Notes for Whoever Has the House

You'll want to know about the kitchen door. It won't catch unless you lift it, not much, about the weight of a full kettle, and then it goes in with a sound like someone agreeing with you. Forty-one years I've had that yes. The hot tap in the bathroom is a quarter turn and wait. It thinks about it, then it comes. Don't force it. Hans forced it once and we had the man round. Third stair from the top, keep left. The banister's loose at the bend, and I know, I know, my son has been saying so since the eighties, but it's loose the way an old friend's handshake is loose. You learn where it gives. The boiler knocks twice at six. That's not a fault, that's morning. When the wind's from the west the letterbox talks. Leave it. It doesn't say much. The back bedroom was the children's, then his study, then the room where I kept the things from his study, and now I sleep down here because of the stairs, which you'll have heard about. Everybody has. The flat is nice. I'm not being polite, it is. Everything's level, and the doors shut by themselves with a little hush, as if to say don't trouble yourself, which is kind, and which is the trouble. Nobody in that flat needs me to know anything. I've been twice. The second time I went round turning every tap and opening every cupboard, the way you listen to a new person talk to hear where they're from, and in the bedroom, the one with the window on the car park, there's a wardrobe door that drags. You have to hold it up a little, and then it closes, and it made, I won't pretend otherwise, almost the sound. My daughter said she'd get it fixed. I said leave it. I'll take the clock and the green chair. The rest of the knowing you'll have to do yourself. Give the kitchen door a year. It'll tell you when you've got it.