The summer fun day was the biggest one Kingsmere had ever had.

Four hundred people on the green. A bouncy castle. A cake stall. A football match, Owners versus Renters, which was abandoned at half time because nobody could remember which team they were on.

Doris won the cake competition again. Nigel ran the dog show, very seriously, with a clipboard, and gave every single dog a rosette.

My mum came down from Reading for the day. She's sixty-eight now. She still rents. A little flat by the river that Hearthstone looks after.

We sat on a bench by the green, eating Doris's lemon drizzle, watching Josh and Sam and Oliver chase each other round the bouncy castle.

“You did it, Katie,” said Mum quietly.

“Did what?”

“What I always wanted somebody to do. When we were packing those boxes.”

She squeezed my hand.

Nigel Fairbrother once told me I was just a renter. That I didn't have a real stake in the place. That I'd be gone in a year.

He was wrong about all three.

There's no such thing as just a renter. There's no such thing as just an owner, either.

There are only neighbours. People who live next to each other, and look after each other's roses, and let each other's kids play football on the green.

The walls don't decide who belongs.

The people do.