They all have the same hair, Claire thought. So floppy, so glossy. Kirk’s was textbook, a prime example. It seemed brighter than the hallway’s grimy strip lights, as if it wasn’t reflecting them but glowing with its own mysterious power. She gazed at the hair as Kirk tried key after key in the canary yellow door. Claire wondered if they all went to the same hairdresser. Or bought the same shampoo. Maybe they were told to, during the training. Did estate agents need training? They were like policemen - it was impossible to imagine them doing anything else. They were born estate agents and would remain so until they died, whether they were working or not.
“Nearly there,” Kirk muttered soothingly, directing his words to the door rather than her. He bent down to peer accusingly at the keyhole, before returning to the first key in the bunch. Claire dug her hands into her coat pockets and yawned. Somewhere in the building, a door slammed. She heard trainers squeaking over the plastic flooring, then a second door slamming, then nothing. Mikki would be here soon. Please let this flat be the one, Claire thought. Their friendship was buckling under a mountain of failed viewings. Most weeks, even finding places to see was a challenge. Which is why Claire had tumbled from bed and raced across the city at 7:30 this morning, minutes after seeing the advert. She ran her tongue over her unbrushed teeth. The lock clicked, and Kirk snapped his head round, beaming triumphantly. “Shall we?” He flicked the glossy, floppy hair from his eyes. Nice eyes, Claire thought. A bit like a Labrador’s. Kirk was willowy and smelled of expensive lotions, of vanilla and cinnamon. On the way in he had bounded up the stairs to the third floor, babbling cheerfully about bus routes and double glazing and CCTV.
As soon as he was through the front door, Kirk began poking his head into the flat’s different rooms. Claire was still getting her coat off when he shouted at her from the living room doorway: “Ah. There is one teeny thing you should be aware of.” Claire’s shoulders sagged, and suddenly she felt exhausted. Her back ached after yet another night on her friend’s sofa. It was a pulsing, taunting sort of ache. I can come and go, the ache said. I can take my time. You’ll be on that sofa for a good while yet. She rested a hand on the wall by the front door. It was painted rental beige, the same inoffensive shade that coated every flat she viewed. Claire had started to see the colour when she closed her eyes. She waited for Kirk to speak again, but obviously the problem was one she would have to see for herself. She walked into the living room and looked past him at a coffee table, a television, cracked wooden blinds hanging slightly askew. And, poking out from behind the coffee table, a pair of feet.
Even when she’d pushed past Kirk to stand right over the body, the feet held her attention. They rested in a perfect V, with the heels touching and the toes marking ten to two on the clockface. Above them a pair of muscular legs disappeared into white pyjama trousers, and above those was a gentle paunch swaddled in a mint dressing gown. The clothes were frayed but spotless. The man’s eyes were, thankfully, closed. His face was screwed up in distaste - as though the last thing he’d encountered was the smell of sour milk. There were a few flecks of spit at the corner of his mouth, but nothing else to suggest panic or pain. The carpet he lay on was beige too.
Kirk stood at Claire’s side, hands folded primly. “Terrible, isn’t it? He can’t have been more than 40. Landlord found him when he popped round yesterday evening. Looks like he just keeled over, poor chap.”
Claire’s stomach rose, then sank, then rose again. “You knew?”
Kirk shifted his eyes to the window. “I thought the landlord would have called the ambulance people by now. Bit of a miscommunication. Obviously we’ll sort out the, er, disposal.”
Claire forced her eyes shut, and a new image lurched into her mind. It was the only other dead body she’d seen, at her grandmother’s funeral a year earlier. When Claire peeped inside the casket, the face she saw was oddly blank. In life her grandmother had fizzed and sparked, and worn a mischievous grin even as she slept. At first Claire had recoiled at the thought of undertakers pulling and poking her grandmother’s features into this alien, expressionless position. But it was in keeping with the bland platitudes offered by the vicar, who had only met the family a few hours before giving his reading. Perhaps, in the end, neutrality was the safest choice.
Claire opened her eyes and peeked down at the body. She started to guess his age but then felt intrusive, voyeuristic, and looked away. Envelopes addressed to Tomas Kasprzak were stacked neatly on the coffee table. There was a worn paperback next to them, its title a jumble of consonants. Kirk was still talking. “Looks like it came right out of the blue, poor chap. Perhaps his height was a factor. Circulation or whatever. 6’ 3”, do you think? Maybe even 6’ 4”. Very tall, certainly. Unusually tall. Tall enough to cover a lot of the floor space in this living room, which is actually very spacious, particularly for a two-bed in this area.” Kirk perched on the arm of the sofa. “Still, it’s a comfort to think he spent his last days somewhere with such good transport links.” Before Claire could say anything, Kirk laid a hand on her arm and fixed her with his Labrador eyes. “Just joking. God, no, it’s awful. Awful. Makes you think.” With the word ‘think’ still leaving his mouth, he pulled out his phone and started pawing at the screen. “Now, shall we have a look at the kitchen?”
Claire’s head was throbbing. “Shouldn’t we be… doing something? Telling someone?”
Kirk looked up from his phone, his face suddenly brighter, and pointed to its screen. “That’s a message from the landlord. All sorted. He’s calling the ambulance people this morning, and he’s already told the family. They’re flying over today. It’s good we arrived when we did, actually - I wouldn’t want you looking around while they were sorting through his belongings. That’s always awkward. Awkward for everyone.”
“Always?” Claire glared at Kirk. “So this happens a lot, does it?”
He grinned and raised his hands in mock surrender. “You’ve caught me. Yes. Bit of a specialist at this sort of thing, actually. Normally it’s people who’ve passed on at work or on the bus or whatever, not in the property itself. But I’ve seen a few bodies too. Job calls for sensitivity, of course. I suppose I’m like a counsellor, really. Or a social worker. Or something.” He handed her a black business card. On one side, in restrained white lettering, were the words Kirk Williams - Urgent Tenancy Solutions Ltd. On the other side was a phone number.
Kirk dropped his eyes back to his phone. “Landlords know me - and they know the high street boys don’t take on this kind of work.” With the phrase ‘high street boys’, Kirk adopted the same sour-milk expression as Mr Kasprzak. He went on: “You’d be surprised how often landlords find themselves in this sort of situation. You’ve got to see it from their point of view - a flat sitting empty for weeks is no good to anyone. A tragedy in fact, what with the shortage.” He shook his head at Mr Kasprzak’s body, suggesting the tenant’s death was exactly the sort of selfish behaviour that snarled up the housing market. “But now you and your friend can get the money together and sign the contracts while all the unpleasantness is being taken care of, and get in as soon as decently possible. A real good news story. A gift from the great beyond. A gift from, er...”
“Tomas.”
“From Tomas. Absolutely. God, he is a tall bugger, isn’t he?” Kirk tucked his hair behind his ears. “Now, I really should show you the kitchen. You are in for a very pleasant surprise.”
Claire trailed after him. In the kitchen Kirk lit one of the hob rings and jumped backwards, as if the heat it gave was overpowering. “Woof! Now that is extraordinary, isn’t it? The size of that flame. Extraordinary. Brand new, this thing, or close to. As is the washing machine. All very energy efficient, very green. And there’s bags of space in here.” He tugged open the fridge door and glanced inside, then frowned. “Oh God. He’d just done a big shop. Isn’t that awful? So sad. I don’t really do big shops anymore, not since I started this job. Hate to imagine myself slipping out of consciousness, right at the end, knowing I’ve got a big bag of cherry tomatoes sitting there unopened. Happens more than you think.” Kirk sighed and closed the fridge door. There were three photos stuck to it. A little girl in a park, brandishing an ice cream at the camera. Then the same girl sat in Tomas’s lap, a paper party hat slipping down over her eyes. Finally, the same girl scowling in a class photo. None of the children wore uniforms, and their uniformly white skin told Claire the picture wasn’t taken around here. Next to the pictures was a boarding pass for a flight to Krakow next weekend. That’s probably where the girl was, Claire thought. She imagined the last call for Tomas at check in on Saturday, the announcer stumbling over his before moving on to security reminders and car park information. Claire wondered if the girl knew yet, if she was one of the relatives flying over today. Maybe she was at the airport now, heartbroken amid the Toblerones and trolleys and plastic chairs.
Kirk was still talking. “So it’s bills not included, but given how efficient these modern appliances are you’ll barely notice them when they do come in. Very green. And as I said, the owner is keen to move quickly. Which would be quite a result for you, with the market being what it is. I’ve got the papers here.” Claire thought about phoning Mikki, then realised she couldn’t begin to explain over the phone. Instead she followed Kirk back into the living room.
He leaned against a windowsill, and studied her carefully. “How long have you been looking for?”
Claire slumped into the sofa. “Six months.”
“Six months. Christ. Well, your luck’s in today.”
Claire smiled, picturing a threadbare tea towel that hung from a hook above her grandma’s kitchen cupboards, a souvenir of holidays on Ireland’s west coast. It read: your luckiest day is just around the corner. Maybe Kirk and the tea towel were right. Maybe this is what luck looks like - a dead body on a living room floor. The smile widened. She couldn’t stop it. Kirk looked put out. This wasn’t the dynamic he expected, Claire thought. He did the jokes and the breezy chat, she looked shell-shocked and stupefied. That’s how this was supposed to go.
The tea towel was too grotty for the charity shop, Claire and her mum had decided, at Grandma’s house the week after the funeral. It joined the stained blankets, old magazines and video tapes destined for the tip. On the drive there Claire announced she was moving to London. She knew it was awful timing, that her mum was still dazed with grief. But the words tumbled from Claire’s mouth before she could stop them, at the traffic lights between her old school and the carpet warehouse. “If you’re sure,” her mum said in a small voice, staring straight ahead and wrenching the handbrake up. Claire had actually told Grandma before she’d told her mum, on her last visit to the hospice. In those final months everything her grandmother heard triggered an explosion of memories, and for half an hour she had peppered Claire with stories of moving to England as a little girl eighty years ago. Grandma described her mother’s tears on the quayside in Dublin, her father’s cheeks reddening as bus drivers asked him to say it again mate, say it slowly, I can’t understand a bloody word. But even the sad memories were relayed with a smile. “Of course, there was no work back home,” Grandma had said. “There’s always work in the cities, my Da said, and he was right, you know. He’d be proud of you.”
Suddenly, Claire stopped laughing. She felt a deep swelling of shame, for not correcting her grandmother’s kind words. There had been work at home for Claire, plenty of it. So what was she here for? She’d just come because she could. Tomas, her grandma - they’d leapt into the unknown because they had to, uprooted their families or even left them behind completely. They had sacrificed. They were pioneers. She was a vulture. Kirk looked uncomfortable. For all his crassness, he had an unnerving habit of knowing what she was thinking. He said: “Everywhere you’ve ever lived has had someone die in it. Probably. It’s the circle of life. That’s what you’re looking at here.” He was speaking faster now, abandoning his usual patter. “Every empty flat you’ve seen - it’s empty for a reason. Maybe they’ve won the lottery, maybe they’ve lost their job, maybe they’ve had a breakdown and gone to live in a cave and talk to their hands. And that decision, or stroke of fortune, or bit of bad luck, that’s what’s opened the door for you.” Kirk smoothed his hair. He was getting back into his stride. “I know a chap who used to work in the city. Chucked it all in last year to set up an organic pig farm. Now he spends half his life slaughtering pigs. And you might think - how awful, spending your days knee-deep in dead porkers. Even organic ones. But it’s honest, that’s the thing. What’s worse - killing pigs or eating bacon sandwiches in wilful oblivion?” He gestured at the body. “This is normal. This is healthy.” He chuckled. “It still surprises me, you know. There’s ten million people in this city, and most of them are convinced that just because they don’t talk to each other on the tube, or weigh in when they see a fight outside the pub, they’re living in isolation. Well, no man is an island. They can go to their high street estate agents and eat all the bacon sandwiches they like, but they are not a bloody island.” He muttered “circle of life” a few more times, seemingly embarrassed by his outburst. The pair fell into an awkward silence, until they heard a knock at the door.
Mikki’s face fell as soon as she stepped inside and saw Claire. She reached up and squeezed Claire’s shoulder. “What’s wrong? Is it mould? Mould’s natural. We can’t be scared of mould.”
Claire shook her head.
“Draughty? We’ve been over this. Everywhere’s draughty. Double jumpers. Triple jumpers.”
“There’s… there’s sort of a dead body.”
“Sort of?”
“There’s a dead body.” Claire nodded towards the living room. Mikki pushed past her, got to the doorway, and froze. After a few seconds, she began drumming her fingers on the doorframe. Claire began repeating Kirk’s argument, about pig farmers and the circle of life, but her voice tailed off. Phrases that were somehow plausible in his mouth sounded mad in hers. Because she didn’t believe them. Mikki wasn’t listening, in any case. Eventually she stopped drumming her fingers and wheeled around.
“We’ll ask for a discount. A corpse discount.”
Claire frowned. “A what?”
“For the distress. First week free. To cover the distress.”
“So you don’t mind?”
“Look, if it’s really bothering you, we can commemorate him somehow. A plaque or something.”
“A plaque?”
“OK, not a plaque. But, you know, people die.”
People do die. Circle of life. But even as she nodded in agreement, Claire thought of the little girl, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Then another, and another. Suddenly Claire was sobbing. Sobbing in a dead man’s hallway. Mikki wrapped her friend in a hug. Deep down, Claire wondered if she was crying because of the girl, the memory of her grandmother, or the thought of spending another moment’s flat-hunting. Kirk was on the phone in the kitchen. Stray phrases drifted down the hallway. Crystal Palace. Car accident. Awful business. 900 a month. Claire gave Mikki a squeeze, and whispered: “Are we monsters?” Mikki squeezed her back, but said nothing. Then she slipped out of Claire’s arms and went to explore the rest of the flat.
A creaking noise sent Claire spinning round to face the door. Maybe Tomas’s family had arrived. She was steeling herself to come face to face with the girl in the pictures, when a takeaway leaflet fluttered down from the letterbox. Footsteps squeaked down the corridor outside, away from the flat. Claire’s heart was thumping, but the fog that had filled her brain since she saw the body was starting to lift. The world was carrying on, just as Mikki and Kirk said it would. Claire looked up and down the hallway, taking in coathooks, a bicycle bump, a ripped umbrella. She tried to make herself see them as everyday objects, not ghoulish relics. What would Grandma do? Grandma would roll up her sleeves and get on with it. Besides, the flat was hardly a treasured family home. Tomas was just passing through, as Mikki and Claire would be. So in a way, they were honouring his memory. Claire picked up the takeaway leaflet, folded it in half and dropped it on top of 20 others in a bag marked recycling. Her hands were shaking, but less than they had been.
She joined Mikki in the kitchen, where Kirk had laid out some documents and a biro. The fridge door was open, and there was a bag of grapes in his hand. He popped a handful into his mouth as Mikki began signing the contracts. “You’ve made a smart choice here girls,” he mumbled through the half-chewed grapes. A trickle of juice was running down his chin. “Not a time to be squeamish. Not with the housing shortage.” Mikki finished and handed the pen to Claire. She signed once, twice, three times. But as she raised her eyes from the paper, she saw Kirk’s face screwed up in disgust. Oh God. What had she done? Was this a crime? Probably. Preventing the burial of a body, something like that. It was a trap. Kirk was undercover. Of course he wasn’t a real estate agent. The floppy hair, the shiny suit, the total lack of compassion. It was a pantomime performance. How ready she’d been to trample over a corpse, just to get a sodding flat. She was evil. She deserved to go to prison.
Kirk gulped, and the grimaced faded. “Seeds. Full of seeds. I didn’t know you could still get them with seeds in. Organic, I suppose. Everything is nowadays, isn’t it?” He looked blankly at Claire’s horrified expression, then offered her the bag. “Sorry, very rude of me. I do think it’s a great flat for you two, I really do. A perfect fit.”