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she’d lie in bed at night and consider the many years he’d spent embroiled in the careful manufacture of corrective, protective and palliative foot appliances –

      

       Oh those magnificent, one-off, hand-stitched surgical boots – With the ‘Charlesworth’ splint, nestling softly inside…

      Love could be rather like shoe-making, she’d quietly reason –

      

       All in the finish –

       And in the detailing…

      For maximum comfort and minimum wear, your basic raw materials – be they plastic, synthetic, fabric or leather – had to be carefully – nay scrupulously – manipulated to fit. Over-the-counter, made-to-measure; it didn’t really matter. There was definitely a craft in it.

      218.

      

      No, seriously…

      That’s Two Hundred (one, two, three, four, five –

       Go on,

      Count them)

      – and Eighteen (one, eight) faults –

      

       Yes, faults –

       ie

       Problems,

       Botch-ups

      – on your average New Build property.

      218.

      She’d seen it on a television report. Some houses fared slightly better, they’d claimed, and some fared slightly worse. But 218 was the average –

      

       Can that really be right?

      They’d also maintained – during this same incendiary broadcast –

      

       Why oh why did I insist on staying up late?

       Why didn’t I just go to bed early, like Isidore said?

      – that the sensible buyer should at no costs –

      

       Under Strictly No Circumstances

      – consider purchasing a New Build property situated either in, or around, a notable dip. This was because most New Builds were sited on meadowland – bogs – flood plains; on the outskirts of town; the left-over bits of land; bits that nobody had ever bothered with before –

      

       But hang on…

      – Which inevitably begs the question, ‘Why?’

      

       Exactly!

       Hmmn…

      Remote control –

       Volume…uh…

       Up

      Were our ancestors all just thoroughly unadventurous? Were they obstinately – neurotically, even – attached to mounds and to hillocks? Was it merely a question of safety (of finding the best site to defend against the marauding invader)? Or was the population so tiny back then that they never felt the urge (there was simply no call) to build in these left-over places?

      Finally (and here’s the rub) did they perhaps know something about the kinds of environments best suited for human habitation? Had they worked out this equation themselves, over time, through a system of trial and error? Did they have more respect for the pitfalls of nature? Did they understand the land? And then did we –

      Those damn politicians –

      And those evil-bastard, money-grabbing contractors –

      – just conveniently resolve not to understand? To forget all the lessons they’d learned, and to build on these marginalised sites anyway (while offering a swift –

       arrogant

      – but mechanical nod to that delightfully infallible modern double-act of ‘progress’ and ‘technology’?

      

      Infallible, that is, until they’ve got your damn money).

      The bottom line (the programme stated) was that available sites were often empty for perfectly good reasons. If there wasn’t landfill somewhere in the general vicinity (oozing a terrifying cocktail of poisonous gases out into the stratosphere), then there would definitely be water.

      

       That horrible, interminable drip, drip, drip…

      Elen and Isidore lived in a New Build. It was set in a slight dip (a little saucer), and she absolutely hated it. She’d always loathed New Builds (she’d never made any bones about this fact. At root – Isidore carped – she was a snob. ‘So are you,’ she’d say, ‘but just of a different kind.’).

      Of course a tiny part of her quite liked the idea of something new, something virgin, but it was only a very small part, and it was dramatically overshadowed by the general thrust of her opinion –

       Unfashionable, maybe…

      – that something’s intrinsic value was inversely proportional to its longevity –

      

       The blackened frying-pan

       The antique, diamond cuff-links

       The family Bible

      It’d been a sacrifice, but she’d made it in all good faith. She’d moved there for Isidore –

      

       Clean slate,

       New broom

      – but it rapidly came between them. And the reasons? So far she’d tabulated 77 –

      

       77 flaws

      And while she knew that it was unhelpful, she simply couldn’t stop herself. She kept an on-going list, in chalk, on a small blackboard in the kitchen –

      

       Day sixty-four:

       The garage door is sticking…

      – and every entry (in tinier and tinier writing, towards the bottom) caused her husband immeasurable suffering. But she kept on tabulating.

      73 had just been insignificant things (a chip in the woodwork, a cracked tile, the oven grill not wired-in properly). Four had been fundamental:

      

      1. The dip (obviously). The autumn after they’d moved in, the entire front garden had flooded. And it didn’t drain properly. And this had affected the front fascia. There was a great deal of mould. Black, dark green.

      

      2. A crack in the kitchen. It wasn’t horizontal (like all good cracks should be). It zig-zagged, like a child’s drawing of lightning, and Isidore now thought –

      

       Oh, great…

      – that there might be a problem with one of the supporting walls.

      

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