[Previously in this series: Southend and an honest-to-God house]
Before I carry on, I feel I ought to state that the past five parts of this saga only covered six months of my life. Six months. No wonder I was cranky.
I moved into the mansion in early December. I put my own sheets on the bed, the couple of books I'd been carrying around on the shelf, my clothes on actual hangers in an actual wardrobe. I did the happiest food shop I've ever done in my life, whizzing down the aisles of the supermarket with a huge grin on my face, picking up anything that even slightly took my fancy, loving the Christmas music more than I had done in years. I had a shelf in the fridge, my own space in the cupboards. It was one of the happiest days I can remember.
The journey into work wasn't the easiest, but beyond that the place was a dream. We cooked things. We did clothes swaps. My friend and I went to dances together thrilled to have someone to come back with on the night bus. I bonded with one of my new flatmates over the Christmas decorations. We all went for drinks and did pub quizzes together. We had a tiny Judeo-pagan Christmas party. When I went home for the holidays, my friend sent me a message telling me she was really glad I'd moved in. The universe was finally being nice to me.
Of course it didn't last. How could it?
I'd been told before moving in that the landlady was trying to sell the house. I'd also been told that it had been on the market for quite some time and it wasn't anything to worry too much about. So I didn't really think about it at all. Maybe it would get sold in six months, a year, but I didn't need to worry about that now.
A month after I moved in, the landlady contacted us to tell us she was going to "pop by for a chat." My flatmate saw her later that same day, sent round a message headed "IMPORTANT" and gathered us all in the kitchen to tell us the place had been sold.
It's probably OK, she said. The landlady is nice and wants to make sure we'll be OK. She's chosen a buyer who's willing to take on the existing tenants, so we probably won't have to go anywhere. She'll send us notice to terminate our current contracts, and the new landlord will draw up fresh ones for us. I nodded and shushed the alarm bell in my head because it was fine, it had to be fine, there's no way I'd have to leave this place already because that would just be ridiculous.
We got an email from the woman who'd bought the flat. She told us that yay, she would take us on as tenants at the same rent we were currently paying. Only now it wouldn't include bills, thus pushing the overall cost well out of everyone's budget. We explained this to her, got a snotty email including the phrase "substantially below market value", and gave up.
Me, to everyone I knew: I have to move.
Everyone: What?!
Me: Flat's been sold.
Everyone: For FUCK'S sake!
Me: Yeah.
We decided to try looking for somewhere together, third flatmate having revised her instant hatred of me, as well as separately. We all independently went to view a place down the road, which had several spare rooms as well as a handy built-in Sexual Assault Tunnel with no lights in it, a kitchen that stank, one room we couldn't get into because there was a broken bed and a stack of wallpaper strippings in the way, and a room which contained nothing except a huge pile of cigarette butts.
"So... people smoke in here, then."
"Oh, no," said the twelve-year-old public schoolboy playing at being a landlord. "There's no smoking in this house."
The twelve-year-old public schoolboy upset my friend somewhat. "Who the fuck rents out a cesspit like that? Complete contempt for his tenants, that's what that is. Oh, you don't live here? With the scum? Live in Richmond, do you? See, this is what was wrong with Margaret Thatcher."
Shortly afterwards my friend found somewhere with one free room and decided to take it, leaving the other three of us to look together. We found a house in an area we weren't sure about with a landlady we weren't sure about, but it was clean and had a big kitchen and cost exactly what we were each paying currently. Also I was paying the most and would have the big pretty room with the sofa in it. We had a week until our notice ran out, and none of us wanted to be living in uncertainty anymore. We told the landlady we'd take it.
[in part seven: new house and more evidence of my truly terrible landlord karma]
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