Could Sarah bring herself to sell her home to this dreadful woman? Or indeed, to anyone?
BY RACHEL HORE
Sarah shaded her eyes against the low November sun and watched from the sitting room as the estate agent’s shiny car drew up outside.
His passenger, a stylish woman in her late forties wearing a toffee-coloured jacket over camel trousers and high heels, stepped out with a grace that drew her envy. Sarah heard a miaow and looking down remembered that her fluffy black cat was moulting.
“Come on, Pumpkin,” she whispered, gathering him up. “Beige trousers and black cats don’t mix.”
She carried him to the kitchen and helped him out through the cat flap, then went to answer the front door.
“Morning, Sarah, and a chilly one.” Charlie, the estate agent was a personable young man with sparkling blue eyes – a “gym bunny”, as Sarah’s daughter Rosie would say. “This is Mrs Debell.”
“It’s Diana, please,” the woman purred, extending a manicured hand for Sarah to shake. “Such a darling little cottage.” The designer tote bag that hung from her shoulder probably cost more than Sarah earned in a month.
Sarah stood aside to admit them, tall Charlie having to duck under the cottage’s low lintel.
“I’ll show Mrs Debell round myself, shall I?” he asked pointedly.
“Of course. I’ll be here if you need me.” She was glad she’d remembered to turn the hall lights on, as otherwise it would be gloomy.
“Perfect. Shall we start in the sitting room, then? This way.”
Diana Debell was the third person he’d brought to look round the Old Forge, presumably beguiled by the unrealistically fabulous photographs on his company’s website.
Since Sarah’s husband John had died two years before, she’d been living in limbo, undecided about what to do next. She was dug into life in this village.
They’d moved here soon after they were married. It was where Rosie had been born. Sarah still had friends here from back then; she’d even done a stint on the parish council, but everything was hard going without John.
Rosie now lived in Manchester, two hundred miles away, where she’d found a job after university. Recently, she’d married and had a baby. Sarah had made the difficult decision to move near her.
It meant selling this draughty Victorian cottage that they’d bought for a song thirty years ago and buying a modern city flat that her daughter said would “do fo
