Louise O'Neill: '"Don’t,” he warned me. “Don’t get attached until we have the keys in our hands".'
Louise O'Neill. Picture: Miki Barlok
When I was a teenager, much of my reading material was pilfered from my mother’s bedside locker. That was where I found Maeve Binchy for the first time, Marian Keyes too. It was also where I came across Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones, and others whose names escape me now.
There were many differences between the Irish and British authors but what I remember clearly from the latter was the idea that my thirties would be non-stop dinner parties at which I would be set up with chinless wonders called Toby and Nigel, men who worked in banking and had braying laughs.
At these parties, I gathered, the delineation between the single people and the ‘smug marrieds’ would be stark, and the conversation around the table would consist of two things – schools and property prices.
Well. Here I am, in the middle of my thirties and I’ve only ever been to one dinner party.
There isn’t some widening abyss between my married and unmarried friends, nor between those who have children and those who do not. I haven’t been subjected to any interminable discussions about local schools from the parents I know, although perhaps they (wisely) divined that I wouldn’t be much use in the matter. The only thirty-something cliché that my friends and I are embodying is the obsession with property.
It’s been creeping into our conversations for a while, slowly at first and then all at once, and has only intensified over the last year.
We love TV shows about other people’s houses, relishing the opportunity to judge their choices (“it’s very… busy, isn’t it?” and “not sure if I would have chosen that particular panelling,”), watching Ireland’s Home of the Year and Your Home Made Perfect with the intensity we used to reserve for The OC and Gossip Girl.
While in my twenties, the only thing I cared about was fashion – following blogs of women whose style I admired, devouring the latest issue of Vogue and Elle, scouring second hand and charity shops to put my ‘looks’ together – now, all I want to do is read House and home magazines and follow Instagram accounts dedicated to interiors, saving images of my dream bathroom tiles to Pinterest.
I have become obsessed with Daft, to a somewhat unhealthy degree. Sometimes I pretend I’ve won the lottery and put my minimum price at two million euro, just so I can marvel at how appalling rich people’s taste in kitchens is – I cannot understate how truly awful they are– but most of the time, I send multiple listings to my boyfriend a day, explaining in great detail what we would need to do in order to make this house ‘Our Home’, like I’m an architect with amakeover show on HGTV.
But a few weeks ago, it finally happened. I found the perfect house. It was in a quiet neighbourhood in Kinsealy, it was only a ten-minute drive to Portmarnock beach, and it was in our budget. This is the house, I said to Richard, fully convinced. This is the Our Home. I was going to paint the bath-tub pink and the walls of the living groom a dark grey, I was going to turn the smallest box room into a walk-in wardrobe, I was going to— “Don’t,” he warned me. “Don’t get attached until we have the keys in our hands, so much can go wrong before then.” And I nodded, smiled. “I won’t!” I promised.
Reader, I lied. I was already picturing where I would put the Christmas tree, where Cooper would sleep, where we would put Betty, his future sister, the imaginary dog that we have yet to adopt. It was perfect in my head, this bright and gleaming future we would have in that house. And then the estate agent emailed back. The vendors needed a quick sale and had accepted an offer just the day before. I lay down in bed and I wept, like my heart had been broken.
I had been warned, of course, I was told this would happen. Older friends had shared similar stories of houses loved and lost, my mother told me of places they’d nearly bought, and how she was glad, looking back, that it hadn’t worked out. What’s for you won’t pass you, she reminds me, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes like a petulant child.
But she’s right, of course. This isn’t a tragedy, nothing near it. It is the tantrum of an overly privileged brat who wants what she wants now. I pick myself up and I tell myself to cop on.
There will be other houses, other futures. And still, I cannot help but think of that cottage in Kinsealy, and wonder at the other couple who will live there now. Their Christmas tree, not ours. Their future, not ours.
Watch: The Underground Railroad on Amazon Prime. This adaption of the Colson Whitehead novel of the same name – about Black people trying to escape slavery in the 1800s – is superb.
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