Chapter Thirty Three

33


Asta la vista, Bailey

Wednesday, January 4

I have made much of Hartley Castle House’s commanding hilltop position and resultant expansive views across the Moors, a view encompassing any number of knolls, valleys, drystone walls, sheep, patches of forest sprouting from the hills like Mohawk haircuts and, it would seem, ringside seats to any local carnage.

Local carnage aside, this view was a significant part of the property’s appeal. I loved that view, thrived on it and I could stare at it for hours. Which was just as well as we were paying through the nose for it in our extortionate lease. Admittedly this lease did not spell it out as blatantly as “House x pounds, view y”, views were just y houses like this were so x-ey. My view was that the more I stared at that view, the better value for money we got.

Until today when without any notice from the realtors, our view was suddenly gone.

‘Where’s the lease, Gabriel?’ I said ripping open kitchen drawers. ‘I want to see what it says about fog.’

Of course the lease said nothing about fog. Especially this sort of fog, the kind of thick, seeping ice cold mist that fell on the land like a Kiss concert from a helicopter. Then, much like a Kiss concert, hung around for an eternity. If a rented hedge trimmer broke down, you got your money back. If a rented view broke down…

‘Think of it from the realtor’s point of view, monkey,’ my ever pragmatic partner said midafternoon as I paid for yet another hour of exorbitantly expensive pea soup. ‘If they added your so called Fog Clause into the lease – and I’m still not sure if you’re serious – what sort of precedent is that going to set?’

‘It would set a perfectly decent precedent, Gabriel. And to answer your question, yes, I am serious. Deadly serious. The ad for this place clearly said “Magnificent views”. It also said “farmhouse kitchen with authentic Aga oven.” If that Aga broke down through no fault of our own, they’d have to come and fix it. If the wallpaper peeled off our “newly refurbished” house, or the “new” carpet came up on the stairs through no fault of our own, they’d have to come and fix it. I want them to come and fix my magnificent view!’

After a long, all too thoughtful stare from my fiancé, I spat ‘What?’

She started and widened her eyes at me. ‘What? Oh.’ She shook her head as if to jettison a thought across the room as Dave Land drove past on a tractor. ‘Nothing, I was just trying to work out where that one sat on the Bailey weirdo meter,’ she said before spinning to the sink and fiddling with taps with her back to me.

Truth is I was joking. Kind of. Initially. Fog was fog and the notion of complaining about it to the realtors was, of course, absurd. But what had begun as merely odd behaviour became something else. Something more sinister. It wasn’t the fog as such I was riled about. The fog merely represented something else I had little or no control over and seemed to be losing more and more control over by the day.

My life.