Crazy Paving by Louise Doughty Read Free Book Online Page B

Cottage sat on the edge of a patch of wasteground, a small, squat building at the end of a street surrounded by a wide expanse of earth, concrete and scrubby grass.
Sutton Street had once been a thriving row of cottages on the very edge of pre-First World War London. Then the city had swallowed it whole. Tower blocks and factories had sprung up around it. The
cottages had crumbled, one by one. Rosewood was the sole survivor in a wide patch of dereliction, the last molar in a broken, ruined mouth.
    William stood at the top of the street, looking down to where the cottage sat alone. To the left, the wasteground stretched away. On the other side, an informal rubbish tip had sprung up:
cardboard boxes, prams, a blue mattress with a burnt and blackened hole. Beyond it was the railway line embankment, punctuated by arches. Commuters coming in from Kent were able to look down on
Rosewood Cottage every day. Behind the embankment was the main road, cutting a swathe through Deptford. Sutton Street itself was inaccessible. If you exited from the road at the wrong place you
were stranded in the wilds of Rotherhithe. The nearest BR station was twenty minutes’ walk away. William had got badly lost and tramped around the quiet backstreets for over half an hour.
    It was a heavy day, with solid wads of cloud in grey folds overhead; so dark it almost seemed that night could fall at any minute. After he had turned out of the station, a brown mongrel had
picked up his trail. When William paused to consult the list of directions he had copied down from the
A-Z
in the office, the dog paused too, pretending to snuffle in the verge. As William
moved on, so did the dog. When William stopped again, the dog trotted to a halt, lifted its leg and urinated.
    In the end, William stopped and said loudly, ‘Piss off, dog.’
    The dog lifted his head and regarded him blankly, then turned and lolloped off down the road. William felt bad.
    The door to Rosewood Cottage had been painted pink a great many years ago but was cracked and peeling now, set in a small porch of crumbling brickwork. From the front of the porch, someone had
used a piece of frayed string to hang an oval-shaped, porcelain sign with the name of the cottage painted in curling letters and a sprig of flowers enamelled underneath. It swung lightly in the
wind. William had to duck underneath it to step into the porch and ring the bell.
    If the bell was working, it made no sound. He waited. He sighed. He stepped back from the house and peered upwards. He thought he saw a net curtain twitch at an upstairs window but it was hard
to tell. It was beginning to rain. He went back into the porch and pressed the bell again, then knocked lightly.
    Eventually, there was the sound of shuffling behind the door. A voice mumbled. Then, very slowly, the door opened a crack. William tipped his head to one side, clutching an orange wallet file to
his chest. He felt suddenly aware that he was wearing a suit. ‘Mrs Appleton?’ he asked, hesitantly.
    No reply.
    ‘I’m William Bennett. I’m a surveyor for the Capital Transport Authority. I have come to talk to you about the cottage. The compulsory purchase . . .’ Thinking that the
door was about to slam shut, William began to talk very quickly. ‘There have been a few developments Mrs Appleton we thought we would have to demolish the cottage due to site works as you
know but it now appears that it might not be necessary . . .’
    Very slowly, the door opened. A woman of indeterminate age was revealed – late sixties perhaps. What was left of her hair was scraped back from her forehead into a green rubber band that
held a topknot on the crown of her head. She wore thick bi-focal glasses. She regarded him. William tried to keep his eyes on her face while being unable to avoid noticing that she wore huge
slippers which were rimmed with bright purple fur.
    Mrs Appleton held his gaze for some time. ‘Better come in,’ she said eventually. As she