My name is Paul. I work three days a week in a bookshop and write for a magazine. I am here in my predicament, and it is not so bad. Amy disagrees with me about that. But then we disagree about nearly everything. Or we did until she disappeared.

*

‘Do you like the word property?’ I asked Amy.

My sister, two years younger than me, considers herself the senior.

‘Property?’ she said.

‘You say it a lot. I’ve seen this great property.’

‘What word should I use? What word would you like me to use?’

‘I don’t know, something less abstract: house, flat, maisonette, or we could change the subject, talk about, I don’t know, music, philosophy, art, love.’

‘Something less abstract?’

‘Property, property, property – do you know what I hear?’

‘What?’

‘Mine, mine, mine.’

‘Do you know what I hear when you talk about property?’

‘What?’

‘Whine, whine, whine.’

*

Recently Amy and I have come into some property together, this little terraced house, only three minutes’ walk from the sea. Open your mouth and breathe that air in, the freshest air in all of the country. Listen to the seagulls’ shrieks. Inside the house you’ll see it’s very tastefully decorated, with wooden flooring, painted walls, a modern kitchen with a door that leads out to the little garden that catches the sun in the morning. Yes, sun. Such glorious summers you could have here, by the waves. It could make an imaginative person a lovely holiday home. Is ‘imaginative’ the word? Self-reliant. You wouldn’t believe how cheaply things go up here. Mortgage payments would be nothing for someone used to the price of life in London. We’ll probably drop the price again soon. It’s slow at the moment. Not much movement. Open the door and the freshest air just fills your lungs. The streets, seen from above, ripple out in concentric circles around a man-made hill: a pebble dropped in a pool, a feat of ambitious town planning from Decimus Burton, the Victorian architect who also designed Hyde Park, Green Park, St James’s Park. People used to come on the train from miles around for their holidays. The line closed a long time ago, but even though we’re surrounded on three sides by the sea we’re hardly isolated. It’s only forty minutes by tram to the nearest train station, and that’s only three hours from London. New trams too, very comfortable. We’d live here ourselves if we could. If it were possible.

*

The magazine I write for is called White Jesus – who knows exactly why? The title is composed of words of equal length convenient for cover design, allows for occasional crucifixion photo shoots, appeals to the editor’s messiah complex and offends ‘civilians’, by whom the editor might mean ‘Christians’, who aren’t offended at all, who remain unaware of the magazine, not working in fashion or hairdressing, or living in Dalston.