I pass by the corner house most days. It slots neatly into a gap it appears to have been custom made for. The bricks are newer, the window paint is not peeling off, the bell is new and the pathway undisturbed by weeds.
“I like that house,” I declare as we stroll along the road one morning.
“It’s a fake house,” he says.
He goes on to profusely deny its potential to be a real house. It must be a facade, it must be uninhabited, the neighbours must have been fed up of people creeping along the alleyway between their houses that they clubbed together and built it. This is preposterous, I argue but it is no use. His mind is made up.
—–
It is dark when I return from work. The winding streets are filled with leaves that don’t so much crunch underfoot as crease unwillingly. Lubricated by the damp fog lingering in the air they are an unruly opponent, taking the streets for themselves. Through the darkness I see a faint light illuminating the fake house from the inside. A body is silhouetted against the window.
“There’s someone in the fake house, it’s real!” I text
“It’s a puppet” comes the response.
—–
From across the street a light is triggered by a motion sensor. A door slams. A man has emerged from the fake house. I make a mental note to tell him that a remarkably life like puppet is wandering freely around North London.
I retrace my steps the following evening and my brain kicks into gear. I call him to regale him of the tale of the wandering puppet but he outright refuses to believe me. A learned scholar of the Monty Python school I know he is trying me but I cannot refuse the bait. I protest vociferously.
A door slams. Another man has emerged from the fake house.
“Just a minute,” I whisper, running across the street without stopping to look for cars, cats or bicycles. Luckily I have no unscheduled meetings with anything of the sort.
“Excuse me,” I yell. “Excuse me.”
The man from the fake house turns, bewildered, to face me.
“Did you just come from the corner house?”
“Yes,” he ventures cautiously.
“My boyfriend thinks it’s a fake house.” I declare accusingly.
The man from the fake house laughs nervously eyeing me up and down.”We get that a lot,” he says eventually. Evidently I have passed his security vetting procedure.
“Yeah he doesn’t believe it’s real. He thinks the neighbours built it to block up a dingy back alley but I said that didn’t make any sense because the building goes back too far and who’d make a building that could be a house and not make it a house? That’s just nonsense because you could earn a fortune from the rent couldn’t you and you’d take that rather than risk burglars wouldn’t you and besides I’ve seen lights on and everything.”
“Er… Yes. It’s real. We do live there. I live on the first floor actually. It’s a bit small at the front but it really widens out at the back and we’ve got an awesome garden – you can’t see that of course but it goes right back. It’s great.”
“Well that’s great,” I say. There isn’t much more to say.
“Thanks,” the man from the fake house says.
“Well done.” I say.
The man from the fake house turns. I watch him walk away before returning my phone to my ear.
“Did you hear that?” I whisper.
“I cannot believe you did that,” is all I hear, amongst the guffaws before his train disappears into a tunnel.
