T

heodore Relish and Melissa Von Bogenschutz lived in a large place off the Goldhawk Road. It was a white Edwardian building and part of a row of elegant houses, although the elegance had faded somewhat and some of the neighbouring houses had been turned into flats. There was a fig tree in the front garden which during the summer spread across the pavement in luxurious flight. Melissa sometimes opened a window and plucked a fig from the tree. For a moment she imagined she was living in Ischia or Agrigento or Syracuse. Figs spilled onto the pavement, crushed underfoot by passers-by looking at their phones or listening to music. Figs spilled onto the road and became food for the rats or the Goldhawk fox which roamed the streets glittering in the moonlight. Gideon would sit under a streetlamp making a plaintive sound as if he were a lovelorn troubadour; his voice—imagine it—accompanied by a celestial lute. He would disappear for long stretches of time but would always come back, not least when the figs were in season.

In the early days, when the house was a work in progress, Melissa and Theodore, or Mel and Theo to their friends, would climb to the top floor in the middle of the night. There’d be the odd drunk or a gaggle of exuberant students but they were of passing interest. They were waiting, breathlessly, for Gideon. They’d hold hands like young lovers. A fig tree and a fox! Melissa would say. Who would have thought? How lucky we are! The fox would look up lovingly before breaking into a vulpine cantata.

They needed a large house. It was the 1980s. Wasn’t cheap but they could get some lodgers in to help with the mortgage. Theodore’s first novel had won a prestigious prize and for a while it was almost a bestseller. The prize money had been useful and at the same time Melissa had not one but two pieces accepted by the Royal Academy. An up-and-coming gallery in the West End ensured Melissa Von Bogenschutz’s paintings sold well. There were residencies in Berlin and Bucharest and even Bogota. The British Council saw them as a couple blessed with ‘added value’, and not infrequently, they were flown off together, all expenses paid, on cultural trips. Several prestigious teaching posts came their way: a lecture here, a lecture there, master classes too. Channel Four showcased Melissa’s work and Theodore was working hard on his second novel. They felt quite wealthy for a while though neither was overly interested in money. Both were in their thirties. The future was opening up in tantalising ways.

They’d acquired a considerable reputation. Theodore Relish, a novelist of forensic precision; Melissa Von Bogenschutz, an artist of beguiling vision. They didn’t see the point of getting married and they didn’t want children. Theodore, travelling in Morocco as a young man, had read Enemies of Promise and decided the creative life was the only life. Although he had nothing against children, he had of late become an uncle, he realised they would be an enervating distraction and Melissa was in agreement. In the early years they agreed on everything and although they would never say it themselves, their friends, over a glass of Chardonnay, would say ‘Theo and Mel were made for each other!’

They had met at a literary party. Theodore had noticed a blonde haired woman in a leather jacket on the other side of the room and not only did she smile but she made her way towards him. Theodore, a clandestine romantic, wondered whether the approaching woman would do what Sylvia Plath had done the first time she met Ted Hughes, namely take a chunk out of his cheek. He began to quiver. She didn’t. She had read his stories in the LRB and was eager to meet him. She wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. A few months later they decided to buy a house together. ‘I need lots of space,’ Melissa pointed out and Theodore said he wanted a place near the tube and which had a good writing room with plenty of light. Melissa agreed the house should be flooded with light. ‘What about a dog?’ Theodore asked. ‘Cats are better,’ Melissa replied. ‘They look after themselves and they keep an eye on the mice.’

No one turned down an invitation to a party chez Theo and Mel. In those days the kitchen room in the basement was uncluttered and spacious with a view onto a long garden. There was a solid functional table which could sit ten people without difficulty, on those occasions they were hosting a dinner party. There were pieces of Melissa’s work on the wall, and a few miscellaneous objects picked up in markets including bronze heads and African masks. Books, novels or otherwise, often migrated to the kitchen table but they could be whisked away and put on a make-do shelf before the guests arrived. The kitchen room offered a capacious welcome, with tantalising cooking smells and bottles of wine in abundance and a generous array of ashtrays, some in Moroccan turquoise as well as several spinning receptacles. A finger movement and the butt ends were spun out of sight. Poof! As the years passed Melissa wondered whether they could come up with such a device for the stuff in the house. She didn’t want to get rid of it but if only some of it might slide from view. Bogdana, the cleaning lady, was good at sprucing things up but she wasn’t a miracle worker.

As a young woman Melissa had made a decision about cooking—she would spend her life doing as little of it as possible. Just as well, therefore, Theodore was a maestro. He might take a cursory look at a recipe but in essence his modus operandi was improvisation. A small hand would reach for a jar of herb or the chillies hanging on the kitchen wall or something bought at Shepherd’s Bush Market and the dish would transcend the prosaic list of ingredients laid out in the book and bring a tremulous hush as the guests began to eat. A brief hiatus in a room filled with noisy conversation. There on the table, for all to savour, on porcelain or ceramic or terracotta or wooden boards crafted in Lebanon, never a disappointment, was the maestro’s love supreme. One of his most attentive critics wondered whether the meticulousness of his writing enjoyed an inverse relationship with the audaciousness of his cuisine. When they moved into the house the kitchen was a tabula rasa. It didn’t take long before it became a symphony of pots and pans, many hanging on the walls, and woks and food mixers and coffee grinders and cash and carry bags of organic rice. It was a large kitchen and it opened its arms unselfishly.

Who didn’t enjoy Theodore’s cooking? There were novelists and poets and publishers and editors and translators and scriptwriters and painters and sculptors and actors and theatre directors and biographers and journalists and professors and musicians and models and performance artists and professional smokers and plagiarists and functioning alcoholics and not a few delightfully bereft of reason. There were speakers of European languages and speakers of Arabic and Japanese as well as Hindi and Pashtun. On one occasion, to everyone’s delight, an uninvited Mongolian poet fetched up. Few arrived empty handed—many leaving signed books and paintings and sculptures and bits and bobs and unread manuscripts which drifted to faraway corners and remained unread, picking up dust but still, nevertheless, calling out in the middle of the night with thin voices: Read us! Read us!

Visitors saw a large house with many rooms which said We are blessed with space. Theodore’s American publisher turned up with a gorilla. It had been part of an installation in Boston. The Boston Gorilla was also known as Gary. It was too big to be a child’s toy and the publisher explained there’d been some kind of battery-powered device inserted in what would have been, technically speaking, the gorilla’s bottom, which meant it could beat its chest and sing “Yes, we have no bananas We have no bananas today!’ The mechanism no longer worked and Theodore, feigning pleasure, plumped the gorilla with both arms onto the sofa where it stayed for several weeks. Neither Melissa nor Theodore knew what to do. ‘Why not put Gary on top of the bookshelf in your writing room? ’ Mel suggested, and with some difficulty they managed to get it to sit up, one leg dangling over the books, its glass eyes glazed with melancholy. Melissa found a top hat in the market and, with the help of a step ladder, popped it on Gary’s head. Theodore said ‘Better the Boston Gorilla, I suppose, than the Boston Strangler.’

Elbowing aside a certain diffidence Melissa Von Bogenschutz was the perfect hostess. Whilst Theodore launched into his kitchen symphony she looked at the mirror in the bedroom and adjusted her hair, before looking into a capacious wardrobe of skirts, dresses, ruffled tops, jeans, trousers, leather jackets, kaftans, faux-fur coats, baggy sweaters and vintage boots. When she wasn’t in a painting mood, and even when she was, she drifted through London’s markets, second hand shops, charity shops, and turned up at house clearance sales. Post-punk London was a serendipitous dreamland. No need to buy new stuff; that would come later, years later. Some of her friends in the fashion industry brought her home made clothes full of patchwork collages and hand-picked buttons and vibrant leggings. She’d told Theodore she needed another wardrobe and that was on his list of things to do.

She walked down the stairs, which in those days one could do without encumbrance, and made her way through the guests and Theodore smiled. She was by far the most interesting woman in the house. Her eclectic, if careful, assortment of clothes resonating with the dishes he was knocking up in the kitchen. Lucretia, their lodger and trainee opera singer, stood in the garden and sang an aria as light as a tiramisu. Guests hovered round, applauding, and Gideon stood at the far end of the garden looking on, twitching his brown ears.

Lucrezia and Jonny, their first lodgers, were perfect. Lucretia, from Rome, was studying at the Royal Academy of Music and Jonny was a member of the SWP. He did a little carpentry but much of his time was dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism. They took over the two rooms at the top of the house and Theodore and Melissa charged a modest rent. Melissa said it was nice to have them and Theodore agreed. Some days they could hear Lucretia singing. Some days the trainee opera singer took Theo on long walks. Some days Jonny tramped up the stairs with columns of serious looking men who were having an impromptu strategy meeting. Or Lucretia came down to the kitchen and whisked up a large bowl of pasta for the household. Gloriously simple lunches—pasta with aglio, olio, pepperoncino, a Roman artichoke or two. Lucretia from the Eternal City, Jonny from Mile End! In their twenties, so young! Jonny had filled one of the attic rooms with pamphlets and manifestos and had made a hefty if wobbly bookshelf, piles of newspapers spinning onto the landing. He invited his landlord to come and admire his library. Theo rather liked the idea there was a burgeoning collection at the top of the house marching in step with his own which slowly but surely colonised the writing room and spilled out into the sitting room, the kitchen and the bathroom.

The first time the rent wasn’t paid Theodore and Melissa looked the other way. Lucrezia and Jonny probably needed a little more time and in any case their lodgers were friends now. After three months of rental drought they wondered whether they should say something. Their own finances were becoming less secure. Lucretia, they noticed, did not sing as much these days and Jonny’s political activism had metamorphosed into what Melissa called ‘Bedroom Opera’—tempestuous arguments followed by percussive sessions of love making. ‘Perhaps they’re having a second honeymoon.’ Theodore noted wryly. It was Jonny who brought the matter up.

‘Theo, really sorry about the rent. We’re waiting for the next chunk of Lucretia’s grant and my work seems to have dried up.’

‘Maybe you could do some carpentry around the house. There’s a lot of stuff on the floors.’

Jonny had another proposal. He found Melissa in the garden room manoeuvring a large painting into place. He’d noticed of late her work was moving away from colour and collage towards a more figurative mode.

Jonny said, ‘Me and Lucretia could model for you. In exchange for the outstanding rent.’

And an agreement was made on the spot—a temporary agreement. Theo shrugged his shoulders when she told him. ‘If that’s what you want.’

Mel felt like a student again—Life Drawing—though her hand was quick and confident now and Lucretia and Jonny without clothes were magnificent. A large plank of wood, sometime ago pushed against the window in the studio, had interrupted the flow of light so Melissa made the sitting room her temporary laboratory. Neither Lucretia not Jonny were bashful about nakedness. Jonny seemed to relish it and every time Theo came back into the house Jonny was sitting on the sofa drinking coffee, legs apart, naked.

‘Waiting for Mel,’ he’d say.

When Theodore mentioned that Jonny didn’t wear many clothes these days Melissa said ‘You’re getting old, my dearest.’

Theodore had put on a little weight. Jonny was as sinewy as a mountain stream whilst Lucrezia, with her long thick hair, was prosperous from every angle. Melissa was taken up with the project—Jonny Dreaming of Revolutions on Divan, Lucretia Blessing the Remaining Light, Jonny Forsaking Clothes to read Das Kapital, Lucretia Holding a Snow Globe, Lucretia with Mother and Child—the mother was of the feline kind and the child one of the vast litter she’d recently produced. There were individual poses and drawings of the lovers together. She even persuaded Theodore to pose for one—Jonny with Landlord. Theo was standing behind the seated revolutionary, only his head and shoulders appeared.

Melissa felt an energy moving into her fingers and she worked with an intensity she hadn’t experienced for a while. Dinner parties were temporarily suspended as well as shopping for clothes. Theodore sat in his writing room, unable to write, waiting for artist and naked models to break for lunch.

The Leopold Museum, as it happens, was curating an exhibition—The Human Form Revisited—and had invited portfolios from artists across the world. Melissa’s work had been accepted at the last minute and now she worked with an even greater intensity. She had to send twelve framed pieces—not small—to Vienna and the house became engulfed in decision making. Her gallerist came round and took several drawings and they sold immediately. Jonny asked if they might not have a cut. Channel Four featured The Jonny and Lucretia Drawings on some late-night show, saying Melissa von Bogenschutz had taken life drawing by the scruff of the neck.

Three days before Theodore and Melissa were off to the opening—flights booked—Jonny announced they were leaving. Lucretia was going back to Rome and Jonny had found a teaching job in Nicaragua.

‘Don’t worry about the stuff in the attic. I’ll ask one of the comrades to come round and take it away.’

That night Lucretia sang Lascia ch’io pianga.

In 1990 they threw a party to celebrate Thatcher’s fall from power. They had a new lodger but they only rented out the one room because the comrades had never come round to clear Jonny’s library and unattended the books and manifestos seemed to have multiplied. The new lodger was a trainee teacher and paid the rent at the end of every month. In 1990 the neighbours on one side were Jamaican and they were celebrating too. Tyrone came round with jerk chicken and from their sound system Dennis Brown was singing ‘Are you ready to stand up and fight the right revolution?’

Melissa was talking to Theodore’s German translator. ‘My father was a businessman and fell for a Jewish girl. Realising the direction of National Socialism he got his lover a one way ticket to America. He remained in Berlin, and thanks to his wealth, he arranged safe passage for other Jews. His cover was blown in 1939 and he slipped across the border. He returned to Berlin at the end of the war and married my mother.’

Melissa was sent to boarding school in England. Her father didn’t speak about the past but she remembered his account of a Jewish couple who had to abandon their apartment on the Kurfürstendamm and slip away with nothing. The thought of having nothing, she said to the German translator. Nothing! She thought of her paintings and palettes and easels and rolled up canvasses and objets d’art and African masks and art books and her cats and her shoes and her bottles of coco chanel and her soaps and her jewellery and her clothes. I will never have nothing, she exclaimed and pulled Theodore to his feet and they danced to the music of Dennis Brown, the smell of jerk chicken in the air. The moon had risen and she whispered in her beloved’s ear ‘Can you see Gideon over there, at the end of the garden?’

In 1997 they threw a party to celebrate Tony Blair’s electoral victory. They agreed Blair was neither Michael Foot nor Tony Benn but nevertheless after eighteen years of Tory rule even Gary the Gorilla would have been an improvement. It was open house from midday. Who didn’t come to the party? Theodore prepared dishes from across the world and guests brought bottles of champagne. The food was laid out on long tables in the garden—a Saturday. Guests would have noticed they had to step over several boxes in the hallway and the kitchen room, with people spilling into the garden, was like the underground at rush hour; that the garden room was now chock-a-block with Melissa’s canvases.

Half of the kitchen table had given way to books and newspapers and abandoned art works and pots of paint and bits of metal picked up in the street—found pieces. Nowadays they could sit six people around the table, including themselves. House parties were different. People came and left until the small hours. The Jamaican neighbours had gone. A gay couple who worked at the BBC had taken their place. Blur blasted out from a stereo: ‘Girls who want boys who like boys to be girls who do boys like they’re girls who do girls like they’re boys.’

Two editors, both drunk, both smoking, were sitting on garden chairs.

‘Theo always pulls it out of the bag. Fabulous food.’

I wonder whether his cooking’s not better than his writing. I haven’t seen much lately.’

‘The odd story.’

‘Extremely odd.’

When Theodore and Melissa eventually got up to their bedroom they looked out of the window and saw Gideon walking by with a cub. He looked up and Melissa waved. ‘Oh Gideon,’ she said. ‘No nocturne cantata for us?’

They had no plans to throw a party in 2000 to celebrate the millennium. Their finances were in a slump. Melissa had given up the second studio on the Uxbridge Road. Theodore was in a slump too. Since the publication of Sudden—his brilliant debut—the quest for novel number two had taken him into a labyrinth. Sixteen years had passed. His readership had waited. Some had wandered off to the lagoon. His literary agent had jumped ship. His publisher’s requests to see the work, which arrived in large brown packages on rare occasions, led to bafflement. In 1989 Theodore sent the publisher a hundred thousand words. In 1993 he sent a hundred and fifty thousand, with ‘Lebensraum’ written on a post it note. In 1998 he’d sent two hundred thousand words. His publisher communicated with laconic Christmas cards.

Theodore—the dragon-slayer—had forsaken structure, economy and clarity and still had his foot on the accelerator. There was no end in sight. He was out-brothering the Brothers Karamazov, out-warring Tolstoy, making Finnegans Wake a jog around the park. Pound’s Make it New was becoming Make it Big. People were saying ‘Poor Theo. He’s been skewered with Second Novel Syndrome.’

A collection of stories published ten years beforehand had been well reviewed but didn’t sell. His second novel contained so many lines of enquiry, so many obsessions, there were piles of books, scrupulously annotated, reaching towards the ceiling. Whilst Melissa was gliding inexorably towards some cannabis-scented retailer of second-hand clothes, Theodore was slipping into a second-hand bookshop. He was convinced there was something which would lead him out of the labyrinth. He flicked though accounts of Victorian sewers, the construction of Lunatic Asylums, the occult. Inevitability he would bring home another handful of books. Review work had petered out. He’d done a little freelance stuff for the BBC and when the lodger left he realised they needed a cash injection so he took on a ‘temporary’ role helping to distribute books for a small publisher. More boxes arrived, boxes on top of boxes.

‘Where on earth are you going to put them?’ Mel asked.

Theodore shrugged. ‘Remember, books will be leaving the house as well as coming in—at least that’s the idea.’

Melissa sold a painting and they threw a party after all. A mountain of books had collapsed in the hallway so their guests needed to walk down a path several houses on which cut back round to the garden. ‘The scenic route,’ someone quipped. It was a smaller gathering than usual and a few impromptu fireworks leapt into the sky and died a quick death. Yet London was full of fireworks. Gideon sat twitching between two wheelie bins wondering what the new century would bring. Theodore’s American publisher was a surprise guest—he couldn’t stay long but he’d brought Gary a companion.

‘I couldn’t resist it,’ he said. ‘She’s a bit smaller and she’s called Madge.’ She was in the same Bostonian installation and had been found in someone’s attic—she’d had some implanted device which meant she could sing something too—though no one seems to remember what she sang.

The next day Theodore and Melissa got the ladder and managed to squeeze Madge next to Gary. Their exertions resulted in a cloud of dust. One of Madge’s legs dangled down from the bookshelf.

In 2003 Theodore and Melissa had their first big argument. They’d been on the Stop The War March. When they got back to the house they couldn’t open the door. Strange—they’d cleared a pathway before setting out. Maybe the cats have been up to something,’ Melissa said. ‘Those bloody cats,’ Theodore replied. ‘I thought you liked those bloody cats?’ They took the path to the back garden but Melissa couldn’t find the back door key. They’d put a spare one under a pot. So many pots now. Theodore broke the glass panel. Their new neighbour heard the noise and called 999. The cats scurried to their bowls. They’d lost count. Cats had drifted in from neighbouring houses, finding empty boxes or piles of clothes to make a home away from home and enter a life of feline meditation. The cats loved Melissa because she fed them, indiscriminately.

A pile of shoes had cascaded down the first flight of stairs. Once in the sitting room they could smell Bogdana’s Slavic perfume.

‘I didn’t know she was coming today.’

‘She has her own key,’ Melissa said.

Bogdana didn’t want to hurt her back pushing boxes around and there was no space to hoover in the rooms upstairs. She had a millennium duster which extended to various lengths. Dusting was Bogdana’s speciality.

‘Is she in the house?’

Next to the front door they found Bogdana lying face up, blood coming from her ear. The duster next to her.

Melissa threw her hands in the air. ‘I think she might be dead.’

But Bogdana wasn’t dead. Theodore patted her face. They helped her to her feet. ‘Better call the ambulance,’ Melissa said. They took her to the sofa and cleared some books and sat her down. Theodore fetched a glass of water.

‘I’m sorry,’ Bogdana said. She looked towards the gorillas and then put her head in her hands.

‘What happened?’ Melissa asked. Bogdana pointed at the gorillas on top of the bookcase.

‘Problem,’ she said. ‘Problem.’

‘What sort of problem?’

‘Big gorilla, big problem,’ she said.

Theodore and Melissa looked at Gary, sitting next to Madge.

‘I dust,’ Bogdana said, ‘many dust, the house quiet and Gorilla began singing, very loud.’

‘Singing?’

‘He had bananas, he not have bananas. I very scared and running to the door.’

‘You must have tripped.’ Theodore wiped her ear with one of Melissa’s vintage shirts.

The ambulance turned up at the same time as the police car. Neighbours watched from across the road. Gideon, out of sight, looked on.

The paramedic walked Bogdana out of the house. The policeman looked around. It’d been a trying day.

‘Are you the owners of this house?’

‘Yes,’ Theodore said.

‘Are you aware of a break in? It does rather look like a break in.’

Theodore explained.

You were on the Stop the War March! If you want my opinion it won’t make much difference. And the woman in the ambulance?

‘Our cleaning lady.’

‘A brave woman,’ the policeman said looking around. ‘Do you mind if I take a look upstairs? He was taking out a notebook.

Melissa sat on the sofa and smoked a cigarette. The men began clomping upwards.

The policeman saw the staircase was hedged by boxes lined up on the sides and at moments he would have to turn sideways to squeeze past and when they got to the next floor he saw stacks of clothes on the landing and piles of newspapers. He pushed open a couple of doors and saw more clothes, some on make do racks, some on the floor in vertical piles.

‘Running a business from this property sir?’

‘Of course not. I’m a writer.’

‘A writer? What do you write Mr Relish?’

‘Fiction.’

‘I like detective stories myself. Much success?’

‘Sudden—my first novel—did reasonably well.’

‘I’ve never heard of it, I’m afraid. And your wife?’

‘She’s not my wife. If it’s of any relevance at all, Mrs Von Bogenschutz’s an artist.’

‘An artist.’

The policeman looked at the next flight of stairs and decided against it.

‘I think I’ve seen enough.’

Melissa was looking at a painting of hers on the wall: a pistol, the barrel of which blossomed into a flowering prepuce.

‘I like that painting,’ she said to herself and lit another cigarette.

As the policeman was leaving he said, noticing an ashtray with vertical aspirations, ‘Far be it from me to suggest how you live your lives. You might think of getting in touch with a charity shop Mrs Von Bogenschutz.’

Cannibal—one of the cats—rubbed itself against his leg.

He added, ‘I’d get that back door fixed too.’

Theodore and Melissa went to bed early that night. They lay together under blankets looking at the ceiling. There were several wardrobes in the bedroom. Yet the piles of clothes on the floor meant they were beyond reach. A pathway led into the room and a casual glance, by an untrained eye, might have given the impression Theo and Mel slept in a four poster bed. Or a boat that had been tossed in an ocean of fabric. One great surge and they would capsize. It was a cold February night. Only one of the bedside lamps seemed to work which gave the room a spectral glow. The jackets on the racks were headless ghosts, latent, muttering without mouths. There was a cobweb on the ceiling which had escaped Bogdana’s duster.

‘Perhaps the policeman was right,’ Theodore said.

‘Right?’

‘You could get rid of a few clothes, I suppose.’

‘And the books?’

‘Mel, really, I need them for the project.’

‘Why don’t you finish that bloody novel!’

They continued looking at the cobweb on the ceiling.

‘The clothes are my extended family,’ Melissa said. ‘I’m not sending my family to a charity shop.’

After a long silence Melissa said ‘And what are you going to call that novel?’

‘The World Beyond’, Theodore said.

By the time the Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 the house had become a forest. Both front and back doors unreachable. Final warnings regarding the electricity bill hadn’t been taken care of and the house was plunged into darkness. They found some candles which they clutched, navigating the stairs and gathering in the kitchen for candlelit dinners. The gas was still working and at first Theodore enjoyed improvising in the flickering light. Although Melissa didn’t cook she had, on her last foray into the outside world, bought a large quantity of exotic vegetables which she’d stuffed into the corners of the fridge. A chemical process of hybridisation seeped across the shelves. Theodore tried to open a window. He scraped the soupy mush from the fridge into a plastic bag.

Although Theodore had quit his job with Independent Distributions, books continued to arrive, left on the stoop, which encouraged the policeman to re-entertain the idea they were running business. For a month or so the house was under surveillance. Difficult to get out of either door now. They were running out of basic provisions. Theodore got a message through to his nephew who’d graduated from Imperial College. Ruben set up a pulley system in the back garden. Theo and Mel put in their orders and the young man winched them up to the second floor. Gideon looked on, bemused, rolls of loo paper falling into the long grass.

Theodore’s writing room was now little more than a desk and a typewriter and a revolving ashtray. His computer had crashed some time ago and remained kaput, notwithstanding energetic Wagnerian prodding. Melissa’s studio was a scrapyard, groaning with artefacts and detritus. There was a pathway of sorts from door to a table on which sat a Moroccan ashtray, next to which there was room for a small easel. Two planks of wood covered up much of the window. Melissa was teaching herself to paint in the etiolated light. Sometimes candlelight. Useful for introspection. She was painting miniatures and was excited by this new direction. If only her gallerist could see them.

Once in their rooms it was easier to avoid further travel. The kitchen was a faraway place, bathroom and bedroom negotiable—just. Melissa could hear Theodore’s typing. She missed her Lebanese café. She was losing weight. The cats weren’t being fed either—Ruben had delivered some biscuits on the winch which Melissa chucked down the stairs—their plaintive cries like the Nibelung gathering on the Rhine. Some had jumped ship. Some had slipped into neighbouring houses. Melissa shuddered when she saw a mouse. Theodore and Melissa banged on the walls when they needed to communicate. Post dropped into the hallway—unreachable, unread. The gas had been turned off.

Melissa couldn’t sleep. The fifth night in a row. It didn’t help that Theodore, notwithstanding the twenty-five years he’d spent on his second novel, was snoring blissfully. Her journey of introspection had not been without cost. Sleeplessness reached out a hand and the fingers of that hand could feel rope. If only she could sleep. She pleaded. If you let me sleep, she said to the God she didn’t believe in, I’ll think about getting rid of my clothes, not all of them mind you. She had some sleeping tablets in the kitchen. She took the torch Ruben had supplied and put on a dressing gown—one of her favourites. She wondered whether she might trip down the stairs and break her neck. Thinner now, navigation of the staircase was slightly easier. One step at a time. She reminded herself there was another staircase down to the kitchen. She pushed a landing switch out of habit. The sound of the click startled her. She thought of climbing back to the bedroom but Theodore’s sleeping form would be a torment, and she’d gone so far that going back would be as difficult as going on. Her descent was crab like, squeezing herself against the banisters, hearing bits and pieces fall from the pyramids of stuff. If only the lights would come back on. The stairs creaked. She could smell the kitchen before she reached it—cat faeces and spoilt okra.

Melissa’s complicated journey to the kitchen had alerted the three cats still in residence. They emerged from their boxes and scurried down to the bowls. Melissa shone her torch: two were little more than kittens, threadbare. Only Cannibal was familiar to her. With some difficulty she opened some deluxe tuna. Cannibal rubbed himself again her leg.

There were boxes pushed against the back door. She knew the pills were in one of them. She reached up for the top one and opened it—shoes mostly. The second box had more shoes and some woollen scarves. Maybe take a couple? It was getting cold in the bedroom. She began pulling at the boxes some of which fell around her feet. They hadn’t fixed the door and a wind blew in from the garden. Then she heard the fox’s cry. Gideon’s face was pushed against the door, blood running out of his mouth.

Several mornings later Theodore announced they needed a war plan. He was somewhat leaner and had a beard now, flecked with grey. Melissa rather liked it.

‘Anything could happen’, he said. ‘There could be a fire. We’re drifting hopelessly. We’re running out of money. We’re running out of air. The house smells like an enormous hamster cage. We need a clear path to the front door and the kitchen and the back door. We need to pay the bills. I need to cook real food in a kitchen that looks like a kitchen. Have you noticed the cats have abandoned their mouse duties? I don’t care what you say, I’m starting today.’

Melissa kissed his forehead. After finding the sleeping pills she’d slept for a whole day. She dreamt of Gideon. He was leaving the city, a trail of blood though the streets of Hammersmith. He limped and wailed, finding shelter in abandoned sheds, licking his wounds. He swam across a river. He walked across green fields. He was getting stronger now. Somewhere over the hill was fox land. He stood on the hill and turned. He looked at Melissa, the blood staunched now. He broke into mellifluous song.

Theodore picked up his metaphorical machete and worked tirelessly for three days—pushing, shoving, heaving newspapers around, putting books into neat piles, shaking his fist at a mouse, surreptitiously bagging up loose shoes. He cleared the hallway, opened the front door, which let out a sigh. He cleared the stoop and walked to a phone box. He paid the bills. He arranged for someone to fix the back door. He bumped into a poet who threw his arms into the air. He looked at the weather. The weather looked back.

If the policeman had returned he wouldn’t have noticed much difference. Yet Theodore’s efforts meant they had contact with the world. The house now had a degree of functionality, as if the Romans had made a road through a German forest. They tried to persuade Bogdana to come back. We’ll pay you more.

‘You get rid of gorillas, I come back.’

‘What do you think?’ Melissa said.

‘We can’t do that,’ Theodore replied. ‘Gary and Madge are inseparable. They’re hand in hand, riding the waves, like us.’

‘I think you’re right. I might try a little dusting myself.’

‘Only if you get the urge. Be careful.’

Not long after the defeat of the Labour government in 2010 Ruben supplied Theo and Mel with iPhones. It didn’t take Melissa long to work out how to order clothes online. The gallerist had been pleased with her miniatures and the household had some income coming in. Needing more space Melissa took a studio on the Uxbridge Road.

Ruben had sorted out Theo’s computer and The World Beyond was taking the novelist in another direction. When he looked out of window of his writing room, the curtain no longer snagging after the clear up, he saw the sun rising over London.

A friend from Suffolk was passing through—an artist. They invited her for supper. The kitchen table still looked as if a dumper truck had dropped a great heap upon it but Theodore had chucked away a few things and the three of them could perch at the end. They drank good wine. Cannibal stretched under the table. The visitor out smoked them, flicking ash into the Moroccan chicken. ‘I adore your house,’ she said.

The bedroom, if anything, was getting worse. Online deliveries arrived for Melissa which she secreted into the room. They lay in the quiet of the night holding hands in a bed walled in by pillars of clothes, listening to the gorillas. Gary would begin—‘Yes I have no bananas, I have no bananas today’ and as if they’d been practising Madge would follow with ‘Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, Madam, Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.’

‘Oh Theo thank God we didn’t get rid of them,’ Melissa said.

‘Did you ever try any of that dusting stuff?’

Now it was possible to get out of the house Melissa established a routine. An hour in the Lebanese cafe, two hours in the new studio, some gentle mooching around the market. If she bought an item of clothing she’d conceal it under her coat. Another hour at the café. It was good to be out of the house. Even the fig tree looked perkier. Maybe they should go to Italy?

Ruben’s winching device was still in place and knowing that Melissa would be away the entire morning Theodore arranged, along with his nephew, now writing a PhD, some strategic winching of clothes intro the back garden, which were thrown into large black sacks and taken down the back path and driven in Ruben’s Cortina to the dump. Risky taking them to a charity shop. Theodore calculated small removals would go unnoticed. A light trim. He hadn’t yet discovered Melissa was bringing new clothes into the house.

Theodore hadn’t had an epiphany for years and now he had one. The World Beyond was going into reverse. He was going to slash it and shrink it. The liberation made him giddy and bold and underscored his desire to take on the house. He even threw a few books into the winch. Ruben said ‘I’ll take them to a second-hand shop to see if I can get some money. Even if the Tories are back in power there’s need to throw in the towel.’

One morning—a Tuesday as it happens—Melissa came home earlier than usual. She slipped through the front door, much easier nowadays, and heard Theodore on the telephone. She didn’t like the drift of the conversation.

‘Would the Red Cross be interested?’ she heard him say ‘A morning collection would be best. The clothes are in very good condition.’

The call went on for a while and she felt her heart pounding. Who did he think he was? The Grim Reaper?

When he’d finished the call she stepped into his writing room, a little tidier these days. ‘We need to talk.’ Theo’s colour changed, not unlike that wonderful lobster dish he used to make for those dinner parties long ago. Her voice was cracking. She wasn’t into shouting. It didn’t matter what Theodore said about speculative enquiries. She’d rumbled him. An act of betrayal.

When she glanced up at Gary and Madge they looked different, as if someone had been pulling chunks out of them. Melissa slammed the front door. She’d never done that before.

A day later, no sign of Melissa, Theodore thought of ringing the police. Then he got a text. ‘I’ll be back in a few days, on condition you call the Red Cross.’ Theodore didn’t know that Jonny, after all these years, had come back to London for an important meeting and bumped into Melissa in Shepherd’s Bush. He didn’t know that Life Drawing had resumed in her studio on the Uxbridge Road.

When Melissa came home she seemed surprisingly chipper and once she saw the bedroom was still crammed with her clothes she was even chippier. She’d been working hard too, she said. Theodore cooked a goat curry to celebrate her return.

For a while life carried on pleasantly enough. Mel went off in the morning; Theo worked on The World Beyond. No allusion was made to the Red Cross. They smoked happily and drank some excellent wine. At night they listened to Gary and Madge:—‘We’ve string beans, and onions, cabbageses, and scallion but I have no bananas, I have no bananas today’ followed by ‘Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today, Madam, Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.’

Melissa ordered a state-of-the-art duster. ‘I think we’ll have a good crop of figs this year.’

Then the catastrophe, years in the making. They woke one morning struggling to breathe. It felt as if they’d been buried alive, like a Victorian melodrama. The skyscrapers surrounding their bed had keeled over. A great wave had capsized their boat. Theodore could see one of Melissa’s arms through an air hole and Melissa could make out one of Theo’s ears. She’d always liked his ears. They could shout but their voices were muffled. The turned over boat had an air pocket but for how long? A piece of luck. Theodore’s iPhone had been knocked into the bed and he clutched it like a man still alive in a coffin who’d found a providential handbell. Let me out! With some difficulty he managed to ring Ruben who came around straightaway, thankfully he had a key, and pulled the layers of jackets and skirts and shirts off the bed. They sat up, propped against cushions, saying nothing for an hour.

Melissa said ‘You can ring the Red Cross or the British Heart Foundation or Mencap, or whoever you choose. Let me pick out a few things, they can take the rest. We can make the bedroom the lungs of the house, a permanent pocket of air. We can worry about the rest of the house later.’

Theodore said ‘I’ll start rounding up some books too. Oh Mel, it will be a new start.’ Later that day Ruben came round with a bottle of champagne.

It was Theodore who saw it first. He’d gone to the bathroom in the night and switched on the landing light. When he heard the noise he thought it was Cannibal, chomping at Gary and Madge. Then he saw a light. The goat clambered up the stairs with ease and stood for a moment next to the bathroom before bleating and disappearing into the night. Theodore got back into bed and slept like a baby. The next morning he put it down to a dream, no ordinary dream, and decided not to say anything about it. Two nights later Melissa, making her way to the bathroom in the small hours, had a similar encounter. The white goat took on the crowded stairs as if they were the ledge of a Greek mountain. At first Melissa thought it was Gideon but the luminous goat revealed itself before fading away. She got back into bed and had the best night’s sleep in a long while, sleeping tablets unnecessary. She told Theo about the goat over breakfast and he shared his experience too. That night they stood at the top of the stairs, hand in hand, waiting, and waiting. All they could hear was a tinny version of ‘Yes, I have no bananas’ and an even tinnier version of ‘Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.’ Then they saw the light. The goat climbed the stairs and passed right by them, they could feel its coat on their legs, and the goat entered the bedroom. They watched it navigate the room. It still looked as if a doodle bug had hit it but the goat found pathways of its own and made its way to the largest wardrobe. They waited for it to come out. When they looked inside there was nothing, not even the clothes which had been hanging there. White mist hovered for a while and there was a goaty aroma which sent them into a deep sleep.

‘I do like goats,’ Melissa said.

‘Nothing at all wrong with a goat’, Theodore said, and as he was saying it he resolved, with a tinge of regret, never to cook goat curry again.

The Red Cross never came because Ruben told Melissa about eBay and she found her clothes sold very quickly—vintage—and at good prices. Every time she made a sale her phone made a pleasing sound. There was satisfaction in seeing the room thinning out. A less brutal resolution. The bedroom began to look like a bedroom. In any case, Melissa told herself, I can always start over again.

‘I didn’t know you’d applied to the Nicaragua Institute for a residency?’

‘I thought it would come to nothing,’ Melissa said. ‘It didn’t seem worth mentioning.’

‘You’re going to Managua for six months.’

‘Everything paid for.’

‘That’s half a year Mel.’

‘I’ll have a lot of work to do.’

‘I’ll come and visit.’

‘Unfortunately, spouses and partners aren’t allowed to come. That’s one of the conditions. You’ll do fine without me. Remember, you’ve got a book to finish.’

Two weeks later Theo was seeing Mel off at Heathrow. They hugged for a long time. He didn’t know Jonny would be picking her up at Sandino International Airport.

Theodore mooched around the house which seemed enormous and although he was pleased the bedroom looked like a bedroom and the stairs were easier to climb he missed Melissa and when he got into the bed he had a pang of nostalgia for the old bedroom.

Melissa did spend a few days in Managua but Jonny had a house in La Boquita. The chauffer drove them in an old Mercedes, a couple of hours from the capital. The house was big enough for a studio and the views of the sea were magnificent, not to mention the light! There was so much to paint Melissa could hardly hold the brush.

Life drawings continued in and out of the studio, and in and out of the bedroom. Jonny had a moustache. His skin had darkened after years of sun and his Spanish was immaculate. Even his English was infused with Central American rhythm.

His chauffeur, it turned out, was also his bodyguard. A fine-looking man. An athlete.

Jonny said, ‘Carlos won’t take his clothes off in the studio—Where, in any case, would he put his pistol?’

Jonny had done well. ‘The history of Nicaragua is muy complicada. It’d take six months to scratch the surface. I gave up teaching years ago. Moved on.’

Melissa enjoyed what lay before her eyes: the sea, the beach, the garden. There were coconuts and pineapples and papayas and watermelon and dragon fruits and passion fruit and plenty of bananas.

Weeks passed. Months. Jonny sometimes drove to Managua, stayed a few days, and came back with paints and canvasses and new outfit for his erstwhile landlady. Her Nicaraguan wardrobe was looking good. She was left with a house maid who couldn’t speak much English. Melissa walked along the beach, put her feet in the sea, and swam out alone. She’s always been a strong swimmer. She wondered what her gallerist would say about the new work. She thought about Theo. She’d never done anything like this before. She wondered if he’d ever find out there never had been a residency; just a plan cooked up with Jonny on the Uxbridge Road. Behind the garden there was a cliff. One morning she watched a goat climbing towards the summit.

The sea was emerald blue yet a hurricane was coming. Gary sat under a banana tree, one of his eyes gauged out. Gideon stood on a mountain top and let out a plaintive wail. Howler monkeys howled. White lights hovered above the Goldhawk Road. The fig tree was barren. Theo stood in the attic, at the top of the stairs, looking a lot older.

‘Miss Von Bogenshutz’s been dreaming,’ Jonny said, his arms around her. She was covered in sweat.

‘I have to go home, Jonny.’

Melissa didn’t know Lucretia was playing Princess Elizabeth in Wagner’s Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House. Their former lodger has sent tickets for the last night, along with a note—I’ll be in London a few days; perhaps we could meet up?

Theodore had received a couple of postcards from Nicaragua. One had a puma on it, the other lots of avocados. He missed Melissa but he was working hard. One morning, a Tuesday, he found Cannibal laid out under the fig tree. Gary and Madge had been knocked off the shelf, their glass eyes gone. Cannibal had been on a frenzy. Theodore should have fed him more tuna. He buried the cat in the garden and put the remains of the Gary and Madge into a plastic bag. He missed their singing but the house, so quiet now, the odd mouse aside, he managed to put the final touches to The World Beyond.

He stood at the Royal Opera House and hollered and clapped on the last night of Tannhauser. Two days later Lucretia came for lunch. Theodore had cleared most of the kitchen table.

‘I will never forget this house,’ she said, tucking into lamb tajine. They drank two bottles of Barbera. They talked and cried a little and held each other. She didn’t know what had happened to Jonny. He might be dead. Nicaragua is a dangerous place. Theodore could see that Lucretia was wondering why Melissa wasn’t there. It felt too strange saying she had gone to Nicaragua so he said she was visiting family in Germany.

‘Ah Germania,’ Lucretia said.

As evening came, the days getting longer now, Lucretia said ‘You’ll think I’m some crazy Diva. I’d like to sleep in the attic one last time!’

‘I’ll get some sheets.’

In the middle of the night Lucretia stepped out of her room and wondered at the pamphlets and manifestos still floating around the attic. The house was quiet. She was remembering Jonny and now she saw the goat. She followed it down the stairs and before she knew it she was gliding dreamily into the master bedroom and sliding into the novelist’s bed. Although she had a fine hotel in a fine part of London she stayed for three nights. They talked a lot and held each other. They went for long walks. Theo read from his novel. Lucretia sang Astrud Gilberto’s ‘Love is the saddest thing when it goes away.’ In my next novel, Theo said to himself, I’ll write about an opera singer who sings when she makes love.

Melissa didn’t know that when Theo’s publisher got the manuscript the man would twitch. Never had he received a book which made him twitch like that. She didn’t know that when her Nicaraguan art was exhibited in London there would be exclamations. She didn’t know that not long after her return they would host a magnificent party.

The World Beyond would win prizes and become a best seller. And soon enough Channel Four would make a late-night programme about her Nicaraguan adventure. She didn’t know the British Council would send them to New York—some called it the return of Theodore Relish and Mellissa Von Bogenschutz. She didn’t know another fox would stand under the fig tree. They called him little Gideon—the finest troubadour in London. Neither did she know Bogdana would stride in with her duster and a brand new hoover. She didn’t know she would take down the painting of the pistol with its flowering prepuce and replace it with a goat.