31 Dream Street by Lisa Jewell Read Free Book Online

on the possibility that you might still have made me proud. I believe you will be forty soon, the age at which a man knows whether or not he will be able to call himself a success when the grim reaper comes to call.
I will be in touch, via Peter.
    Best,
Reggie (Dad)

9
    It was almost impossible for Toby to ascertain what all the disparate members of his household were up to at any given point of the day, so finding a moment when the house was empty so he could invite an estate agent in for a valuation was a challenge.
    But a few days after his father’s letter arrived in the post he found himself unexpectedly in possession of the knowledge that Ruby was at rehearsals, Joanne and Con were at work and Melinda was ensconced in a salon in Crouch End having her highlights done.
    The agent who arrived at his house five minutes later was called Walter. He had a moustache. ‘Well, I must say that this is a very exciting opportunity,’ were his first words upon entering the house and shaking Toby’s hand. ‘It’s not often that a property like this comes on to the market.’ He wiped a slick of sweat off his forehead with the back of a hairy hand and wrote something in an A5 notebook. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, gazing round the entrance hall. ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes. Quite magnificent. So, you are the owner, Mr Dobbs?’
    ‘Yes, that’s right.’
    ‘And you’ve owned the house for how long?’
    ‘Fifteen years. Almost.’ Toby gulped. The combination of Walter’s suit, moustache and notebook madehim feel like he was being interrogated by a detective
    from a 1970s TV drama.
    Walter nodded approvingly.
    ‘I must warn you,’ said Toby, sensing that Walter was getting too excited, too soon, ‘I haven’t maintained the house particularly well. It’s in need of a fair bit of TLC.’
    ‘Ah, well, let’s see it, then.’
    Toby led him through the house. Due to the short notice, he hadn’t had a chance to tidy or clean, and random items were strewn carelessly about the place: shoes, mugs, papers, hairbrushes, empty jiffy bags, CDs, old toast, a plant that was halfway through being re-potted on a sheet of newspaper on the dining-room table, the combined detritus of five people’s separate existences.
    ‘It’s a bit messy, I’m afraid. I live with quite a few people and they’re all out.’
    ‘Oh, so you don’t live alone?’
    ‘No. I live with some friends.’
    ‘I see. No family, children?’
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘just us grown-ups.’ He laughed nervously.
    Walter didn’t say much as they moved round the house, just scratched notes into his notebook and made the occasional approving noise. Toby felt guilty as he opened the doors of his tenants’ rooms for Walter to peruse. He never, under any circumstances, went into his tenants’ rooms. He tried his hardest not to look at anything.
    Ruby’s room, predictably, was the messiest. The windows were hung with silky lace-trimmed shawls and dusty strings of fairy lights. The floor was covered in clothes, books and CDs. Her bed was unmade and overloaded with cushions and discarded underwear. A full ashtray sat on her dressing table, surrounded by scruffy cosmetics and piles of jewellery. It looked like the bedroom of a student, of someone who’d just left home and didn’t know how to look after themselves. It smelled of forgotten sex and cigarettes.
    Con and Melinda’s room was bare and minimal. Melinda’s bed was made with a neat crisp duvet and two fat pillows; Con’s mattress on the floor was unmade and messy. A wooden panel to the left of the window had been decorated with the word ‘Clarabel’ and a small black painting of a pretty girl wearing a hat and smoking a cigarette. Clarabel was a manic-depressive performance artist who’d lived here for six months in 1996 and left to marry a Russian gymnast and move to St Petersburg. It was strange to see her avant-garde and mildly disturbing self-portrait staring out at him from the midst of Con and Melinda’s bland