He crouched and looked up to talk to Miss Laura, spreading his hands apart as he did, outlining some inaudible solution to the sagging window shutter, or the mossy eaves. From Melody’s perspective on the far side of the kinder yard, they looked like a nursery-rhyme husband and wife, come home to find their house had shrunk. But Hans, how do ve get in, now ze door iss ze height ov our goat? Melody and Skip had moved house that morning. Eddy-the-Kind had arrived at Melody’s flat with croissants and coffee, and offers of help to move her possessions into the new-old house, to which Grace had already moved her things. Melody and Skip didn’t have a lot of stuff, and in two car trips the job was done. Melody liked the run-down old house, although she could see Grace was appalled by it. The taps coughed and spluttered when you turned them on, as if shocked at such demanding behaviour. While there were two shabbily grand front rooms, the back was a series of lean-tos upon lean-tos, like a card house.
