42” Flat Screen Plasma TV £399 or nearest offer (5)

When I arrived in Choppingchurch, looking at the tidy but generic buildings, an inheritance beyond the dilapidated office that was Flycure’s Estate Agents, seemed unlikely; yet here I was the recipient of a tiny flat and a huge TV which my predecessor had possession over. My pragmatism slapped the cheeks of my imagination to prevent it running wild. It’s hardly a coincidence - Mr Greenman retires and moves away; after all who would choose to don life’s cosy slippers here? He sells his worldly goods, which just happen to include this huge TV, and goes to a better place. His flat is recently vacant so it makes sense to move a recent immigrant in here. I had no real assets from the city. I’d rented there so I wasn’t carrying a bundle of equity with me into Choppingchurch. If I had I’d certainly have made an offer to myself for that detached stone house in Flycure’s window. It was a leasehold accommodation sitting waiting for a lessee - me.
What further evidence was required that my loving employers had arranged everything for me? Blaze’s concern was particularly enthusiastic: “Leave it with us Clair. I’m sure there’s a nice cosy little place in Choppingchurch just for you.” Cosy wasn’t the word – closet was closer.
Funny that Greenman should do as I’ve done though – purchase a huge plasma screen for this bolt hole. But then again was it that uncanny? They’d been dozens of properties that I’d bought and sold in the City comparable or even smaller than this. Many of them had overlarge TVs in lounges designed for portables.
One, I recall, was an ex-council house in Fulham. I nicknamed it the Doll’s House but not entirely due to it being ludicrously bijou. There was an extended family in residence – two grandparents, two parents and three children aged 10, 8 and 6. There were only the three bedrooms with paper thin walls, a small ‘reception’ room, a smaller kitchen and a microscopic toilet and bathroom. It was on the market for offers over 400K.
The grandparents were both about 4ft 10’’ with the parents little more than 5 feet each. The three children offered little more promise in breaching that vertical plane that was the family ancestry’s mach 1 and yet in a sitting room that could furnish only a two-seater settee and small armchair, sat a huge TV in the corner which eliminated the use of the armchair. What exacerbated the living arrangements was that it predated flat screens and sat like the deck of the Starship Enterprise jutting into space it wasn’t designed for.
When I called on them one evening to discuss the sale the father welcomed me and beckoned me into the kitchen. As I passed the living-room the door was ajar. Through the gap I saw the Grandparents and the children’s mother squeezed onto the sofa whilst the children sat on a green carpeted floor so close to the visual monstrosity that they had to crane their necks as if positioned in the front rank of the local cinema. If they’d all had fishing rods the scene could’ve been mistaken for a small exhibit in a garden centre.
As we discussed the family’s plans to take the unencumbered proceeds (they’d purchased it under the Thatcher government and received a huge 60% discount on the asking price then) relocate to a cheaper county and buy something more spacious that they could practically get lost in, or at the very least accommodate the television, I wondered where he was sitting before I knocked the door – the lampshade perhaps?
I’m spooking myself for no good reason. It’s only the fact that I’ve left the comfort zone of a huge nonchalant metropolis and landed in Royston Vasey that’s put me ill at ease; but could I ever feel comfortable without that personal space that London afforded me? .

By mid-morning the office that called itself Flycure’s was looking healthier. Houses for sale and rent were arranged as charmingly as was feasible for a small town estate agent. The scarcity left a lot of window space but furnished me with an opportunity to introduce quality. Rather than one picture of a prospective property with a couple of thumbprint photographs of a garden and a kitchen with the proverbial banal details of the number of rooms, I’d add some colour; larger pictures, touched up if necessary (I still had my photoshop software) and bring the bloody things to life. I harboured the notion that somewhere out in the great wilderness of the motorway network there would be a bus full of half-mad tourists who would land mistakenly in Choppingchurch and fall in love with the place.
I’d found a large map of the area and stuck it on the wall behind the sorry old desk. I had seven properties for sale and five to rent so I began to place a dot against each location with a marker pen. I listed the addresses in order and noted the contact details of each alongside.
I was amazed at the rapidity of my returning enthusiasm. Then I recalled the dream and the climax. The last time I’d had sex was a week before the Richcroft scandal. He was a young apprentice, Ben, 18 and not long in the business. He was wiry, perhaps a little too thin for me but had the most gorgeous bright grey eyes whose scope gave the impression that they reached far beyond the superficial and that even the most recklessly unguarded of beings would have found uncomfortably intrusive.
At the end of the first week after the usual rambling he eagerly accepted my offer of a date Friday night – just to get to know each other socially of course. At two o’clock in the morning and both giddy with a potion of mixed alcohol I offered him the couch.
He was no virgin but neither was he an expert and as I climbed on atop him, fearing his thin little legs would crumple beneath me, I realised that, despite the fact that he was fairly blessed, I was going to have to work for this one. As I rocked and twisted above him he made several attempts to caress my buttocks and breasts but they felt like perfunctory manoeuvres – something he perceived I would expect.
After about five minutes he groaned and I thumped him in the chest and cried “Not yet” I’d hardly bloody started. Then his eyes, which had remained firmly closed throughout, snapped open and the shock of the luminosity of his irises slowly rolling back in ecstasy was so sensuous that it accelerated my own climax. That sudden realisation that I was about to achieve what seconds earlier was unlikely made me stop rocking. I steadied myself against his ribcage with both hands and felt him emptying so comprehensively that I feared my palms would squash him like pushing the air out of a child’s rubber ring. Then I came. The unanticipated nature of my orgasm gave it a purity that I’d never experienced before. It wasn’t fabulous but it had all the potential into developing that way, then Richcroft came along and the prospect of any further liaisons were dashed.
Last night had been so different. There seemed little purity about it. It felt dirty even sordid perhaps, but exciting beyond measure and when I awoke I was as empty as young Ben.
I wasn’t prolific with sexual partners but six weeks without sex was pushing it; but, on the evidence of last night’s wet dream, I might give it another shot. Then I remembered where I was and considered that short of the usual accoutrements any girl should have in her bedroom drawer it may become habitual.

As I drew up my route, house by house, I arrived at the last address, the detached Stone House, Lethe Hall, in the village of Shade. It outstripped the other locations in every department - rooms, gardens and acreage and the price was reasonable enough, around 500K (relocated to the south-east it would double the asking price) Moreover with the other properties I began to wonder how much touching up the interiors would need judging by the dreary exteriors.
My instinct told me that the décor of the detached Stone House would be dated nevertheless visiting and photographing it offered a more pleasurable diversion that the rest put together. I fished out the file. The vendor’s name was Stephanie Moyles and there was a contact number for her.
As I lifted the office’s only phone (not a single extension!) a streak of sunlight shot across the office floor propelling the dark backward like the Red Sea parting obediently under the abeyance of Aaron’s rod.
The phone rang about six times before it was answered. “Hello” the responder’s voice was dark and treacly. I introduced myself. “Hi, I’m Clair Fortuna from Flycure’s estate agents. Is Stephanie Moyles at home today?”
“She is”
“May I speak with her then sir?”
“You are (pause) speaking with her”
Well fucking done Clair. The best prospect of earning in this little town and you’ve blown it in seconds. I was desperate for a line to get me out of the ditch I was standing in but all I could think of was Michael Palin telling John Cleese “I’m sorry I have a cold” in the parrot sketch and that would have surely lost the business altogether.
“Oh”, I vacillated, “It’s a bad line” and then moved on with mercurial alacrity “I’ve just taken over from Mr Greenman and find it hard to believe that a residence as sumptuous as yours is still on the books”
Silence
“I thought I might adopt a more positive approach and perhaps spice it up a little”
More silence; I carried on.
“What we have here at the moment is pretty standard but my idea would be to put the detached Stone House centre stage in our window. Beef it up a little - take some new photographs, circle them around the master shot and put some pizzazz back into the sale”
This time I got an answer: “Come at five o’clock” and then the phone line burred dead. It wasn’t a ringing endorsement but I’d got the appointment.