t a rental.

There had been a lot about the buying process that had surprised me.

The extra fees, the affordability checks—I’d applied off the back of my full-time position; I hadn’t told them I’d recently gone freelance, and not exactly by choice.

But it got me approved for the mortgage, and that was all that mattered.

I ran my hand over the surface of the door.

They’d been careless placing the lock. Didn’t matter how much gloss paint they’d used; they’d failed to hide the deep scratches in the woodwork all around the edge.

Maybe they’d had to pry it open after the last inhabitant.

I peered through the small, mottled window in the door, slightly worried I might see said inhabitant staring back out.

Well, who cared? It was mine now. My anachronistic lock. My scratched door. My new life. My new neighbour hiding behind their curtains.

I put the key in the lock.

Next door, a movement.

My eyes flicked to the left.

I waited a moment, watching 1a’s downstairs window not more than a few yards away from me.

Nothing.

I swore I’d seen the ground floor curtain twitch, like the flickering of an eyelid about to wake.

I exhaled. Maybe the police were right. Maybe I was crazy.

I turned the key and headed inside.