across,” but she was exaggerating. I don’t. And anyway, this isn’t “anything,” this is Matt! I love him! And I’m ready to love his family too.
“Tell me everything about your parents,” I reiterate, squeezing his hand. “Everything. Don’t leave anything out.”
“OK.” Matt nods. “Well, there’s my dad.”
We walk along a bit in silence while I wait for Matt to continue. Till I realize that’s it.
“What’s your dad like?” I prompt, and Matt furrows his brow as though I’ve hurled some impossible problem at him.
“He’s…tall,” he says at last.
“Tall,” I say encouragingly. “Wow!”
“Not extreme,” Matt clarifies. “He’s about six foot two. Maybe six foot three. I can find out if you like.” He gets out his phone. “I’ll text him.”
He summons up his contacts page and I hurriedly say, “No! No, it doesn’t matter what his exact height is. So, he’s pretty tall. Amazing!”
I’m hoping Matt might carry on with more details, but he just nods as he puts his phone away again and we walk on, while I feel tiny prickles of frustration.
“Anything else?” I say at last.
“He’s…” Matt thinks for a bit. “You know.”
I quell an urge to retort “No, I don’t know, that’s the point.” But that would ruin the mood, so instead I say brightly, “What about your mother? What’s she like?”
“Oh.” Matt thinks for a while again. “She’s…You know. It’s hard to say.”
“Just anything!” I say, trying not to sound desperate. “Anything about her. Any detail. Big or small. Paint a picture.”
Matt is silent for a while, then says, “I guess she’s pretty tall as well.”
She’s tall too? That’s all he has to say? I’m starting to picture a family of giants here. I’m about to ask if he has any siblings when Matt says, “Here we are!” and my head jerks up in surprise. Followed by stupefied horror.
I’ve been so preoccupied, I haven’t noticed our surroundings changing as we’ve been walking. We’re not in a pretty garden square anymore. Or a pretty street. We’re standing in front of the ugliest building I’ve ever seen in my life and Matt is gesturing proudly at it. “Home!” he adds, just in case there was any doubt. “What do you think?”
What I honestly think is, I can’t believe anyone ever designed this. Or built it. It’s made of concrete with sinister-looking circular windows and odd rectangular structures extending in all directions. There are three blocks in total, linked by concrete walkways and stairways and weird angular bits. As I look up, I can see a distant, high-up face peering out of a glass stairwell as though in prison.
But then I feel guilty for having critical thoughts. London’s a nightmare to find a home in. It’s not Matt’s fault that this is all he could find.
“Wow,” I say. “This is…I mean, London property’s expensive, I know it’s hard, so…” I smile sympathetically at him and he beams back.
“Tell me. I was lucky to see this place on the market. I had to fight off three other bidders.”
I nearly fall over in the street. Three other bidders?
“It’s a great example of 1960s brutalism,” he adds with enthusiasm, opening the main front door and ushering me into a concrete-clad hallway.
“Right,” I respond faintly. “Absolutely! Brutalism.”
I’m sorry, but if you ask me, no word that contains “brutal” is a good word.
We travel up to the fourth floor in the kind of lift that belongs in a violent thriller, and Matt opens a black-painted front door into an atrium. It’s painted matte gray and contains a metal console table, a leather footstool, and a piece of wall-mounted sculpture straight ahead that makes me jump in fright.
It’s an eyeless face made from clay, straining out of a panel on a long neck as though it wants to scream or eat me. It’s the most grotesque, creepy thing I’ve ever seen. In revulsion, I swivel away—to see a similar piece of art on the adjacent wall, only this is ten hands all reaching out at me like something from a nightmare. Who makes this? I reach down to Harold for some reassurance and say, “Isn’t this…great, Harold?”
But Harold is whining unhappily at the face sculpture, and I don’t blame him.
“Don’t be scared!” I say. “It’s art.”
Harold gives me a desperate look as though to say, “Where have you brought me?” and I pat him, soothing myself as much as him.
“Take your coat?” says Matt, and I hand it over, trying desperately to think of something positive to say. In my peripheral vision