Chapter One

 

“…a stunning opportunity to purchase this highly sought after property. A once in a life-time chance to acquire a spacious dwelling, within easy reach of local amenities.”

     Gulping down her third cup of scalding hot coffee, Molly studied a hackneyed example of estate agent language. Her interview with Crouchback, Lockwood and Biddle, the most flourishing of the several estate agents in her neighbourhood was due late that afternoon. She was trying to prepare. But how, with such a job?

     If appointed, she could sometimes walk to work rather than drive. At around four o’clock she set out for the interview. She decided to test out the pedestrian route, which she estimated should take no more than twenty-five to thirty minutes. Half way there, someone began to follow her. Pausing at a shop window, she pretended to peer in while searching in the reflections for her pursuer. The unwelcome footsteps petered out. On resuming her journey, she increased her pace. So did the stalker. With other people about, she did not feel unduly threatened. Nevertheless, it was tiresome.

    She suddenly whipped round and found herself facing a pasty-faced middle-aged man wearing a tired looking suit. He offered her a sickly grin, displaying teeth that appeared not to have been near a dentist for a while.

    Adding insult to injury, he ostentatiously looked her up and down and offered some unsolicited comments.       “Miss! You can’t possibly walk down the street like – er - without…By the look of you, you’d like a drink with me later?” He smiled again.

    “No – certainly not. I don’t know you from Adam and don’t appreciate being accosted by strangers. Some men really are the limit!”

    “Oh - come on. The way you - you’re asking to be...”

    “The way I...? How dare you. I’m dressed perfectly reasonably - modestly - not that it’s any of your business!” Her voice suddenly rose in fury as she found herself defending her behaviour. “Now leave me alone!”

    “You can always spot a certain kind of woman by how she...”

    Molly summoned up her most potent glare. He cast her a venomous look, but held back for a few moments as she walked on. Was it often going to be like this here? She had recently moved away from her home town, having tried for months to obtain employment there. Her boyfriend Trevor had followed. Somewhat to her irritation, he had found a job immediately.

~

    “Miss Minion. Your salary may seem modest, but there are significant opportunities to earn commission. That’s how most estate agents work. We always have. Take it or leave it.”

    Molly avoided the speaker’s eye, wondering why the chair of the interview panel was already defending the very poor salary offered when she had not even commented on it. To her horror, he had turned out to be her stalker. Introducing himself as Mr Redwood, he gave away nothing of their earlier encounter and failed to offer any other information about himself, such as his precise role in the company. As soon as she had recognised him she had been on the point of leaving, but held back as she remembered the feeble state of her bank account.

    If anyone had told her that she would work as an estate agent, she would have ranked the prospect lower than being a traffic warden. Armed with her first class degree in Geography, she had hoped for better things. And also for something close to her family and friends. But now, here was the prospect of a job at last, even if it was in a strange town miles away from her roots.

    “If I may borrow some of the language of your trade,” Molly said, without expression, “my proposed remuneration is deceptively small.”

    The interview panel glanced at each other and tittered unconvincingly. Her unwelcome acquaintance looked distinctly unimpressed. Two of the others, both men, were ostentatiously checking her out and not on her potential as an estate agent.

    “That’s all for now, Miss Minion. You’ll hear from us very soon. Assuming you are still interested in the post, despite your reaction to the salary offered.”

S    he began to walk home, hating the idea of accepting any job offer from Crouchback, Lockwood and Biddle. Yet here she was, actually strolling along in the sunshine. She could use the car sometimes – it was about half an hour on foot, so not exactly on the doorstep. But still, not always having to drive – that would be wonderful.

    The Estate Agent phoned her that evening and offered her the job. However, her dreams about walking to work were shattered when it became clear that she would often have to drive to properties that her employer was putting on the market.

~

    “A friend who works in retail told me about the idea of ‘objective selling’, Mr Harvey. Discover what the customer both wants and needs and feed them accurate information about what is available.”

    Molly was still thanking her lucky stars that her stalker had not turned out to be her immediate manager, Harvey. Nevertheless Harvey had preferred another candidate for the post Molly now occupied, but had been overruled by senior management. He had already told her of this and made no attempt to mask his feelings about it. Now, he began to stare at her with overt distaste. Molly again wondered just why he had been overruled.

    “Absolute rubbish,” he retorted brusquely. “Your job is to sell. And to ensure that customers acquire views about what they ‘need’ that will bring us profits. Don’t import pretentious nonsense about ‘objectivity’ here from whatever academic bullshit you were fed at university.”

    He opened the door to his office, firing a last instruction to her before closing it behind him. “There won’t be many customers today. Spend your time getting familiar with our stock, and make sure any visitors feel we’ve plenty of bargains on offer. I’ll see you later!”

    His door slammed. Molly wondered what he could possibly find to do in there. She proceeded to spend time studying the brochures and current files. He emerged just after lunch.

    “Right, Molly. Some brochure training. You must describe a property after you’ve viewed it – using language that will entice potential purchasers. We also video both outside and inside the property, but that won’t normally be your task. We’ll now watch a video together as a case study. When a new vendor is attached to your case load, you are provided with a little movie about the house, together with location details - and you can use Google Street View to study the immediate environment. Information about the current owners will also be supplied.”

T    hey watched Harvey’s clip. It was hard to concentrate, because a succession of rooms in a house interested her little more than watching paint dry.

“    Right. Let’s do the overall description for this one. Include ‘extensive scope for renovation’.”

    Molly looked at her manager questioningly.

    “It’s in neither decorative nor structural repair. There were plenty of clues in the video. You can’t have been concentrating. I mentioned flooring. Actually, you could say ‘wood effect flooring’”.

    “I’ve no idea what that means.”

    “The floors look vaguely as if they might be made of wood, yet it’s pretty clear that they aren’t and that we have no idea what they are made of.”

    The tutoring session dragged on. Another time, Molly might have found some of this quite entertaining. With Harvey and a job she was already finding repellent, it was both depressing and terminally boring.

    At last, Harvey switched off the video and rose to his feet. “Time you went out on your own,” he announced. “In the old days, we’d have given you longer to settle in, but...”

“    I’ve only just started, Mr Harvey. I’m very willing, but.” Her lies subsided into silence. She stared miserably at the floor.

    “You need commissions from the start in this job. Or you’ll starve! You and your fancy degree.” Harvey smiled cheerfully.

    Molly thought of a few things to say and said nothing.

    “Here’s the file. Everything you need there. Keys in the pocket.” Harvey glanced at Molly as if she were a slug nestling in his salad. “Here’s the last brochure we did for this one.”

    Molly casually flicked through the papers, and a detail suddenly caught her attention.

    “Oh? Who is Candlish? I don’t know anyone of that name here. But he’s done this one already.”

    Harvey looked slightly sheepish, gazing down at the dirty coffee cup on his desk.

    “Never mind that. Just get some more decent pictures. Use the camera, not your phone. I don’t care how good the phone is. Use the camera.”

    “OK OK. I wasn’t going to use my phone. Why haven’t I met Candlish? And why more pictures?”

    “He’s no longer with us. Not long gone, though.”

    “Why?”

    “Well. His extra-mural activities began to compromise his role here. Enough! Just go and get the job done.”

    “Sure.” Molly put on her jacket and turned to leave. She hesitated. “I’m just repeating what Candlish did. Must I?”

    Harvey stared at her and nodded wordlessly at the door.  “Oh, just wait a moment. You’ll need this, of course.” He handed Molly an elegant metallic fob. “One of those gated communities again. You need this to get through. There are so many now.”

    She swiftly pocketed the device and left the premises without ceremony.

    Her car juddered and vibrated as she drove over the innumerable potholes towards her destination. Whole stretches of road were beginning to crumble into mere dirt tracks. Had it been as bad as this when she was a girl? These days there was no money any more to maintain local amenities.

    She slowly approached a six foot high gate, topped by aggressively mounted sharp curved spikes. It marked the boundary between public and private domains. The fob in her pocket caused it to open for her, and to close silently as soon as she was through. Abruptly, her tyres hushed as the pitted menace of the municipal roads was replaced by a luxurious high quality durable surface. It was almost as if she had begun to glide over a sheet of ice. She was in a different world.

    Her destination house was in what her estate agent described as an area for the discerning owner. It apparently had “incredible views” and was “attractively distant” from local facilities. She briefly wondered whether anyone had ever tried to describe Harvey in their professional dialect. “Harvey is deceptively…” she murmured to herself, but was unable to complete the sentence.

    In front of her stretched a smooth dark road, free from traffic and even from any parked cars. She peered to right and left, scanning the gates for numbers. Mellow stone dwellings nestled in their own gardens, often hardly visible from the pavement. She stepped from her car into a hushed air, laden with the scent of moist leaves and tree bark. The gate of number 31 was stiff, as if unaccustomed to use. Large shrubs and trees hemmed her in from both sides as she walked towards the front door.

    Searching for the ideal camera shots, she was hindered by the dense foliage. Backing away from the building yet again to capture a good image, she trod on something hard with her left foot. She lurched to one side and turned her ankle painfully. She picked up the offending object. It was curiously heavy, apparently made of metal with a faint green lustre. There was no time to waste in studying it. Harvey would become an avenging force if she failed to return to the office before five o’clock. Without a second thought, she placed it in her case.

    The heavy key fitted beautifully and she only had to push gently for the front door to swing open without a sound. A large hall stretched a long way back into the house. Gleaming tessellated tiles were illuminated by the fading sunlight from a window high in the wall. The cool air smelled delicately of sandalwood and lavender. She strode from room to room, her camera clicking and her tablet recording the measurements. Everywhere seemed almost unnaturally clean, though her understanding was that the house had been empty for some months.

    She sat down in the living room. Curtains were drawn across the large French windows that presumably gave on to the back garden. The curtain materials were very thick, and the room was almost in darkness. It would have been sensible to turn on the lights but she felt too tired to bother. She made some notes on her tablet, leaned back in the very comfortable chair and reflected on just how little she was interested in her job, drowsiness almost overcoming her. Pushing her tablet into her case, her fingers encountered the heavy green object she had found in the front garden. Its surface was smooth and soft, like the pieces of serpentine among her brother’s geological specimens. There were a number of slight indentations and a bigger one in the centre. With an idle movement she gave it a gentle push. Something caught her eye. To her surprise, the light admitted from the very narrow cracks at each side of the curtains abruptly became quite intense. This was very odd, since it was still broad daylight, and if she had somehow switched on some outside lights, they could not cause this sudden change of brilliance. She rose to her feet and walked over to the curtains. She was about to twitch the edge a little to see what lay beyond when a gentle sound from behind her made her jerk violently.

    “Excuse me!” A soft voice broke the silence. She turned, to see a tall woman looking at her questioningly.

“I am the owner. My name is Miss Teece, and you must be someone from the estate agents.”

Molly nodded, but said nothing.

    “I thought we’d agreed that you would let me know when you were coming into the house. Lucky for you that I could see who you were. Otherwise I might have knocked you on the head and called the police.”

    “My apologies. Er - I was just given this job. I’ve only just started working at Crouchback, Lockwood and Biddle. They implied that the house was empty. My name is... Molly. ” She had no idea why she had suddenly offered her first name.

    “Well. As you can see, the house certainly isn’t empty!” Miss Teece spoke sharply. “I’m not impressed. Take my comments back to your manager.”

    Anxious to make amends, Molly said, “It’s a lovely place! And so tastefully decorated. “Is this yours?” she said, offering the green device to Miss Teece.

    “It certainly is. Give it to me at once! Where did you find it? I hope you didn’t just pick it up in here.”

    “No - no. It was lying in the garden.”

S    he felt like a child being sent to sit on the naughty step and immediately offered the mystery object to its owner. It weighed even more heavily in her hand than when she had first found it. Miss Teece made as if to snatch it from her. Then she seemed to think better of it.

    “Just hang on to it for a few moments. Sorry - I don’t know how it got out there. Must have slipped out of my bag. By the way, I’m acquainted with a guy originally from your place – a very decent person - Candlish.”

    “Oh. He’s left. I think I’m his replacement.”

    “Yes. He’s with us now – a rather special estate agency which exploits what’s still in your hands. If you hear that he was sacked, don’t believe a word of it. He left of his own accord.”

    “What? What are you talking about? What I’m holding?”

    “Come and see.” Miss Teece went over to the French windows and pressed a button somewhere. A low humming sound ensued as the curtains slowly parted. Light began to stream through. It had a strange quality, as if it had a subtle hue that could not be put into words. Molly moved to stand by the owner and stared. The light began to reveal a large comfortable sitting room. An old-fashioned fireplace was flanked on either side by alcoves filled with shelves of books from floor to ceiling. But it was not this that had caught her attention.