It’s so often the case that hoarding behaviour is triggered by bereavement. I identified Edward Finch’s type; a widower whose grief paralysed any tidying-up instinct he might have possessed. A straightforward, standard-issue case.

How wrong could I be?

THREE

Edward Finch was not one of those hoarders whose problem you would recognize from outside their homes. The front garden of his Lancing bungalow was well maintained, the gate neatly painted black, and no weeds allowed to assert themselves between the red bricks of the front path. The exterior was only distinguishable from all of the others in the road by choice of paintwork and curtains.

The interior, though, was another matter. As I could see as soon as he opened the front door.

He opened it wide, which was unusual. Many hoarders are resistant to letting anyone into their space. Even people they’re expecting. Many’s the appointment I’ve made which didn’t happen because the client wouldn’t allow me in. In some cases, I’ve had to go through a kind of wooing process, turning up every day for a week until I was finally granted admission. Occasionally, that moment never arrived and, if there was a Health and Safety issue, the police would have to take a battering ram to the front door.

Those who do let me in often take a long time to come to the door and then peer through a crack with the chain still in place. Edward Finch had no such inhibitions.

What the opened door revealed in the hall was untidiness but not squalor. Nor did I get the blast of smell for which I always prepare myself at a new property. I immediately removed the sharp-proof gloves which I wear as a precautionary measure on a first visit.

The walls of the hall were piled high with sagging cardboard boxes whose contents I could only guess at. They were teetering towards the ceiling and probably a bit wobbly but not an immediate danger (depending of course on how heavy their contents were). I’ve seen much worse. There was a clear path between them and the exposed carpet had been recently vacuumed.

Edward Finch did not look too far gone either. When I meet a new client, I have to be prepared for anything. Some hoarders are literally unaware of their appearance and, never seeing anyone, don’t make any concessions to personal hygiene. But he wasn’t like that.

A small, neat man with a good head of well-cut grey hair, he had shaved that morning. His brown eyes looked innocent, exposed almost, ready to flinch at any adversity. He wore a khaki quilted gilet over an open-necked tattersall shirt and light brown needlecord trousers.

‘Mrs Curtis, so good of you to come.’ As he had on the phone, he sounded almost surprised that I was fulfilling the agreement to visit him. I was only doing my job, after all.

‘My pleasure,’ I said. There was not exactly an awkward silence, but a vague one. He looked at me as if he had been expecting someone quite different. ‘May I come in?’ I asked.