Isobel Maxwell

The House

I never wanted to live there to begin with. It was his house, not mine; I knew that as soon as I walked in. Those awful pinkish-reddish curtains, the colour of irritated labia. They were velvet, embroidered with a pattern that was meant to resemble vines – a branching network crazing across the breadth of the god-awful fabric. A crime against nature, against taste, against fashion. I didn’t tell Daniel that. He didn’t want to change a thing about the house. It hadn’t been updated since the seventies. He was in love. I wasn’t. I didn’t want to live there.