Mark doesn’t shake her hand, merely nods at her. She’s too excited – too grateful to this man – to take offence. He’s tall and thin, as Jake described, mid-twenties, slightly stooped, as if trying to diminish his height. Despite the heat, he’s wearing a scuffed leather jacket over a black T-shirt, jeans that hang low from his hips, greyish Converse trainers that might once have been white. It brings their own more formal clothing into sharp relief. Both she and Jake have dressed up for the occasion, as if it were an interview they were about to attend, not the viewing of a flat.

His scruffy clothing aside, there’s something dark and serious in the quick glance Mark gives her and she sees that he’s attractive in a raffish sort of way. Long eyelashes. Liquid green eyes.

The men talk about work and their mutual acquaintance – Ian – the vital link in the chain that led Jake and Leah to Mark and this house. As they talk, Leah’s attention drifts, her eyes drawn to the house. One of the terraces flanking three sides of the park, it has all the imposing grandeur of the age in which it was built. Sash windows, a fanlight in a sunburst pattern, stone steps leading up to the threshold. The front door is painted a deep purple, the paint peeling in places, but Leah can imagine that at one time it was bright and glossy, the brassware shining bright.

Jake is giving an account of all the weeks they’ve spent looking, the dispiriting queues they’ve joined outside houses in Ranelagh, flats in town, only to be knocked back again and again.

Mark nods, staring down at the pavement where he’s dropped his cigarette butt, crushing it beneath his trainer. It’s clear he’s not really interested. He probably has no understanding of how odd this feels for Leah and Jake, turning up outside a building with no line of people forming, knowing that without ever having set foot inside the place, it’s already theirs. Or maybe he’s embarrassed by their presence here on the street, awkward about the arrangement made between them. Leah is surprised by the feeling that comes over her now of something illicit passing between them – as if the agreement that’s been reached is unlawful or underhand. She glances across at the houses on the opposite side of the street – the long row of sash windows, intermittently open to the evening air. The last house is smaller than its neighbours – a newer addition, perhaps, more modest in scale. For just a second, she thinks she sees the ghostly oval of a face peering down at her through an upstairs window. But then she blinks and her vision clears, revealing only a blank space, the swathe of a curtain half hidden from view.