Rod Was Right

Rod Was Right

I was in the kitchen of 17 Godfrey Road when I first experienced
it.

That spine-tickling, butterfly-inducing conviction that we had stumbled
upon the house of our dreams.

It was a Hello editor's fantasy: roomy and minimalist, with
shimmeringly polished units, funky pot plants and strategically
positioned bowls of pot pourri and tomatoes on the vine.

My heart began jigging to the most peculiar rhythm - a way it never had
in the twenty-nine previous properties we had surveyed. A definite case
of love at first sight. And that was before I even glimpsed at the vast
bedrooms and pastel bathroom that lay beyond that kitchen door.

This was The One! This was meant to be our home.

The owners, a couple of thirty-year-old accountants and would-be
yuppies, were relocating to London for work purposes, and so sought a
speedy sale.

"I want that house!" I yelped to my fianc?, Rod, in the car afterwards,
choking on my own excitement and already naively visualising our
furniture in those immaculate rooms.

"Well I hate it! I mean - that kitchen! Have you ever seen anything so
soulless? No food has ever been within a mile of that cooker."

I sulked. I pleaded. For a week. But Rod was resolute. When pressed, he
would make a sort of flinching, shrugging motion and be aggravatingly
vague in his reasoning. "Sorry, Dawn, I could never live there. There's
just something about that place...."

So it was not to be after all. I would not get my way on this
one.

Six months later, a speeding stolen van careered off Godfrey Road and
smashed through the french window of that airy, shimmery kitchen I had
so coveted. The new owners - who were mercifully out at the time of the
crime - were quoted in the Sutton Coldfield Observer as being
'devastated.' Like their home.

An eerie chill prickled my skin. "That could have been us," I kept
numbly repeating, the newspaper fluttering between my clammy fingers,
"that could have been us. That could have been us!"

I never even heard Rod enter the room - until his solicitous question,
"What is it, sweetheart?" penetrated my morbid trance.

In reply, I laid the open news article before Rod, kissed him and said
simply, "Thank you!"