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Gazumpee, Anne Enright is still seething mad with Mr X, the man who's living in the house she wanted!

Everyone has a lost house. Until you’re thirty it is the men you regret – the ones who got away - after thirty, and in a rising market, it is the houses. Isn’t it awful, being middle class?

But you fall in love with a house, as you fall in love with a man. You imagine your life with a man, as you imagine your life in a house - in those rooms, with those stairs, but maybe, yes certainly, with different paper on the walls. You move from the hall into the kitchen in your mind and think about windchimes – could you live with a windchime? You certainly could live with a coatstand, or maybe even a whole cloakroom, or just a couple of hooks on the wall, instead of the way you live now, just chucking your damn jacket onto a chair.

So, seriously pregnant, and dreaming of gardens, space, and light, we start looking out of town, and find, immediately, our very own house – cheap! A house with a garden, space and light, a house where you can sit out for your breakfast and see nothing but trees. The only problem is that it belongs to someone else. But this is just a sort of minor error, a misunderstanding, this is something we can clear up.

So a month of - you know – Apr. Bridging finance. Surveyor. Subsidence. Roof! There’s always lots of roof. Offer. Counter offer. I am planting rhododendrons in my head, and worrying about the child getting lost in all those trees. I have painted the front room, I have knocked through downstairs. I have rehung the washing line in a more convenient place, and turned the garage into a playroom. Then we get The Phone Call. The vendor, meaning the guy who is currently - brazenly - living in our house, is about to close with a someone who, two days ago, walked up and knocked at the door. We have three hours. The baby is kicking up a storm in my tummy, and it’s father’s mobile is stuck on answering machine. There follows two weeks of gazump, counter gazump and final gazump, when the only thing that’s certain is that the man who, through some dreadful mistake happens to be living in our house, is mad.

And so there it goes, sailing off in my mind, the lost house. And with it, I suppose, a lost life. The particular life we might have led. And slowly, as the imaginary rhodedendrons wither along the fence, my mind drifts to Mr X. The man who knocked at the door. The man who walked up and bought our life, and doesn’t even know who we are.

I wonder does he have a wife, a child? Will she peg out clothes on the washing line that is forever now strung in the wrong place, will the child walk down the road and in through the door of my child’s incredibly convenient school? I want to see him move in. I want to see their furniture going up the path and in through the door. I want to see what lights they turn on in those rooms, whether they sit out front, as I would do, and read as the sun goes down. Sometimes, when I am in the car, I think about turning into the road, and parking quietly and waiting.

I wonder there isn’t more slaughter when it comes to real estate. I wonder could you stand up in court and plead real estate as you might plead insane. They stole our house. Case dismissed! And the judge tells you about the crooked estate agent who didn’t even let him bid on that small georgian farmhouse on fifty acres, that he, as a judge was supposed to own. Sold it to a developer at a knock-down price. Took home a wad of cash in a brown paper bag. I took ‘em out with my Colt .45. Yes even the very rich have their regrets, their bad choices and missed opportunities, their different lives - the house that was just that bit too far out, that was maybe hard to heat, the house that bit to expensive, that bit too small. The house where you would be another person, with a coatstand, or a cloakroom, or maybe just some hooks on the wall.

I still drive by, but I never do turn into the street. I say Oh well, the walls were a bit ticky tacky, and those rooms at the back, actually quite dark, when you think about it. There was a sort of sadness upstairs, as though the people who lived there were not exactly… happy. I hope Mr X senses it, and feels uneasy in his skin, and realises the mistake he has made. The gazumper. The greedy guts. He bought an unhappy house, from a madman, a house that really belonged… to someone else.

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