Dream House

An extract ...

   
​       It could hardly be understood from the outside.  Not standing separately, like other houses, it was always touching something unexpected, borrowing from next door, not always having the windows or doors one would have guessed at; having either more or less of the corners, passages, rooms and balconies that you had decided on from the outside.  But beautiful.  Winking and smiling at the corners of it's shared walls, growing outwards toward the other houses and pressing hard against them.  They pushed back and made strong walls, not separating their rooms.  Sharing their families' noises, their pain-layer-histories and picture-hook memoires.

​       Touching the walls, you  could feel them warming under your hands, seeming to move towards you, and away and staying still.  Like breathing.  In and out.  Breathing you in through the back door into the kitchen, surrounding you, swallowing you whole without chewing.  Then back out, across the passageway into the dining room:  letting you go in the big space towards the open living room and then catching its breath and you halfway across the floor to the windows and out again to cross the passage in to the downstairs office, swirling you around and out, up the stairs and past the three bedrooms to the upstairs balcony, directly opposite the top of the stairs - from the bedroom and studio on either side too.  The house breathed you straight out into the light - and you stood there blinking, not quite understanding how you'd got there so quickly, but loving the view and the place.

​from an unfinished novel, Untitled.