LITMIR.BIZ

      Stiff in my stale clothes, I wake. I could lie here all day, all week, all year and the hairs on my skin would grow through the wool of my sweater, like the tendrils of ivy through a green knitted jumper, dropped in a wood. The sun would make its rounds, from the fairground picture above the bed, to the chest of drawers, to the blue, painted mirror and back again and I would still be here, thinking and getting thinner, until one day I would have found the answer, but by then there would be nothing left of me, just an imprint, the shell of a tall woman as brittle, straight and empty as the hollow stalks of the Queen Anne’s lace that lines the drive in summer . . .

      Your search has found 83 matches.

      Click. ‘A little piece of paradise on the banks of the Severn . . .’

      Click. ‘Want to get away from it all? Look no further than this 3 bed, 2 recep . . .’

      Click. ‘Looking for a project? Turn this barn into your castle and be lord of all . . .’

      That’s how it started. Mark and I in London, hunchbacked slaves to the laptop, squabbling over control of the mouse, believing that the bricks and mortar and land just a virtual second away would eradicate the bickering and divisions which had increasingly become our coat of arms after twenty-two years of marriage.

      ‘It can’t be that hard to find somewhere,’ said my colleagues at school.

      ‘With the price you’ll get for this . . .’ said our neighbours.

      Moving out of London, living off the land, that was the dream. It always had been Mark’s dream, but he had mortgaged it for me and, although he never put it this way, he was calling in the debt. He had paid out for so long and now he was bankrupt, whereas I had been investing and accumulating in people and work and ways of living that to sell out now seemed, at the very least, daunting.

      Standing like a child on tiptoe at the edge of the diving board, I wanted to jump and yet was terrified of jumping; I wanted to grasp the handrail and walk back down and yet the cold concrete world at the bottom was also slippery with fear. To plunge into a new, freshwater pool, live with a different energy in a world unpolluted by hatred, to come up for air at last, like Mark I was in love with the idea of getting away from it all and starting again in the country. But if we slipped, it would be a long, long way to fall and we would be far away from anyone familiar who might throw us a lifeline. As far as Mark saw it, it was the right thing to do at the right time. I was an inarticulate advocate and found it strangely hard to voice my worries in the face of his enthusiasm, not to mention his desperation. His central thesis was convincing; he might have had a fair hearing at the tribunal, been found innocent, but he had no hope of an unprejudiced future if we stayed. He had things to get away from; I had things to stay for. And whose fault was that, I thought, when I was at my lowest, even though that was neither true nor reasonable.

      Mark had further supporting arguments in his brief: there may have been a lack of rain for a while, but these cycles had a habit of correcting themselves, didn’t they? Money wasn’t an issue; the sale of our semi in the suburbs covered the price of a cottage in the west with land and some to spare, and his pay-off for his unfair dismissal from the local authority plus what I had inherited from my father was going to give us enough to live on for a bit; we had savings. Angie had turned out to be the cheapest of teenagers: hers was the one problem you cannot throw money at and the NHS, Social Services or HM Young Offenders had spent more time looking after her than we did. We spoiled our grandson Lucien, of course, but as I think of that word, I regret its double-edged meaning. Anyway, the theory was we would be fine for a couple of years, if we were careful, until we knew whether we could make a go of it. It, ostensibly, being the smallholding. It, in reality, being our relationship.

      We almost didn’t bother to get the details of The Well. There was no video link and anything that wasn’t instantly accessible online seemed like too much hassle. We wanted to be able to view heaven now, without an appointment.

      ‘It’s got to be worth a real look,’ Mark said.

      ‘Only if there are two or three to see on the same day,’ I replied.

      There were, but one was sold two days before and the other was taken off the market, so that left The Well. We argued about it, but went anyway. Lucien was with us. He had been staying for two or three weeks while Angie tried yet again to sort herself out. He must have been four at the time. ‘He’s a lucky little boy to have grandparents like you.’ That’s what our friends said, whenever we took him on again. I don’t expect it’s what they’re saying now.

      It was an unnaturally hot autumn day, a sort of savage last stand by the sun after what had been yet another dull, dry summer following yet another dull, dry winter – dry, that is, according to the statistics the weathermen had then. The various restrictions in the southeast had already been extended to the rest of the country, even by April, and the serious papers carried editorials on the introduction of compulsory water meters, while the tabloids alternated between the threat of Armageddon and close-ups of celebs wearing very little in the sweltering heat. No one knew then where the downward trajectory of the rainfall graphs would eventually take us.

      The map was magnetic. The Well was on one of those

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