Dulcie knew this estate would be the perfect place to live for a young family . . .
BY ALISON CARTER
Set in 1960
IT looked as though there was a lot of rain about to drop out of a heavy sky. Dulcie hoped she could fit in showing the house before the heavens opened.
“Hello, Paddy,” she called out cheerily.
The caretaker was up a ladder at number 95, doing something with lead flashings.
“Dulcie!” He grinned down at her. “Hello. Nice day.”
“I disagree,” she replied. “Have you seen the clouds?”
He frowned at the sky.
“Then I need to sort out the guttering in the flat at number ten.”
“Have you put in those bedding plants for Mr Webster?” Dulcie asked.
Mr Webster was the boss of Holliston Estate and Managing Agents.
The firm had been there when the first brick of the estate was put in place, and now they were selling the final properties and looking after the residents’ needs.
It was a small business, and the Spencer estate was by far their biggest and most prized account.
“Not yet,” Paddy said. He was fiddling with the lead again. “They’re still in all those little pots.”
“You should make a start. He’s coming tomorrow.”
Paddy was young for a caretaker – Dulcie guessed he was thirty.
She had recently discovered that he had children – two girls who, to Dulcie, looked identical but were apparently two years apart in age.
Paddy had been widowed soon after the arrival of child number two, and Dulcie thought that must have been truly ghastly.
He had taken the job on the estate because the hours were flexible and there was only him for school pick-ups.
Paddy was good at the job, though he annoyed Mr Webster by spending too much time on tenants’ problems and not enough on making the unsold properties look smart.
Dulcie liked him, and his girls weren’t nearly as noisy as other children she knew.
Paddy had been in the job a year and had moved into the estate’s showhouse two months ago.
Eighty per cent of the homes had now been sold or rented out.
Mr Webster had decided that the showhouse could now be used, so Paddy had been given it temporarily, for a reduced rent.
Dulcie had been inside the showhouse, before and occasionally after Paddy had moved in.
She sometimes wondered how he and the girls managed in there.
For instance, it didn’t have internal doors.
“Doors make a house look smaller to a prospective owner,” she’d exp
