The Cure

Chapter 4

Nathaniel had already scaled four grubby, narrow flights of stairs to find his final flat viewing, so that when the doorbell refused to ring, he was ready to write it off. The corridor was humid, gloomy, its auto-light intermittent and inefficient, and with no windows, he was thrown into darkness three times until the door to flat 4B, scuffing and squeaking, opened to reveal its warm, smiling occupants.

The man had his arm about the woman – Jen, he thought she was called – and the flat was breathtaking; Nathaniel walked straight into the lounge, with its sprawling cracked brown leather sofa, and its tasteful cushions, and artfully mismatched armchairs, and strong oak coffee table; a TV seemed generally overlooked, dusty, propped up haphazardly on reasonable literature; a black, old fashioned record player threw its shadow by the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The kitchen was spacious, with a huge piano gas stove, and a long bar separating it from the sitting room, with well-worn barstools punctuating its stretch.

And then there were the enormous bedrooms; one looked barely lived in, smelling freshly of paint, and polish, and it was to be his; the king-size bed had been reduced to insignificance in the space. The other showed more signs of life, the bed unmade, with clothing rails nailed precariously to the shaky drywall partitioning the two rooms, overflowing with summer dresses and jeans.

'She rarely plays,' Jen soothed him as he looked with uncertainty towards the guitar neatly nested upon its stand in the corner, 'it's more decoration, than anything.'

'This is a great place,' Nathaniel replied with a smile, suddenly doubting the eight-fifty price tag. 'I work at the hospital, so –'

'Oh, then it's perfect for you,' Jen was all wide eyes and teeth and excited nodding, and her boyfriend, though quieter, looking about wistfully into the high ceilings and good fittings, committing them to memory, was, inadvertently, equally compelling. 'Ten-minute walk, max.'

'And rent?' Nathaniel asked nonchalantly, peering into the bathroom, floor artfully tiled with tiny squares of black and white, and a walk-in shower, and a claw-foot bathtub; they had even neatly rolled new-looking white towels and placed them pleasingly about the bath, a commercial ploy which, while shameless, worked its magic nonetheless.

'Well, we pay eight fifty between us, but if you're bringing your girlfriend –'

'No girlfriend,' Nathaniel replied absent-mindedly, completing his tour besides the sprawling hand-crafted dining table, and he wondered distantly how they had got it into the flat in the first place, running his hand across the well-varnished old oak, and the black plastic of the record player as he wandered about the spacious loft.

'Those can stay, if you want,' Jen seemed to read his mind, with a gentle touch to his forearm as he approached the couple, who were seemingly stitched to one another's side with the sweet and stable simplicity of a seven-year coalition. 'It'd do us a favour, actually.'

'Nightmare to take apart,' her near-wordless boyfriend added, nudging the table leg with his toe. 'But I'll want a hundred for the record player.'

Nathaniel couldn't flick through the fifties in his wallet fast enough; even if he wasn't going to take the flat – and nobody believed that for a second, not even him – the record player was an exceptionally good price, and his vinyl collection was growing dusty with disuse under his freshman year books.

Jen was observing the newcomer minutely; the marine blue, heavy knit jumper, the fine tailoring of the dark coat, Docs well-worn but clean, wallet real, soft leather with good stitching, swallowing an impressive stack of notes, watch winking and hinting at wealth beneath his sleeve.

There were two things she could conclude from the intimate, admiring study – the sleepy smile creasing an arch into the olive-skinned cheek, the thick dark hair falling into his eyes in handsome disarray, the general tidiness, gentle and unaffected politeness, accent lilting with the round vowels of the well-read and well-educated.