A slightly frazzled, middle-aged woman greets me at the door and leads me through to a stuffy lounge, where her mother sits propped in a chair, glassy-eyed. Just when the kids have been navigated safely through school, sex, drugs and alcohol, the dependent parent shuffles over the horizon on a Zimmer frame.
The old girl is due a hip operation. She doesn’t want to leave the house; daughter knows she must. I measure up around the gently nodding old woman as she does that bovine, air-chewing thing with her mouth. She looks ready for the undertaker’s tape, and that’s before they’ve slipped on the rear-opening gown.
Then a gnarled hand grabs my arm.
“I don’t want to leave,” says the old woman, grip surprisingly tight.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” I venture, hoping the daughter will be back soon.
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“They just want my house,” she hisses, eyes suddenly alive. Bit of a dilemma, because I want it, too.
“My best friend died in that hospital.”
“Oh, they’re much better now,” I lie, finally shaking her off.
I ought to tell the daughter to pop her mum into a private hospital if she can. I’ve had too many excruciating phone calls following up valuations, during which I’ve found the owner never came back. Tearful family members have picked up, recounting tales of grubby wards and harassed cleaners giving a cursory sweep past Grandma with a soiled mop.
On the bright side, the inheritance often gives a leg-up to grandchildren for their first-time buyer’s deposit.
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Back at the office, F, my trainee, comes nervously to my desk, with T, the assistant manager, shepherding him from behind.
“Go on, tell him,” urges T, “he won’t bite.”
“I forgot to give you a message yesterday,” begins F, as T slides away.
“Again?” “Yes.”
“Go on, then.” I swear I can feel a filling coming loose.
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“Mr Baker rang — he’s giving his house to someone else.”
My heart sinks: it’s another property I wanted with a passion. I quiz F for the agent’s name and the anger rises.
“But why?” I whine, pointlessly.
“They offered him more money.”
And I flip. I head off into a familiar diatribe in which I inform a frightened F that unless the other agent — a pubescent pimple in cuff links — was buying it himself, he wasn’t offering anything other than a fraudulently misleading asking price. I rant about nonexistent standards and no real industry enforcement and finish off by asking F what we offer that they don’t.
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F blinks at me, chewing uncannily like the old lady with the worn-out sockets. Finally, he speaks, gormless on the surface, but his brain no doubt paddling beneath like a duck on a waterfall.
“Er, floor plans?” “The Ombudsman scheme, you plonker.”
But in truth, it wouldn’t have mattered. An independent arbitration service for people disadvantaged by an errant agent isn’t much good when most people don’t even ask about it and some surprisingly big players don’t even belong to it. F waits until I blow out, then wanders off aimlessly.
I would like to think you would not wander aimlessly into an agency without checking its credentials — only there’s more chance of the old woman I saw earlier returning home and taking up jogging.
I’m off to arrange medical insurance.