Читать книгу An Angel on My Shoulder - Theresa Cheung, Theresa Cheung - Страница 19

In the late 1980s my wife and I were trying to get our feet on the property ladder. She was a midwife and I was a fireman and we both worked long hours with little financial reward. We were sort of coping with the bills until my wife got pregnant with twins. It was the most amazing news but I had no idea how we could manage on our pay packets. At the time we were renting a tiny flat and as the months ticked away slowly the pressure to move out and find a proper home to start a family in was intense.

Every weekend we’d look around house after house, but each time they were either too expensive or too far away from our work. With just two months to go before I became a dad I started to get really worried. I scanned the newspapers and signed up for agencies, but there was nothing suitable. We came close to finding somewhere on one occasion but eventually lost out because I couldn’t get the deposit together in time.

One Saturday afternoon I got a phone call from a mate at work saying there was a house for sale a couple of streets away from him that might be worth checking out. On the off-chance that someone might be in to let us view it, I raced round immediately. It was a lovely little detached house in a quiet cul de sac with a park a few blocks away. As I walked up the drive I imagined myself mowing the lawn while my wife smiled at me from the kitchen.

I rang the doorbell and a man answered. He must have been in his sixties or early seventies and he introduced himself as Doug. He was more than willing to show us around. There were three spacious bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and a roomy kitchen, study and living room downstairs. The back garden was delightful and I complimented Doug on his flowerbeds. He chuckled and told me that he’d spent years getting the garden the way he wanted it. He said it had been a wilderness when he’d arrived and asked me to make sure that I took care of it in the same way when I lived there. I was surprised that he assumed I would be living here and asked him if other people had viewed the property. He said there had been four or five others but he wanted me to have the house. He told me to come round the following morning to meet his daughter and start the legal process. I asked him about a deposit and he said I wasn’t to worry. We’d sort something out in the morning. The house was ours.

Doug showed me to the door and as we said goodbye he took a pen out of his pocket. He asked me to give it back to his daughter the next day because he had borrowed it from her and had not given it back. I took the pen, which had the name ‘Alice’ engraved on it, and shook his hand firmly, promising him that I’d take care of his house. I was so excited that the oddness of it all didn’t really strike me until I was walking home. He’d said he wouldn’t be able to see us the next morning, but in that case why didn’t he just leave the pen for his daughter in her house?

When I went home that night I told my wife about what had happened. We didn’t allow ourselves to get our hopes up, though, as we had had them dashed so many times before and without anything written in stone we knew that Doug’s promise to us might not hold up. All the same, the next morning we went to meet Doug’s daughter with high hopes. I was due to start my shift later that day, so I had my uniform on.

A woman in her thirties opened the door and we introduced ourselves. I asked her if her name was Alice and she nodded. I told her that her father had shown us around the house yesterday and agreed to let us buy it. I told her that he had been very particular about the garden. I also handed her the pen he had asked me to give her. She didn’t say a word the whole time and I apologized for not giving her a moment to speak, but told her it was because we were so thrilled. Then I paused and waited for her to respond, but she just stood there staring at us. I asked her if she was OK and she nodded and gestured for us to step inside.