Charlie hadn’t understood the house, at first, or why it had to look so different from the normal type that most folk were content to live in. On the inside, there would be no carpet and no fancy Anaglypta, no dado rails, not even a partition wall. The downstairs would be open plan, with well-positioned corners that would hide the dining area from the living room, the kitchen from the hall. The floor line of the living space would spill on to a terrace. It wouldn’t be like any house he’d ever stood in. But the more he’d studied the design on paper, the more he’d grown attached to it.

Then, one morning, Mr Mayhood had brought out the 3D model from the storeroom and they’d circled round the plan chest to appraise it from all sides, so Charlie and his sister understood ‘the through-lines’ of the building. ‘Model-making’s far too intricate for me these days. But there’s a man we know in Hampstead. He’s not cheap by half, because he does terrific work, as you can tell.’ The roof had lifted off as though it were a doll’s house and they’d seen the way the ground plan was supposed to flow from room to room. The fireplace was cut out of foam and sandpaper, the painted floorboards made from matchsticks. His sister had been awestruck: ‘Look at all that detail on the bricks! Your fella’s eyes must be like magnifying glasses!’ But it was only on the day that Charlie had been standing there on site, surrounded by the scaffold and the smell of oiled timber, that he’d really got a sense of what the building would become. His body had gone weightless at the thought.

The Mayhoods’ satisfaction with it was much harder to determine. He’d tried to gauge it from the way they’d talked to Quinn, how often they’d both sighed and hummed and scratched their heads. At one point, eyeing up the intersection where the lower aspect of the roof was going to join the upper, Quinn had asked to borrow Joyce’s notebook. ‘Here, Flo, let me show you what I mean,’ he’d said. ‘This sort of thing is what I had in mind. A few rods here to suspend it. Flitch plates here on the one below,’ and he’d scribbled a quick picture of the problem – he was certain that the timber beams were not enough to bear the weight, but Florence had said, ‘Surely that’ll overload it. You’ve just made a different problem.’ Then Mr Mayhood had sketched out a version of his own on the reverse and argued that the cantilever would give plenty of support: ‘You see it now? They’ll hold each other, no two ways about it. I don’t see the benefit of steelwork. It’s redundant.’ This back and forth had lasted for an hour. Charlie’s toes had chilled from standing in one place so long and Joyce’s dour mood had worsened by the minute. She’d grown bored and weary, singing in that quiet, tuneless way she often liked to do when she was waiting for a bus. After a while, she’d lowered herself on to a stack of pallets, crossed her arms and stared down at her feet. When he’d gone to sit beside her, she’d said, ‘Wake me when it’s over. I don’t get why Mr Mayhood hasn’t told this fella where to go yet.’