Read the following extract.

The first house had been prepared for our arrival. Every lamp was switched on, although it was three in the afternoon, and the dining table had been laid for four people who would never eat there. Four white plates. Four folded napkins. Four empty glasses waiting for a celebration.

The estate agent moved ahead of us, opening doors with a bright sweep of her arm. She described the kitchen as generous, the hallway as welcoming and the main bedroom as a retreat. The words seemed to have arrived before the rooms and been fitted to them afterwards.

Nothing was out of place. The cushions formed a row of identical squares. Three books rested on the coffee table, their spines matching the grey rug. Even the bowl of green apples looked obedient.

‘You could move straight in,’ the agent said.

I nodded. I could see how someone might live there. Someone careful and quiet, who remembered to hide the toaster and never left a wet towel on a chair. As I walked upstairs, I tried to place our furniture in each room, but it appeared clumsy and oversized. Our scratched kitchen table would interrupt the clean floor. My father’s old armchair would bring its sagging cushion and its history into the colourless sitting room.

In the garden, a square of new grass shone beneath the rain. There were no footprints on it.

We were meant to drive home after that. Instead, my partner noticed a handwritten sign tied to a gate two streets away. The ink had run, so that the telephone number leaned downhill. Twenty minutes later, we were waiting beneath the cracked porch of a narrow brick house while its owner searched for the correct key.

The door opened with a shoulder rather than a bright sweep of the arm.

Inside, the hallway was dark and smelled faintly of oranges. A bicycle occupied most of the space. Coats leaned from hooks in a heavy crowd, and a single red glove lay on the stairs as if it had stopped halfway up to rest. The owner apologised for everything at once: the boxes, the dog hair, the loose tile, the washing hanging above the bath.

The kitchen was smaller than the first house’s utility room. One cupboard refused to close. Rain tapped through a leak into a saucepan on the windowsill, producing a patient, irregular music.

Yet light from the back door spread across the old table and caught in the scratches. I imagined our blue mugs beside the kettle. My father’s armchair would fit beneath the window, where the fabric would fade a little more each summer. In the cramped garden, rosemary had pushed through a broken paving stone, sharp and green.

Upstairs, the smallest bedroom had clouds painted on the ceiling. They were badly shaped and too numerous, but I stood beneath them longer than I needed to. Through the window, roofs tilted towards the railway, and a train drew a silver line through the distance.

‘It needs work,’ my partner said carefully.

Below us, the saucepan received another drop.

On the way out, I caught my sleeve on a nail beside the door. The owner apologised again. I looked back into the crowded hallway, at the bicycle, the resting glove and the strip of light reaching from the kitchen.

‘How quickly,’ I asked, ‘could we come back with a builder?’