The Cornflake House by Deborah Gregory

course. So he wasn’t the least bit sorry when we left. Perhaps he missed us later, the way a ball misses skittles or a dart longs for a bull’s-eye. He used a fat round stick as a substitute for his lost leg and since he couldn’t kick us, he swung this out at those who were careless enough to venture close. You had to be pretty agile to avoid bruised knees and red shins. This game was his only exercise, that and eating.
    Finally the day dawned and we were off on our long-awaited journey. You’d be amazed how much you can fit into one small caravan and an old open-backed lorry. We stacked ourselves high, perching on toys, books, bedding, crockery, and that was only the caravan. Our furniture, such as it was, had been stored in a shed until that day. Now it sat in the lorry, exposed to the sky. Ancient moth-eaten sofas and wormy chairs wobbled under hastily tied ropes and on the very top lay a scratched white table, its legs pointing crudely upwards. We must have looked like refugees.
    In my prison bed I lay and smiled to think of the consternation our arrival caused in that exclusive cul-de-sac. What were we? Gypsies? Tinkers? Tramps? A bit of each, all things abominable. The residents’ worst nightmares, multiplied by eight and then added to by a number of dogs, cats and rodents. I suppose, if you belong to the middle classes, and if you have invested in a nice, tidy house in a smart location, the arrival of vagabonds in an old, open lorry and a battered caravan is not exactly a welcome sight.
    God, it was brilliant to arrive. We were so fed up, having been cramped in that egg of a caravan for hours on end. Except for Fabian who sat like Lord Muck beside Owen in the cab of the lorry. Yes, the rest of us had reached the hair-pulling, head-banging stage, the point where torturing each other was the only way to stay sane.
    They had built the houses of our cul-de-sac in an orchard, or on the spot where the orchard had once blossomed. This site was at the bottom of a steep hill and as we descended behind the lorry we were tipped to the front of the caravan and attacked by sliding crockery. Before we could yell at Owen to slow down, he was turning sharp left, swinging us against the windows, then shuddering to a halt. We picked ourselves up, turned around and squashed our faces on the glass to see why we’d stopped.
    We had arrived.
    It took me a while to understand this, because reality was nothing like my expectations. I’d conjured my own Cornflake House from the artist’s impression and my version was prettier than any house I’d ever seen, but only two-dimensional. My imagined house stood, a cardboard cut-out in splendid isolation, in a watercolour meadow. I think there was even a thin, paper Eve gazing wistfully from a bedroom window. The sight I first saw through the caravan window was very different; far from isolated, these dwellings stood almost overlooking each other. In the small sphere of my vision I could see three homes at least, trim as dolls’ houses and close enough together to share hammocks. Figures emerged from tidy hallways, people imitating goldfish, mouths opening, closing, dropping open again. Then Owen appeared at the caravan door, ‘Reception committee’s waiting,’ he announced in his finest fen voice.
    Dogs escaped instantly, yapping, peeing, heading for the goldfish people. Merry followed them, pushing past Owen, running to catch up, tumbling, screaming and, not being encumbered by a nappy, copying the hounds by pissing against a flowering cherry. The rest of us formed a queue behind our mother, picking up on her anxiety, nervous of meeting our benefactors.
    â€˜Which one? Which is ours?’
    â€˜Number three,’ Mum informed us, ‘the one with the flags flying.’
    We were shoved back inside, driven in a neat semi-circle, and rearranged right outside our very own Cornflake House.
    Like me, you’ll have to wait to see the inside