For years the estate agent’s window had failed to agree with itself. Prices crossed through in biro and rewritten lower, then rewritten again. “Under Offer” stickers loosening in the damp. Reginald could name half the houses by the shape of their chimneys alone, without reading the address. Maggie had recorded one particular bungalow as under offer three separate times in eighteen months. Ivy had reached the corner of the frame two summers running; nobody had cut it back.
One morning, all of it was gone.
In its place: a grid of glossy posters, card pressed flat to the glass. Cottages widened by the lens. Stone too clean. Skies too blue. Captions in italics: Two-Night Peak Escape. The Hidden Peak. Heritage Cottage Experience.
The Dog reached the window first. He pressed his nose to the pane, left a fogged circle, sneezed once, and sat.
Audrey read the small print at the bottom of each poster, lips moving. “Is holiday use declared? That photograph shows a public footpath.”
“Accurate enough for visitors,” Reginald said.
“Bakery does better trade in high season,” someone said, from the back.
“Nobody’s disputing the bakery,” Audrey said, not turning round.
“Fourth one this year,” someone said.
“Third,” someone else said. “The flat above the ironmonger’s stood empty. That’s not a let, that’s just empty.”
No one settled it either way.
“The roof’s the wrong colour in that one,” someone else said, pointing. “That’s not even weather you get up here.”
The Dog pressed lightly against Maggie’s boot. Netta stepped forward.
She moved through the knot of bodies without breaking pace. Earrings mismatched, scarf too thin for the cold. She stood at the glass and went still.
Her lane. The bins gone from the foreground. The patched section of wall by the gate cropped clean out of frame.
“Hidden,” she said.
Audrey glanced at the caption. “That’s what it says.”
“Milkman found it every morning for eleven years.”
No one answered that. Reginald shifted the loaf under his arm and said nothing else.
Audrey checked her clipboard. “Seven o’clock. WI hall. Bring anything that shows the houses were lived in — rent books, bills, anything with a date on it.”
The hall smelled of instant coffee and radiator dust. Chairs still stacked from the last meeting, half unstacked. A shoebox sat on the table, corners going soft, already half full.
Audrey read from a printed sheet: a change-of-use application, filed nine weeks prior. The objection period had closed six weeks ago. “Nobody submitted anything,” she said. “There was a notice.”
“Where?” Reginald asked.
“Pinned to the board by the recycling bins.” Audrey said it plainly. She had checked before the meeting. The notice was gone.
People had brought what she’d asked for anyway. Old slips from drawers and doormats. A parish newsletter with the wrong date circled. Dot added her mother’s milk round book, dated 1987, and left it on the table before anyone could ask why.
Enid said it should go back — the window, the display, all of it — though nobody asked her how.
Reginald set his own contribution on top: the slip for the terrace with the crooked chimney, corner curling.
Netta didn’t sit. She stood at the back with her coat still on. When the box reached her, she went through it slowly — the bungalow under offer for the third time, somebody’s rent book still smelling of a drawer. Near the bottom: a two-bed cottage on Bell Lane, not her own house. £169,950, printed. £157,500, corrected underneath in blue biro.
“I’ll write to the planning office,” Audrey said, closing her folder. “I’ll write it anyway.”
“Motion carried,” Enid said, to no one in particular.
Audrey said she’d copy what she needed and have it all back by Monday. The box stayed on the table when the room emptied. The Bell Lane slip did not go back in.
By dusk the square had emptied. Audrey locked the hall and checked the door twice. The Dog pulled Maggie back toward the estate agent’s window.
Netta sat on the bench, the notice open across one knee. She looked at the printed price and the correction beneath it.
“Still too much,” she said.
She folded the paper along its old crease, put it inside her coat, and fastened the top button. Then she crossed the square.
Maggie watched her go.
She opened her grey notebook.
Casefile #62: Not Held Bell Lane. £169,950 amended to £157,500. Fourth holiday let this year.
She closed the notebook.