THIS OLD HOUSE
Prompt - This Old House : Write about an old house that is abandoned or being renovated
Three months. It didn't sound long if you said it quickly, looked at in the context of a lifetime, and if you managed to ignore the rest of the sentence. Four months living with my parents. That was full story, and it sounded like a lifetime within a lifetime. But we knew it was the only way to realise our dream. Assuming our marriage didn't crumble under the strain.
Ever since we'd first talked about living together we'd had a vision of the home we wanted to bring our kids up in. Some rambling Victorian pile with four of five bedrooms, three of four reception rooms, one of them being a library of course, a big welcoming kitchen and a bathroom with space for a massive, original, claw foot bath in the middle of the floor. And we'd found it, only a year after the wedding. Victorian and rambling for sure. Five bedrooms upstairs, along with a huge bathroom. Three big rooms and a massive kitchen downstairs, with plenty space under the stairs for a shower room. Affordable. Very affordable. And there was the catch.
It needed work doing. Some of it could be done over a period of years. But it still needed a lot doing to it simply to become habitable. The place had been empty for years, utterly neglected, hence the bargain price, and the plumbing and electrics needed to be done from scratch. No toilet, no power, some unsafe floors, and we wanted to knock through from dining room to kitchen to create a big welcoming area to entertain in. We had to sell our wee flat to buy it, and we couldn't afford to rent while the work was being done. So this was the solution. We'd stay with my parents, who were only two streets away, while the all the really major work got done, and the wreck became at least the outline of a home, and then we'd move in and carry on with our own plans. Most of this initial phase required professionals, so we wouldn't be able to spend much time in there until it was done. That was the catch.
It's not that I don't like my folks. But ever since I left home the relationship has been strained, and Mum is one of those who thinks that no girl could ever be good enough for 'her boy', so Sarah has a hard time of it. It would bb bad enough for me, worse for her. But we agreed it was worth seeing through, teeth firmly gritted, to achieve our goal.
The work was progressing well, so well that it looked like we might even get in ahead of schedule. Floors repaired and made safe, plumbing installed, damp sorted out. Most of the electrics done too. But there was one big job to come that could turn this positive picture around. Knocking down the kitchen wall would be messy, and the builder was concerned that the wall seemed to be thicker than he'd normally expect. They'd have to make a start on it before they could determine why.
Turned out that there had been a false wall installed on the dining room side. So well done that it hadn't been immediately obvious. Why had someone done that? The first skull to turn up provided a strong clue...
As well as a big shock to the poor guy making the discovery. The builder called the police, the uniforms called the detectives, and suddenly our wannabe home was a crime scene. The first we knew was the police coming to my parents' door in the early evening, asking to see us. Once we'd been talked through the discovery, which was shock enough, we were told that work in the house would have to be suspended. Indefinitely. Which answered our next question, and not in the way we hoped for. We would have to wait.
And wait. One skull turned into a full skeleton turned into three. Plus a couple of boxes of documents. Every time we asked for information we were told to wait until the full story was available. Every time we asked the word 'indefinitely' still appeared somewhere in the reply. It took more than six weeks for the house to be returned. By which time our builders were on another job and it would be at least three weeks before they could return. They had all our money so what could we do but wait? We went into the house a few times ourselves, hoping to be able to do something useful, but there was little could be done, with the threat of dust clouds from the impending wall demolition a serious hindrance to any cosmetic activities. And there were still reporters sniffing around, keen to ask questions we weren't keen to answer.
The story emerged bit by bit. The house had once been the home of an elderly woman who had died without direct heirs. Somehow the system managed to fail to the point where ownership was undecided and the property left to decline. This proved useful to the owner of a chain of betting shops, who lived a few doors away, when he had some bodies to dispose of - members of a syndicate that had tried to cheat him out of millions. Under the guise of doing some safety work, his men went in and built the false wall, the bodies, and the details of their activities, hidden away from interested parties. We had bought into a major murder story.
The builders returned, eventually. More work than expected, what with the false wall and the damage done by the police forensics people. But they got there. Eventually.
It was a terrible tale, a horrendous crime. We hated that bookie. Three months had turned into six, and Sarah and my mother may never speak again.
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