31 Dream Street (6 page)

Con and Melinda’s room was bare and minimal. Melinda’s bed was made with a neat crisp duvet and two fat pillows; Con’s mattress on the floor was unmade and messy. A wooden panel to the left of the window had been decorated with the word ‘Clarabel’ and a small black painting of a pretty girl wearing a hat and smoking a cigarette. Clarabel was a manic-depressive performance artist who’d lived here for six months in 1996 and left to marry a Russian gymnast and move to St Petersburg. It was strange to see her avant-garde and mildly disturbing self-portrait staring out at him from the midst of Con and Melinda’s bland possessions.

‘How many bathrooms do you have?’ said Walter, heading towards Joanne’s room.

‘Two,’ said Toby. ‘One on each floor.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Any en suite?’

‘No. I’m afraid not.’

Toby pushed down on the handle to Joanne’s door and realized with some surprise that it was locked. ‘Ah,’
he said, turning to face Walter. ‘Erm, it seems it’s locked.’

Walter nodded.

‘Joanne – very private girl,’ Toby offered, pointlessly.

Upstairs, Toby showed Walter his own overstuffed room and Gus’s garishly decorated room, apologizing for the smell of elderly cat and explaining that the cat’s owner had recently passed away. By the time he led Walter into the back garden and noticed for the first time the pile of compost that had been sitting on the lawn since the end of last summer and the weeds sprouting forth from every conceivable – and inconceivable – crack and crevice and the old bicycle tyres, the rusty treadmill and the aged fridge stained an unappetizing brown, Toby was feeling thoroughly depressed. There was so much to apologize for, so much to excuse. He couldn’t imagine that Walter would be prepared to put his house on the market for fifty pounds, let alone five hundred thousand pounds.

He offered him a cup of tea and sat down with him at the kitchen table.

‘Well,’ began Walter, ‘it’s a beautiful house.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Oh, undoubtedly. But, as you say, there are some maintenance issues. Not to mention some decorative issues and some lifestyle issues.’

‘Lifestyle?’

‘Yes. Because here’s the bottom line. I could put this
property on the market for you tomorrow, as it is, and probably, if we could find a buyer or, more likely, a developer prepared to put in the work, to see beyond the aesthetic problems, we would probably be looking at something in the region of seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’

Toby stopped breathing.

‘
But
. If you were able to reconfigure the house, to replace the kitchen, the bathrooms, do some basic work in the garden and, more importantly,
remove your house-mates
and give the place the feel of a
proper
family home, we could be asking for considerably more.’

‘How much more?’

‘Oh, I would say that this house, redecorated, modernized, made fit for a family to move straight into, I could put it on the market for around nine hundred thousand pounds. Maybe even a million.’

‘
No?
’ Toby blinked. ‘Surely not that much.’

‘Oh, yes, definitely. Maybe more depending on the quality of the renovation.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Toby breathed in deeply and tugged at his sideburns.

‘This house is unique, Mr Dobbs. There’s nothing else like it in the area. People will pay a premium for unique.’

‘So, if I were to put it on the market now, what do you think would happen?’

‘I would expect to sell it to a developer. Maybe to be developed into two or three apartments. Or to a family with a fondness for home improvements.’

‘And if I were to make the improvements myself and evict my tenants… I mean,
friends
?’

‘Then you could command a much higher asking price and make a much bigger profit.’

‘And what would you do, if you were me?’

‘Well, if I had the cash at my disposal, I would go down the latter route. Most definitely.’

‘You would?’

Walter nodded, emphatically. ‘Without a doubt. But you’d need to get cracking on it. The market’s precarious right now. Get your tenants out, get your builders in, get the house on the market. Maximize your profit.’

‘Right,’ said Toby, staring through the kitchen window at the wilderness of the back garden and feeling a sense of unbridled panic galloping through his insides. ‘Right. Then, that’s what I’ll do.’

Toby did something he’d never done before after Walter left. He made a list.

Suddenly there was so much to consider, so much to do, and he thought that setting it down in writing might somehow make it easier to control.

Things To Do

1 Buy new sofas

2 Get hair cut

3 Buy new socks

4 Look at kitchens

5 Look at bathrooms

6 Get builder in to quote on works

7 Get plumber in to quote on works

8 Get decorator in to quote on works

9 Get tenants to move out

10 Sell house

11 Move to Cornwall (?)

12 Get a publishing deal (?)

13 Get divorced

14 Stop being in love with Ruby

15 Find someone proper to be in love with

16
START LIVING

10

Leah found it hard to believe that she’d ended up working somewhere called the Pink Hummingbird. She’d thought it was a joke at first when the woman at the agency had mentioned it to her.

‘The what?’

‘Yes,’ she’d said, ‘I know. You’ll understand when you see it.’

It was the most violently, unremittingly feminine shop in London. It had a sugar-pink façade and windows strung with feather-shaded fairy lights. It sold things that only girls would ever want to buy, such as gem-encrusted picture frames and writing paper scented with eau de toilette. The ceiling was dripping with bejewelled chandeliers and whitewashed bamboo birdcages. The walls were hung with Venetian glass mirrors and soft velvet hats in shades of plum and passion fruit. It sold underwear constructed from pure gossamer and presented in tissue-lined sateen boxes with rosebuds on the lid. And soft plush cats dressed in fur coats and heels. And birthdays cards handmade using diamanté and sequins. And cushions made from pastel-tinted Mongolian sheepskins. And pens decorated with lilac glitter and wisps of marabou.

It was sugar-coated decadence on a sickly scale.

Leah wasn’t really a pink sort of girl. Leah liked wearing chunky footwear and hard-wearing jeans. She wore the minimum of make-up and no perfume. Her only concession to femininity was her hair, which she wore long and wavy, and her fingernails which she kept manicured and shiny. She didn’t really need make-up. She had one of those scrubbed land-girl kind of faces that looked better with just a touch of eyeliner and a pinch of the cheeks. Maybe that was why Ruth had offered her the job. Maybe she hadn’t glanced down and seen the chunky-heeled boots and the hint of old mud clinging to the hem of her only smart trousers. Maybe she hadn’t noticed that Leah was wearing a T-shirt with a logo on it. Maybe she’d just taken in the cute face and the girlie hair and decided that Leah was a Pink Hummingbird in the making.

Whatever the reason, she’d offered her the job. Leah had been managing Ruth’s shop for five years now, ever since Ruth had relocated herself to LA and opened Pink Hummingbird II in Beverly Hills. Leah quite liked working here. It was a sweet-smelling antidote to the scruffiness of the rest of her life. It was nice to walk in here in the mornings, stepping from the grey of the pavement outside into this fragrant pink grotto.

But if someone had told her ten years ago that one day she’d be thirty-five years old, unmarried, non-home-owning and managing a gift shop in Muswell Hill she’d have kicked them in the shin. But here she was selling overpriced gewgaws to girls and grannies and clinging – she could feel it as keenly as an oncoming train today
– to the sheer rock face of an existential crisis, by the tips of her shiny fingernails.

The doorbell of the Pink Hummingbird sounded at three o’clock, just as Leah had opened a new copy of
heat
and was about to tuck into a tortellini salad. She jammed the plastic tub under the cash desk and glanced at the door.

It was Toby.

He was wearing a cream cable-knit turtleneck jumper with narrow black jeans and a red scarf. On his head was a grey ribbed woollen hat. His shoes were enormous and shiny, but he somehow managed to pull the whole look off, even with his abundant and unfashionable sideburns. She smiled when she saw him; she couldn’t help herself.

‘Hello,’ he said, peering at her from beneath the Chinese-print paper parasol she’d been hiding behind.

She peered back at him. ‘Hello.’

‘It’s me,’ he said, apologetically, ‘Toby.’

She nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘So,’ he said, nervous eyes taking in the shop, ‘this is where you work?’

‘Yup. Uh-huh. This is my… pink and fluffy world.’ She spread her hands outwards.

‘It’s nice,’ he said. ‘I must have walked past here a million times and never been in.’

‘Yes, well – you’re either the sort of person who is attracted by feathery fairy lights or you’re not.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said glancing around. ‘I quite like
some of this stuff. These cushions are great.’ He fingered the price tag of an ivory sequinned cushion and winced slightly. ‘Oh, my God,’ he said, ‘for a
cushion
?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Leah nodded. ‘You don’t want to know the cost price.’

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘I don’t suppose I do.’

They both turned as the doorbell chimed and an old lady in a woollen coat walked in. Leah smiled at her.

‘I hope you don’t mind me turning up like this, unannounced. It’s just, I’m not sure, really, but I just feel a bit strange that I haven’t seen you since what happened the other day. And you mentioned that you worked in a pink gift shop and I was passing and assumed that this must be the pink gift shop you were talking about. So I thought I’d come in and say hello. And thank you. Again.’

‘What for?’

‘For being so cool, calm and collected in a crisis.’

‘Ah, well. If nothing else, I am good in a crisis.’

‘Yes, indeed you are.’

‘So. Have you had the funeral yet?’

‘Yes. On Tuesday.’

‘How was it?’

‘Oh, miserable,’ he said, smiling. ‘Horrible. It rained all day and his relatives were gruesome.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Leah replied, smiling back.

‘Yes, but lots of interesting things have happened since.’

‘They have?’

‘Yes. My life’s been sort of turned upside down, really.’

‘God, really. In what way?’

‘Well…’ Toby paused and licked his lips. Then he stroked his sideburns and squinted. Leah watched him curiously.

‘Are you OK?’ she said.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I hope you don’t think I’m being strange, but I recall you saying that you considered yourself to be a curious person, about human beings, that is, and unfortunately curiosity is not one of my fortes, and I’m in a very strange quandary and I really need to, God, this will sound so American and so inane, but I really need to
share
. And I know we’re strangers, but I don’t really have anyone else whom I feel
comfortable
discussing these things with…’

‘You want to talk to me?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded.

‘About your problems?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Cool,’ she smiled, sliding down from her stool, ‘let’s go for a coffee.’

They went to the Ruby in the Dust. Toby ordered a cappuccino and Leah had a peppermint tea and a slice of cheesecake. She glanced up at Toby. He had a foam moustache and some chocolate powder dusted across his stubble. She resisted the temptation to wipe him down with her paper napkin and smiled at him.

‘So,’ said Toby, ‘this is the thing. Gus has left me some money. Posthumously.’

‘Well, obviously.’

‘Yes. And now, in a weird twist of fate, my estranged father is coming back to London to see me and, frankly, I’d given up on him for dead, never thought I’d see him again, and I’m forty next year and I just feel as if this is my last chance to, you know, make a life for myself, because I’ve become stuck in a terrible, terrible rut, come to a kind of grinding halt, I suppose, and now I have both the incentive and the means to do something about it, to refurbish the house and put it up for sale. But there’s a snag.’

‘There is?’

‘Yes, my tenants. I need to get rid of them.’

‘Right…’

‘Yes. I need them all to move out. So that I can renovate the house and sell it before my father comes back.’

‘Which is when?’

‘End of March. Ten weeks.’

‘OK. So why can’t you just evict them?’

‘Because…’ Toby paused, then sighed. ‘Oh, God, I don’t know, it’s so pathetic, really, and I know that’s exactly what I should do, but for some reason I just can’t bring myself to do it. For some reason I feel personally responsible for them all.’

‘But why?’

‘Because, well, because they’re all so
lost
.’

‘Lost?’

‘Yes, all of them, to varying degrees. And the only reason they’re living in my house is because they have absolutely nowhere else to be. No friends, no family,
no safety net. And if I evict them, then what will happen to them? What will become of them all?’

‘Well, yes, but surely that’s not your problem, is it?’

‘Well, no, not technically, but I do feel a certain level of responsibility. It was me who invited them to live with me, after all. It was me who placed classified adverts, who selected them on the grounds that they were genuinely needy. It would be like kicking people out of a halfway house. And the funny thing is, I always thought it was just Gus who was keeping me from selling the house, from moving on, but now he’s dead and I’ve realized that it wasn’t just him. It was all of them.’