Nigel was about seventy. Retired accountant. Tweed cap, red trousers, a clipboard. He'd been chair of the Kingsmere Residents' Association since the first houses were built. “Welcome to Kingsmere!” he said, handing me a folder. “Bin days, parking rules, the newsletter. We like to keep standards high here.”

“That's very kind. Thank you.”

He looked past me at my boxes.

“And are you a buyer or…?”

“I'm renting,” I said.

His face changed. Just slightly. Like someone had let a little air out of him.

“Ah,” he said. “One of Larkspur's houses. I see.”

He took the folder back off me, flicked through it, and removed two pages.

“The clubhouse gym and the summer barbecue are really more for owners,” he said. “But you're very welcome to come to the open meetings. At the back.”

Then he tipped his cap and walked off.

I stood in my doorway with my half-empty folder, and suddenly I was ten years old again, in a cardboard-box kitchen in Reading.

Biscuit the cat yawned.

“Don't look at me like that,” I told him. “We're staying.”