Three letters to the occupant

This is a short story. It is fiction.

Found behind a loose panel in the meter cupboard, Flat 2, 14 Wray Street.

March 1998

To whoever has just moved in,

Nobody told me any of this and I lost most of a winter working it out, so here it is.

The boiler will make a noise like something falling downstairs. It is not falling downstairs. Turn the small brass tap under it a quarter turn clockwise and wait a minute. If you turn it more than a quarter it will do the opposite thing, which is worse.

The sash in the front room does not stick. It is painted shut on the left side only. A knife along that edge and it opens for the rest of your life. I have done the hard part.

Mrs Ademola is downstairs. She will knock on the wall at eleven and she is right to. She also has a spare key to the back gate, which the landlord does not know about and does not need to.

The floorboard by the bathroom door is the loud one. Step nearer the wall.

I am only here fourteen months and I have written more of this than I meant to. Put it back where you found it.

D.

September 2009

D,

You were right about the boiler and there is now a piece of tape on the brass tap showing the quarter turn, because I did it wrong twice before I believed you.

Mrs Ademola died in 2004. I did not know her as well as your letter suggests you did. There is a woman called Priya there now with two boys and she does not knock at eleven, she knocks at half nine, and she is also right.

Things I would add. The immersion switch in the airing cupboard is wired backwards, so down is on. The corner shop will let you owe them and you should not make a habit of it, but there was a stretch where I did and nothing was ever said about it, and I want that recorded somewhere.

I came here after something went badly wrong and I stayed six years, which was not the plan. The flat is small and it faces the wrong way and the bathroom is cold. What I would say to you is that it is a very good place to be unwell in, and then a very good place to be slightly less unwell in, and I did not expect a building to be able to do that.

The sash still works. Whoever you are, thank him for the sash.

Put it back.

R.

April 2021

To the next one,

I found these on my second day, looking for the stopcock. I have read them more times than is reasonable.

The boiler is gone. There is a new one in the kitchen and it is silent and it has an app, and I am sorry to report that the brass tap and its piece of tape went into a skip in November. I kept the tape. This is not a sensible thing to have done.

The sash opens. Twenty-three years and a knife along one edge, and it still opens.

Priya is still downstairs. The boys are enormous. She knocks at ten now, which I take to be a negotiated position arrived at with somebody before me.

R, if you are reading this somehow: I was also not well when I came here, and I also did not say so to anyone, and I found your letter in a week when I badly needed to be told that somebody had been in this room before me and had got up again. I have no way to tell you that. This is the only address I have for you.

Practical matters, for the next person, since that is what this is for.

The immersion switch is still wired backwards. Nobody has fixed it in twelve years and I have decided that at this point it is a feature.

The loud floorboard has moved. It is now the second one in from the door, which I think means the first one was replaced at some stage and the problem simply relocated. Step nearer the wall anyway.

The corner shop is a phone repair place now. Priya will lend you a tenner and will be embarrassed if you pay it back too quickly.

I am leaving because I am well enough to, which is a strange sentence to write in a letter to a stranger. I have been happy here in a small way that I did not advertise to anybody at the time.

Add yours. There is room behind the panel; I checked.

Put it back.

J.

Three tenants, none of whom met, maintaining the same short list of instructions for twenty-three years. The practical advice is the reason the letters exist. It is not what any of them were really writing down.

For another story about a record kept longer than its purpose required, read The lamp room, or The cartographer’s error. For a whole life assembled out of objects and paperwork, Lot 41: contents of a piano stool. For a different kind of late shift, The last wash.