one of my visits, I was brave enough – or stupid enough, depending on your point of view – to open the gate, walk up the long path that’s bordered by lavender bushes on both sides and divides the square front lawn into two triangles, and peer in through the front window. I was afraid I’d be caught trespassing and couldn’t really concentrate. A few seconds later an elderly man with the thickest glasses I’ve ever seen emerged from the house next door and turned his excessively enlarged eyes in my direction. I hurried back to my car before he could ask me what I was doing, and, afterwards, remembered little about the room I’d seen apart from that it had white walls and a grey L-shaped sofa with some kind of intricate red embroidery on it.
I’m looking at that same sofa now, on my computer screen. It’s not so much grey as a sort of cloudy silver. It looks expensive, unique. I can’t imagine there’s another sofa like it.
Kit loves unique. He avoids mass-produced as far as is possible. All the mugs in our kitchen were made and painted individually by a potter in Spilling.
Every piece of furniture in the lounge at 11 Bentley Grove looks like a one-off: a chair with enormous curved wooden arms like the bottoms of rowing boats; an unusual coffee table with a glass surface, and, beneath the glass, a structure resembling a display cabinet with sixteen compartments, lying on its back. Each compartment contains a small flower with a red circle at its centre and blue petals pointing up towards the glass.
Kit would like all of these things. I swallow, tell myself this proves nothing.
There’s a tiled fireplace with a large map above it in a frame, a chimney breast, matching alcoves on either side. A symmetrical room, a Kit sort of room. I feel a little nauseous.
Christ, this is insane. How many living rooms, up and down the country, follow this basic format: fireplace, a chimney breast, alcoves left and right? It’s a classic design, replicated all over the world. It appeals to Kit, and to about a trillion other people.
It’s not as if you’ve seen his jacket draped over the banister, his stripy scarf over the back of a chair . . .
Quickly, wanting to be finished with this task I’ve set myself – aware that it’s making me feel worse, not better – I work my way through the other rooms, enlarging their pictures. Hall and stairs, carpeted in beige; chunky dark wood banister. A utility room with sky-blue unit fronts, similar to those in the kitchen. Honey-coloured marble for the house bathroom – clean and ostentatiously expensive.
I click on a picture of what must be the back garden. It’s a lot bigger than I’d have imagined, having only seen the house from the front. I scroll down to the text beneath the photographs and see that the garden is described as being just over an acre. It’s the sort of garden I’d love to have: decking for a table and chairs, two-seater swing with a canopy, vast lawn, trees at the bottom, lush yellow fields beyond. An idyllic countryside view, ten minutes’ walk from the centre of Cambridge. Now I’m starting to understand the 1.2-million-pound price tag. I try not to compare what I’m looking at to Melrose Cottage’s garden, which is roughly the size of half a single garage. It’s big enough to accommodate a wrought-iron table, four chairs, a few plants in terracotta pots, and not a lot else.
That’s it. I’ve looked at all the pictures, seen all there is to see.
And found nothing. Satisfied now?
I yawn and rub my eyes. I’m about to shut down the Roundthehouses website and go back to bed when I notice a row of buttons beneath the picture of the back garden: ‘Street View’, ‘Floorplan’, ‘Virtual Tour’. I don’t need a view of Bentley Grove – I’ve seen more than enough of it in the past six months – but I might as well have a look at number 11’s floorplan, since I’ve got this far. I click on the button, then hit the ‘x’ to shut down the screen within seconds of it opening. It isn’t going to help me to know which room is where; I’d be better off taking the virtual tour. Will it make me feel as if I’m walking around the house myself, looking into every room? That’s what I’d like to do.