23 Honeyhill Road was a small, neat terraced house with bright white net curtains at the windows. But beyond the nets the house was empty save for the memories that it held. The ‘sold’ sign outside had gone up earlier that week, and Billie was here to take a last look around her childhood home and bid a final farewell. The front door caught on a pile of junk mail as she pushed it open, and the air in the hallway was warm and still and slightly fusty. There was a rectangle of wallpaper where the pattern was still bright, unfaded by the sun. It had been preserved by her graduation photograph which had hung there in pride of place – one of the first things visitors saw when they came into the house. She walked through into the kitchen where they had eaten so many family meals together. Hurried breakfasts of tea and toast before school for her, and the bus depot for her mum and dad, where they had both worked, met and fallen in love. She could still picture her mum standing at the counter making sandwiches for their packed lunches while she sang along to songs playing on the radio. She remembered picking fresh mint in the garden for all those Sunday dinners, and the smell of bread sauce simmering in a pan and turkey roasting in the oven on so many Christmas mornings. Billie unlocked the back door and followed the well-worn path down the narrow garden. The path on which she had drawn hopscotch squares with chalk, and the garden where she had played with Bubble and Squeak, her pet guinea pigs. The lawn was a little overgrown now, and the narrow flowerbed that bordered it was sprinkled with weeds. But soon, no doubt, it would be covered in decking and dotted with carefully chosen architectural plants in zinc containers. The couple who were moving in next month had shared with her their plans for a ‘low-maintenance outdoor entertaining space’. Billie wandered back inside and glanced through the door to the lounge, where she had sat together with her mum and dad on the sofa watching TV and sharing boxes of chocolates and bags of crisps – their Saturday night treats. After her mum died and her dad became ill, she had come home to look after him and they had watched travel documentaries together. Just before he died, he told her that he felt as though he had travelled the world without leaving his armchair.