The House That Grieved

Clover was bent double; upper torso thrust inside a shelf groping for a super-sized pack of pickled onion Creature Crunch. She froze at the sound. It was unmistakable. How that woman elongated random vowels begged for a solid kick like an errant vending machine. Then she recognised her own name with vowel seasoning and abandoned the Crunch. 

“It’s an eyesoooooore. My uncle Neville, he’s an estate aaaaaagent, and he said it’s sure to drive down eeeeeeveryone’s house values. The whoooooole street. It really ought to be illegal,” said Lucie.

Mouth-flapping, sticky-beak. Like she can talk. Open her letterbox and the stench of sausage dogs knocks out half the village. A sense of injustice shook Clover harder than a wobbleboard. She stomped up behind Lucie.

“Vodka for dinner again,” said Clover, un-neighbourly. Everyone knows the polite thing to do is not mention the litre of Russia’s finest. Like it’s polite to overlook said neighbour in one’s garden making daisy chains and singing ‘Hey big spender’ at two in the morning.

Politeness can suck it.

It wasn’t just sausage-loving Lucie. All her neighbours were talking about it. Hell, if it weren’t her house, she’d probably be talking about it too. But respectfully, and in confidence.

#

Clover loved her house. It wasn’t the biggest or fanciest on the street, but it was all hers, and she’d poured everything into it. And it had needed it—neglected and empty for three years.

Those early days were tough, tackling a single problem at a time. With the help of YouTube and the oddly sexy, hairy guy from B&Q. She’d never wanted to rummage in a tool belt so much.

But finally, she was settled, the house was sorted, and they’d had ten years of happiness. She had even got little Beamish, a kitten, to make it a home.

And that’s when it started.

Not with the kitten, but after the ten years thing. Beamish wasn’t a kitten by then either; he was two-and-a-half. She’d been trying to do what was best for them; hadn’t anticipated the consequences. Who would?

Behind the house, the old conservatory was worn out, falling apart. She was either wearing thermals or wringing sweat out of her bra. Plus, anyone with a screwdriver and a slight shove could break in. A promotion at work settled it; she paid the builders a hefty deposit to start immediately.

For an extension, it was modest; nothing extravagant and in-keeping with the local aesthetic. No-one had an issue, not even the clipboards with comb-overs at the planning department. People even requested her builder’s contact details. And the finish exceeded Clover’s expectations; finally, she had a large, open-plan kitchen-diner and three whole bedrooms upstairs. Big enough to have visitors and an office, where Beamish could bask in his own sun-bathed nook.

But as soon as the builders packed up tools, the house started to change.

At first, it was subtle, incremental. Clover blamed being tired, working too many hours, not getting enough sleep, and that third glass of red with dinner. But soon, self-delusion couldn’t beat reality.

Despite bigger windows and a southern orientation, the extension was darker than the rest of the house. She would look inside a room, sunshine brightly cascading across the wooden floorboards. Step beyond the doorframe, and a cloud covered the world. Even Beamish seemed confused. He’d strut, chirping into her office, settle on the window-seat; then shoot out, fluffier than a tumble-dried rabbit. 

When the doorways shrank, Clover took a week off and booked an appointment. Opposite Dr I Qualified Before Women Had Rights, she listened to the GP call her ‘dear,’ and all but accuse her womb of wandering.

Back home, still without an infant to distract her from hysterics, there was a marked difference. This was not in her imagination or any number of Merlots to accompany her microwave lasagne. It was residing quite physically in her kitchen-diner. Beamish was pawing at it, meowing incessantly. The big kitchen window was his favourite magpie lookout, and there wasn’t one. A window, that is. Her house had closed it. Heaven knows what it did with the glass or the blinds. 

#

And it kept happening. Whenever Clover left her house, it sealed a window in the extension. It took only five days for all of them to vanish. What if it seals a door, or traps Beamish behind a wall? She couldn’t take the risk of leaving the house unattended. Or bumping into Lucie again. After notifying her manager she’d be working remotely for the foreseeable, she ordered groceries and hunkered down.

It helped. No vanishing or shrinking. She reasoned, the house preferred having her at home. They had eight weeks and three days of stability, discounting Clover’s quivering trepidation when anyone knocked on the door. She liked to think this was fear of the house’s reaction but suspected the seeds of agoraphobia were sprouting in her brain. Then, that morning, as Beamish shot outside, his black and white rear-end capsizing over the fence after a soon-to-be chewed butterfly, the house moaned. And sealed the cat flap, vanquishing any sign there had ever been a feline-sized void.

While Beamish was outside, air rumbled through the central heating, pipes creaked and floorboards and ceilings grumbled. Clover tried noise-cancelling headphones, cotton wool, played music over the top, but the house got louder.

For ten days she persisted, trying to keep the cat’s outdoor pursuits to twice a day, via a window. Even little Beamish picked up on the vibe. At least that’s what Clover intuited when the cat started dragging in random debris from the back garden and leaving it in different parts of the extension. Shreds of tarpaulin, bits of wood, small scraps of carpet; all sorts of rubbish the builders had left, now in small heaps like ceremonial offerings.

While these offerings seemed to decrease the volume, they didn’t stop the house’s protests. Clover saw no choice but to keep the cat inside. One headache-inducing racket traded for another. 

“Beamish, please, baby, can you stop wailing? I know you want to go outside; Mummy wants to let you outside, but I can’t.”

“Meeeeeeeoooooooooonngggg, mmmmmmmeow, mmmmmmmmeow.” The cat pushed his head against the section of door, formerly a flap, his long-winded yowls bouncing back into her face.

I can’t, I can’t take it anymore. I can’t hear myself think.

#

Work hours soaked into her evenings and weekends to mop up time lost. Intervals sacrificed to absent concentration, staring blankly at a wall that was previously a window, falling asleep at her desk, interrogating ChatGPT about inanimate possession. She jumped every time a car passed a remaining window; her left eyelid twitching when Beamish’s furry mouth opened. The duo-toned menace himself was rampaging like a hyperactive infant fed crystal meth and sherbet.

#

“What the–” Clover was upright, her room a smeary blur, dragged from stuttering sleep for the second morning in a row. She’d give anything for the low grumbling to return instead of this, hands clasped over her ears. It was shrill, like a dog whistle, and she was clearly the mutt it felt needed training. At 06:00.

Clothes, brushing my hair. Who cares? Not me. Not now. She couldn’t remember when her limbs got so heavy as she shuffled across the kitchen tiles. The kettle boiled; she extracted a cat bowl from the dishwasher and placed it on Beamish’s mat. She grabbed the oversized, faded red mug, clunking it onto the countertop. Spoons delayed caffeine; so she tipped coffee straight from the tub and poured the kettle.

“Crap. No. Bloody hell.” Water sploshing from the spout; she slammed down the kettle and upturned the mug over the sink. Miniature, soggy fish-shapes in every shade of brown beached themselves in the metal basin, taunting her.

Where is Beamish? Normally, the sound of his food fleeing its container summoned him from the beyond. Clover sorted his bowl, refilled the kettle. Then went to investigate.

High-pitched screaming pipes stopped.

Paused in the hallway; she shook her head and thumped her ear, stretching her jaw to impersonate a snake’s dinnertime. It took two to three minutes to knock the whistling out of her head.

A scratching, banging noise was coming from the junk room. Too small to be a dining room or an office; Clover had never assigned it a purpose. Over the years, it evolved its own, categorised as miscellaneous. It had built-in, floor to ceiling storage down one side, which comprised most of the tiny room. This was where she found Beamish.

“If you’re trying to dig your way out, this isn’t the most direct route,” she said, bobbing down to the cat’s level. He’d been up on his hind legs, full weight pressing and clawing against the cupboard.

“Meow.”

Sitting down next to him, she gently rubbed under his chin and Beamish nuzzled against her leg. It was the closest she’d felt to him in too long. Days in their house dragged on for months and morphed into seconds simultaneously.

Clover rocked backward, sitting cross-legged on the carpet and stroked Beamish. “I love you so much, baby. I’m sorry things have been hard.”

It was the first time the thought had occurred to her; we could move. She had to resist clinging too hard to the not-so little bundle in her arms. At eight weeks old, with his ears too big for his head, he had caught his own reflection in the conservatory window. Through fluffy fury alone, the cat quadrupled his mass. He’d arched his spine, hissed and bounded sideways like a kangaroo with a crab complex. I don’t want us to move.

Beamish had called time on strokes and was pawing at the same cupboard door, eyes fixed on her face.

“Alright, puss, let’s see what you want.” She opened the door to piles of random stuff. Most of the boxes were straight from her parents’ loft—never unpacked, contents a mystery. Some had Christmas decorations, random trinkets, embarrassing teenage photographs. In front of all that crap were more recent additions. “What’s happening inside your adorable noggin, Beamish?”

Filling her arms with his offerings, she chased him into the kitchen and heaped the rubbish he’d diligently forced into their house on the floor. It took her about four trips to retrieve everything. After which, she finally got her coffee, perched on a stool, and eyeballed the state of her floor. Beamish crunched away at his biscuit fishes.

Maybe it was the caffeine, the disregard for hygiene or residing in captivity with only a cat for meaningful dialogue? But Clover knew what to do next. Texting work she’d be on a month’s leave was the first step. Suspending her sanity was not an activity to be recorded on Teams for posterity. This was going to be in-house and unwitnessed. Beamish didn’t count. Not that she was going fully la-la, cuckoo like burning sage and chanting cleansing incantations off Wikipedia. She wasn’t that far gone. Not yet.

No, she was a fully integrated, tax-paying, completely hinged adult member of society. That was about to talk to a house. And hoped it would talk back. Fingers crossed.

#

Standing in the doorway where the old met the new, Clover repeated her question. “This all started with the extension. Don’t you like it?”

Nothing.

“What can I do to make you happy?”

A deep rumble emanated from underneath the kitchen tiles. Glassware and crockery chattered like teeth in a blizzard. And an invisible weapon tore a long, thin crater across the wall; plaster and dust spilling onto the surfaces and floor. Beamish ran behind her, using legs for cover, as she gripped the doorframe.

“Well, you made yourself very clear. Removing the extension is not that simple, and I don’t even think I could afford it. Can we compromise?”

Nothing.

“Come on, Beamish, this was your idea. How does all that crap help us?”

Confident the shuddering was over, Clover hunched over another coffee, sweeping dust onto the floor so she could rest her arm on the countertop. Her head needed support not to obey gravity.

Tail tucked between his legs, Beamish was testing the integrity of the kitchen floor, one paw at a time. He circled the debris, sniffing; eyes darting to her or the direction of any minuscule noise. This procedure needed repeating. And again.

Black front paw extended; he thwacked a torn section of carpet tile, separating it from the heap. Beamish carried it in his mouth and dropped it by the door, nudging it with his nose until it pressed up against the frame. He did the same thing with three other objects.

Sunshine extended across the kitchen-diner; it felt warmer.

Clover copied her pet. She hurried everything from the floor to where the extension joined the old house, pushing it against the walls. Didn’t even care that grubby marks were transferring onto her paintwork.

Middle of the floor now empty; she was out of breath and staring at the returned kitchen window. Her blinds were still missing, but Beamish had an unblemished view of magpies.

“It’s not the extension, is it?” All the filthy rubbish plastered against her property—its significance finally clicked.

“You miss the conservatory.”

Water shot from the taps, gurgling down the sink’s plug hole. She heard the shower upstairs running, both toilets flushing.

“I’m so sorry for your loss. It’s completely understandable to feel upset, depressed even; you’re grieving. You two were together for a really long time, just the two of you; you held each other up.” Clover stroked the doorframe, her voice barely above a whisper. This is happening. I’m not delusional. Beamish furring against the wall felt like solidarity. Although they can’t section cats.

She promised to retrieve everything she could find of the conservatory from the backyard, while still talking to her house from outside. That way it knew she was there and not leaving. Clover begged the house to keep the door open and not to shrink, vanish or collapse.

Nothing.

She took the plastic kitchen bin outside and started filling it. Beamish carried scraps inside too. Throughout, she chatted to her house loudly. Every noise—a car back-firing, someone getting a delivery—she froze, ready to be sealed out by her house. After dropping a length of stringy silicone sealant in the bin, she continued the story of when she’d first viewed the house.

“Ah-huh-huh-hmmm.” Lucie’s head poked above the garden fence.

Not unlike one of those coconut things you shoot down at a fair. If only I had a ball. She continued filling the kitchen bin and chatting nonsense to her grieving house, ignoring the intrusion. “That’s when I knew you were the right house for me, and I haven’t looked back since. We’re family, me, you, and Beamish.”

“CLOOOOOOVER.”

Her name, lobbed like a grenade over enemy lines. With everything they’d been through, giving a sausage about what her neighbour had to say was long dead. “Maybe we should make a mural on your wall with all the pieces, like a memorial to the conservatory. What do you think, house? Would you like that? Tell us later.”

“I’ve reported you to the council. Your house is a mooooooonstrosity. Can you hear me? Clover, you answer me right now or I’ll tell the authorities you’re talking to yourself and decorating your house with rubbish. You need locking up for your own saaaaaaaafety.”

Clover picked up the overflowing bin and walked back to the door. “If I were you, Lucie, I’d jog on. Or next time you’re crawling around my garden at night, I’ll open your front door. Release all those stinking woofs into speeding traffic. Now do piss off, you’re disturbing my house. It’s delicate.”

Slamming the door felt good, even if she did have to apologise to the house afterward.

#

Six months had passed, and they were happier than ever. After calling back the builders, they’d agreed to return all the glass, bricks, and wood they’d repurposed from the old conservatory. Swore an oath to the house that they were the originals and started work on a new garden room that week. It helped the company’s manager was mourning a garage his ex-wife demolished. He even agreed to a payment plan and ensured every piece of the conservatory was used in, or buried touching, the new structure.

Clover’s miscellaneous junk room had a new life. She’d plucked up the courage to ask the hairy handyman, also known as Brendan, for a date while buying paint to decorate it. She’d also gone part-time, spending more time at home to study counselling. Bereavement was her specialism.

Even their neighbour problems were improving. After a disturbing incident, where Lucie believed she saw windows disappear and reappear, and told her GP about it; she’d been admitted to hospital for an ‘assessment.’ Or at least this was the local rumour. In confidence, to be supportive. And the RSPCA chasing a circus of sausage dogs up the street did seem consistent.

#

“That’s for you,” Clover said, putting salmon down for Beamish in their new garden room. The cat sauntered through the doorway, brushing against the wall, purring, before settling in his favourite breakfast spot.

Sitting on the floor with her back pressed against warm glass and a steaming mug of coffee, she read celebrity gossip stories out loud. They were the house’s favourite. One of the high windows opened itself and she laughed. Beamish pawed at the patio door, sniffing up at the summer breeze.

There was one thing that could make life perfect. If Clover could convince the house, and its BFF Beamish.

“What if we ask Brendan to move in? With his terrier?”

Flattened ears and a quietly closed window weren’t the best reactions. But grief was a process. They’d come around. Fingers crossed.