Chapter One
The Price Of Nineteen
The house at nineteen Jalan Keruing cost less than their apartment had, and their apartment had been six hundred square feet above a tyre shop.
Sara noticed the price before she noticed the house. Everyone did. The listing had been up for a year, drifting down the property site like a leaf refusing to land, and each time it reappeared the number attached to it was smaller. A double-storey heritage shophouse, prewar, structurally sound, freehold, in a town where lawyers and cafe owners were fighting over every other lot on the street. The photographs showed high ceilings, an airwell with a square of sky in it, teak floors the colour of strong tea.
“There will be something wrong with it,” Arun said, on the drive down. He was a draughtsman; he said it the way a man says something he intends to find. “Settlement cracks. Beetles. A roof like a colander.”
There was nothing wrong with it. That was the first wrong thing.
Ms. Yap, the agent, walked them through with the practised briskness of a woman who had walked many couples through, and watched many couples leave. The roof had been redone eight years ago. The wiring was newer than that. No leaks, no rot, no disputes on the title. The previous owners, she said, had simply found the house was not for them. There had been a few previous owners.
