The New Flat

After two weeks of searching, Nora was beginning to suspect that an affordable flat within reach of her office did not exist. When her brother Leo offered to come with her to one final viewing on Saturday, she accepted mainly out of exhaustion. The building looked rather old from outside, but the entrance was clean and the owner arrived punctually, which was already a better start than most of the visits she had endured.

The flat turned out to be smaller than the photographs had suggested. Even so, the bedroom received plenty of natural light, and there was a recess by the window where Nora could picture her desk. She imagined reading there in the evenings instead of propped up on her bed, as she did in her current room. It was an unexpectedly persuasive image, and she tried not to let it decide everything.

While she absorbed the atmosphere, Leo concentrated on practicalities. He tested the taps, opened the kitchen cupboards and asked which appliances were included in the rent. The fridge was staying, the owner said, but there was no washing machine. He also mentioned, almost in passing, that the heating was electric, which could make the winter bills higher than the rent alone suggested.

They spent a few minutes standing by the open window. The flat was close to a supermarket and a bus stop, yet the street was surprisingly quiet. Better still, Nora could walk to work in twenty minutes, saving both money and time. The one thing that held her back was the unknown cost of heating, a worry that seemed small in the sunshine and much larger when she thought about January.

On the bus home, Leo advised her not to decide simply because she was tired of looking. Nora agreed, and that afternoon she wrote to ask the owner for an estimate of the monthly bills. His reply was reassuring: the cost was reasonable, and he offered to show her last winter’s figures. That evening Nora wrote to say she would like to take the flat, provided the contract matched what had been discussed.