Freshpaint

Mind your back!’I squeeze into the corner of the half-landing as two removal men manoeuvre a chest of drawers down the stairs. They’ve been flat out for a couple of hours now and there’s not much left to go.

From the top of the stairs, I can see into the bedrooms, each one now looking bare and slightly distressed. Or is that just me?

When we bought this place we named it the White House, and I was sure we’d never move again. Yet here I am, preparing to leave it behind. It’s almost 26 years to the day since we moved in but it seems like yesterday.

Martin and I had been hunting round this area for weeks, looking for somewhere suitable to buy. We’d viewed two places in the nearby village that afternoon and were calling it a day when I misread the map. We took a wrong turn and drove past a ‘for sale’ sign for a property we knew nothing about.

The house was set back along a long drive, in grounds full of heavily laden fruit trees and neatly kept lawns. It was beautiful.

‘Pull over, Martin,’ I said. Once he did, I was out of the car and halfway down the drive. The exterior was shabby but I didn’t care. It was love at first sight. I fell as heavily for the house and, more importantly, its garden, as I had fallen for Martin three years earlier.

Martin stood beside me. I knew that he wasn’t as bothered about the garden as me but there was a double garage and what looked like a workshop next to it that appealed to him.

‘It’s bound to be out of our price range, Jane,’ he said.

He wrapped his arms around me, resting them on my ever-increasing bump. Time was running out if we were to find a home before the baby came.

I sighed. ‘You’re probably right. But there’s no harm in asking.’

‘Needs a lot doing to it.’ I could imagine the estate agent Lynda shaking her head as she said this when we rang to ask if we could view the property. She added that she didn’t want to put us off but she had to be honest.

But then she quoted an asking price that was just within our budget and we decided we may as well take a look inside. Lynda agreed to bring the keys and show us the house right away, as it was empty. While we waited, we wandered through the garden getting the feel of the place.

‘I think we should paint it white,’ I said to Martin as we looked up at the front of the house. ‘It looks as if it was the original