Perfectly Ordinary People(75)

When I’d finished reading I closed the lid of my laptop and Buggles looked up at me with what looked like a question in his eyes.

‘No idea,’ I told him. ‘It’s like some demented puzzle, babe.’ But then Buggles jumped down and ran to the fridge, revealing that his actual question had been far less challenging. All he wanted to know was whether I was going to feed him.

At the beginning of March, I came home from Impressionable one Thursday to discover that the ‘For Sale’ sign the estate agent had fixed to my lounge window had sprouted an exact twin next door.

I phoned immediately but it was only a small one-bedroom unit, so of no use to us at all. It was an ‘unfinished conversion’, the estate agent told me. The developer had gone bust halfway through.

The price troubled me though, as on a per-square-foot basis it was twenty-five per cent cheaper than mine. No wonder I’d had no visits.

I didn’t see Dan all week, but when I finally did mention it to him he got excited. With a tiny bit of help from me he could buy the place, he pointed out, and then we could simply knock through, effectively joining the two flats.

We visited it the following morning and, though it really was unfinished, the unpainted plasterboard walls at least felt bright and clean.

It had a brand-new kitchen/dining room, which Dan said he could ‘make work’, plus a bedroom/lounge he suggested could become our new lounge/dining room, leaving my existing lounge as a second bedroom/nursery.

Because I was struggling to imagine the finished project, I told Dan he’d have to draw me a floor plan when we got home.

He started pacing out the rooms and taking notes of their approximate dimensions and while he was doing this I noticed that there wasn’t anywhere for a toilet.

I strode through to the lounge where our naughty estate agent, who’d forgotten to mention this nugget of information, was talking on his mobile phone. Eventually I got bored waiting, so I moved into his line of vision, whereupon he apologised to whoever he was talking to and hung up.

‘I can’t work out where the toilet’s supposed to go,’ I said, and I noticed he looked caught out.

He led me through to the bathroom – originally half the hallway from before the first floor had been divided into two flats. It had been beautifully tiled in those white Paris Metro tiles and had some drains and pipes sticking out, but otherwise was bare.

‘I assume you’d stick it in here,’ he said, nonchalantly.

‘There’s not enough room.’ I turned to see that Dan had joined us. He started pacing out the space.

‘Clearly the shower is meant to go here,’ he said, waving his arms around as much as the tight space permitted. ‘Because that’s the drain, right there. And then . . . washbasin here . . . So, toilet where?’

‘Yes,’ the estate agent said. ‘I agree it’s tight. You’ll probably have to be inventive.’

‘Inventive,’ I repeated.

‘Perhaps have the toilet somehow share the shower space?’

‘Erm, that won’t work,’ Dan said.

‘Maybe a fold-out washbasin or something?’ the estate agent offered, fiddling with the massive knot of his tie.

‘A fold-out washbasin?’ Dan said. ‘Have you ever seen such a thing?’

‘No, well . . .’ the estate agent said. ‘I’ve never seen electricity or radiation, but people assure me they exist.’

Back at mine, on the backs of the pages of one of the worst submissions I’d ever read, Dan excitedly drew some of the worst sketches I’d ever seen. Discovering that he was so very bad at something made me love him even more.

By the end of the week, I was getting impatient for news of cassette #3. The tapes had started to pop into my consciousness at random moments during the day and I was becoming desperate to understand the dichotomy of how these people could be who they seemed to be – my grandparents and my Aunt Ethel – while having characteristics, life stories and even names that were entirely unfamiliar. Which version of our family history was the true one – the one I’d grown up with, or the one recorded on the cassettes? And if this new narrative was the true one, how much did Dad know? Was it humanly possible that he was entirely unaware?

But beyond the family intrigue, I felt gripped by the story. I felt as if Genevieve and Pierre were stuck in limbo, locked in darkness in that horrible wood cabin in La Vielle-Loye and, because it seemed almost an act of cruelty to leave them there, I began texting Freida to egg her on.

After a few more days, I thought about them again, and realising Freida still hadn’t replied, I decided to phone her instead. It was nine in the evening, but she answered immediately, saying she was working on them at that very moment. She’d ‘done’ tapes 3 and 4, she said, and was giving them a last read through.

‘Please, just send them, faults and all,’ I begged. ‘I really don’t care about typos.’

But Freida was nothing if not professional. ‘You’ll have them both tomorrow morning when you get up,’ she said. ‘I promise.’

‘Just tell me about that bloody cabin. Do they get out?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, they get out.’

‘Thank God,’ I said. ‘Thank God for that.’

‘And do not worry,’ she said. ‘I’m on holiday all next week, so the next instalments will be somewhat expedited.’