Our architect's wife, a glorious gaunt harpee, assures me the reasons for building a dream-house are strikingly similar to those for owning insanely-over-priced sports cars. (A key to such a motor sits between us, a silent little accusation.)
I gaze at her candidly, amused.
'Felice, you are far too young to know your dreams, let alone have access to the quantity of cash required to fulfill such high pretensions,'she snorts, pointing a teaspoon at me (as if it were a wand able to bestow common-sense). 'What is wrong with the ten dozen perfectly adaquate dwellings littering Cornwall like so much tossed confetti?'
'It's keeping your husband in pin money,' I point out wryly.
'I thank you for that: keeps him out of my hair,' she softens. 'Nevertheless. You girls are fools.'
Is a dream-house one of those crunching, hyper-critical self-indicators of how far one has managed to get in one's life? Achievement indicators differ from person to person: some call it a day if they manage to drag their carcass from bed to sofa; others count the lives of stolen children as so much chaff in their scramble to showy success. A continuum from killers, liers and thieves, to orchids tenders or poets.
Me? Real estate is a buzz. Raising eyebrows, I tell her, 'You'll love my house like your own child.'
'True,' she concedes. 'But thank God I don't have to pay for it.'
