‘This house costs five crores to buy and two lakhs to rent.’

Anu almost tripped and fell. ‘Oh, that is a bit too low for us,’ she whispered to Sanju eliciting a silencing glare from him.

‘But, sir, ma’am,’ the man was now purring. ‘You are so in luck. I can’t tell you how lucky you are.’

You can stop repeating yourself. Anu felt her irritation raise. If not two lakhs, what is it? One lakh eighty thousand? Now that will be very affordable for us.

‘Let us look at the place, sir, ma’am.’ The man bowed dramatically like a butler in an old English household.

Anu butted in. ‘Can you tell us how lucky we are before we see the place?’

The man gave the fakest laughter she had heard in recent times. ‘No, ma’am, no! I want you to fall in love with the place first.’

As they stepped in, Anu gasped. They stood in a living room as big as their current house. It had a wall-to-wall glass window that overlooked a lush lawn. The rest of the tour seemed surreal to her. It was like the villas the Greek tycoons or the Sheiks owned in romance novels. They strolled upstairs, and Sanju had forgotten to close his mouth. The agent disappeared for a few minutes to take a phone call, leaving them in the massive master bedroom.

While Sanju sauntered to the French window, Anu finally found her voice. Her head spun from the tour. ‘Anu,’ Sanju’s voice had gone all husky. ‘This house is straight out of my dreams. I want to live here right this moment.’

‘Are you out of your mind? This house is not where people live. This is where celebrities live! I can see myself turning this into a large messy junkyard within a month!’ Anu could not believe Sanju wanted to live in an unreal world like that!

‘Now, sir, ma’am,’ the agent walked in, and his addressing them thus started to grate on Anu’s nerves. ‘You have seen the house. Shall we see the property now? Verdant Green boasts of five pools, two tennis courts …’

‘Multiple clubhouses and at least ten five-star restaurants.’ Anu completed the sentence for him, with her best sarcastic smile. ‘Can you please tell us the rent?’ She could feel Sanju cringe even without looking at him. He was certainly going to tell her later that she was way too crass in the way she spoke. She did not care. She wanted to get out of there before Sanju fell even more deeply in love with the house.