Simply Shady

On the sixteenth Martinfinally came over to look at the plans. I spend my life interviewing people and discussing in detail the manner in which they raped or murdered someone so it’s rare for me to classify a conversation as awkward but this one truly was. Even though he kept smiling and making positive noises about how great it would look our plans clearly disappointed him. He said that it was a bigger project than they had hoped and we would remove the view from their landing window, daylight from the kitchen and the morning sunshine from their patio. Despite this he said we should aim to have the house as we wanted it. I just didn’t want that to be achieved at their expense. As an act of appeasement we said that we’d pay for an extra window in their pitched kitchen roof to allow the maximum light in. I felt increasingly lost for words and apologetic. He asked to borrow the plans so he could get a better grasp of what we planned and explain it to Anne. He’d return them the next day. When he left I stood in the garden feeling thoroughly crestfallen and looked at where our new pitched roof would be and where their patio was and for the first time really grasped how much it would impact on them. He actually returned the plans fourteen days later, all smiles and saying he’d forgotten he still had them. Nothing else was said so maybe there isn’t an objection to our plans on the way.