1.

Tim Waverly surveyed the wreckage, hand running unconsciously through his tousled hair, and sighed inwardly. He then looked again and groaned out loud.

Like most people Tim was aware that moving home came second only to divorce in the stress stakes, like most people he didn’t know if this was verifiable fact or simply a myth. At 28 he’d never been married, let alone divorced, but could well believe it.

His teaching salary hadn’t afforded him the opportunity for a professional removal firm and neither had the fact the move to 56 Oldfield Street wasn’t too far from his old, rented apartment – which was based in a less leafy area of West London.  Consequently he’d found a ‘man with a van’. Will, a perma-tanned and gruff Aussie had spent much of the day smoking and shouting into his phone. Will’s idea of removals consisted of throwing Tim’s possessions into said van and simply decanting them into the new place as fast as possible, heedless of where they ended up.

 Tim couldn’t grumble, Will had been relatively cheap and he felt 56 was going to suck up his dwindling reserves of cash (much of which had itself been borrowed). He was only too aware how fortunate he was to have purchased his first home and one with its own front door, stairs and small backyard to boot.

As is so often the case, good things were built on terrible foundations. His deposit, which he’d have struggled to save on his own, came largely from the untimely deaths of both his parents. Tim had lost his mum when he was just 16, ovarian cancer had roared through her body, an unstoppable fire. Just six weeks from getting a diagnosis to her small family and tight friendship group standing in an impersonal crematorium. Eight months prior to his move his, much older, father had passed away after a series of increasingly serious strokes. Given they lived in a council house there’d been no home for Tim to inherit. After taxes he had had enough left for the deposit on this place and now he gave silent and heartfelt thanks to his much missed mum and dad.

The estate agent who’d sold him the house was the kind of upper middle class Londoner who went to the co-ed private school Tim had found himself teaching at. None too intelligent, but good looking and well-spoken enough to do okay for himself in the feeding frenzy otherwise known as the London housing market. On showing the house he’d described it thus: ‘Fashionably unmodernised’.

Tim had parsed this description for a few seconds before inwardly and accurately translating it as ‘small, dark, a bit of a mess and relatively cheap’.

The sellers were themselves something of a mystery. The place had been empty for several years following the death of the previous owner, apparently an elderly single man. After a protracted probate it went to his twin sisters, also elderly. The house had then languished on the market for over a year, unusual in London but, Tim thought wryly, perhaps a sign that fashion had yet to catch up with the ’unmodernised’, despite the agent’s hype. When he’d first accompanied the agent, named Xander of all things, around the property he’d noted with amusement that the few remaining personal effects has sticky labels on. These, it seemed, were designed to apportion ownership to whichever of the sisters had claimed them. A cursory glance as to what was on offer suggested paying a house-clearance specialist might’ve been more appropriate. The house had been tidy enough, although the box-room at the front had a cloying odour of damp and looked to be a breeding ground for spiders.

Tim became aware of a faint noise breaking into his recollections. A baby, perhaps, having a screaming fit. It must be coming from one of the houses either side and, he hoped, didn’t augur months of disturbed nights.

He checked his watch. 2.30pm, plenty of time to attack the boxes. At least he’d moved in at the start of the half-term break.

2.

‘Nobody can live with a boiler that makes this noise!’ Tim yelled into his mobile. ‘I’d really appreciate it if you can get someone out as quickly as you can.’

He tried to listen over the screech of the boiler as the woman on the end of the line explained the various, eye-watering, callout charges. ‘Yes, Thursday morning’s great, thank you so much’. Tim disconnected and tried to decide on the best course of action. On the one hand the house had been empty for a long time, smelled damp and felt freezing. On the other he had no ear defenders. Decision made, he raced into the bathroom and flicked the switch controlling the boiler. Silence fell, leaving behind it a faint ringing in his ears, a blessed relief in contrast to the plumbing which had sounded, in Tim’s mind, like an operation being conducted without anaesthetic.

He gave a slight jump when the knocking started at the front door. He made his way around and over various boxes to open the door at which was standing a striking young black woman waving a bottle of wine. ‘I heard you pop the heating on’, she said with a laugh in her voice. She held out her hand, ’Louise Sanglin, 54, that’s my home not my age, just through the wall’, she smiled as they shook.

’And you brought wine,’ Tim laughed after introducing himself, ’the way to my heart and it might help warm me up’. He peered at the bottle, ’Screw top too - that should save a good half hour searching for the corkscrew’. He waved vaguely at the remaining boxes.

Louise Sanglin was a talker and Tim liked to listen. He sometimes wondered if standing up all day in front of his students had made him less inclined to speak outside of the classroom. ‘So, here’s the thing,’ she was saying, ‘I’ve lived next door for a decade and never saw the old fellow. Literally never saw him pop to the shops or get his milk in or anything’.

‘Surely you must’ve heard him though?’ Tim asked, refreshing their glasses.

‘Hmm, I heard him cough from time to time and sometimes speaking – either to himself or on the phone. And I heard the bloody boiler or whatever it is, you know, the pipes. Like somebody being tortured isn’t it.’ Louise rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘To be really honest, once he’d been carried out, and I didn’t even see him then by the way, we were quite pleased the heating probably wouldn’t keep us awake’.

‘I’ve got a plumber coming, don’t worry’, Tim explained, ‘I’d rather hit the credit card than live with that racket.’

The conversation meandered, as they do when two people don’t know one another and there’s alcohol on the go. Louise explained that she lived with her husband Andrew, who spent much of his time working overseas (‘Middle east, loads of money, the downside being that we see less of one another than we should’, she told him.) Tim assumed the couple were childless, children certainly weren’t mentioned.

‘And on the other side of me? I think I heard their baby’.

‘Oh, you must be mistaken’, said Louise, taking a sip, ‘Mrs MacDonald is next door to you, she’s 75 if she’s a day so no baby there – unless there’s been a miracle. She’s a character, loves her garden and plays bowls at the local rec. She doesn’t suffer fools either, which can be a source of amusement’.

Louise took Tim through a verbal snapshot of the street or at least those inhabitants who made themselves known to their little community – this being London it amounted to about 20% of them. She told him about ‘Shandrew’ and their dog, Molly, ‘Cute little thing, bit of an intimate sniffer, if you get my drift’. She filled him in on the gossip about ‘woo-woo’ Mr Bromwich at number 14, ‘Rarely seen, much gossiped about. I think he does bookkeeping?’ she said with a question mark in her voice.

When she got to the Warwicks, Tim stopped her. ‘Lucy Warwick? Bit of an emo?’.

’That’s her. Nice girl, or young woman I should say. Bit intense maybe, likes to wear black’.

Tim laughed. ‘Bugger it, she’s a student of mine. Now I’ll have to be extra careful about rolling home drunk or being a dirty stop-out.’ While he joked about it, Tim did feel a mild sense of discomfort about living in such close proximity to a student.

Louise gave a throaty laugh. Tim rooted around in a couple of boxes before finding another bottle of red, which they shared. They chatted some more and speculated a little about the mysterious Mr Bromwich. Louise pondered about what might be found if you rummaged through his bins (nothing good, she surmised). They ended the evening pleasantly tipsy, tipsy enough to take the edge off the cold at least.

When Louise had said her goodbyes, with an open invitation for ‘dinner or brunch sometime’, Tim decided to call it a night, thankful that he’d prioritised setting up his bedroom over getting the television hooked in – it had been a close-run decision. He spent several minutes engaged in a fruitless attempt to focus on his paperback, but soon realised he’d tried to read the same page more than once. The impact of moving and alcohol had caught up with him and he gave an extravagant yawn, then another, before settling down, satisfied, for his first night in his new home.

Somewhere, in the darkness, something stirred. Faintly, right at the edge of his awareness as sleep crept over him, Tim could hear a baby starting to cry.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two