The first home I ever bought was a mistake. I knew it from the minute we arrived as first-time homeowners with hundreds of bags and boxes piled in the street behind us. On paper, the flat in Southeast London was just what my husband and I wanted: two bedrooms, high ceilings and a large garden. But in the chaos of moving day, a niggling thought that we’d got it wrong just wouldn’t leave me alone.
Damp appeared in places that didn’t make sense, and I always felt cold there. One winter evening, when I was home alone, a standing lamp in the corner of the living room suddenly started to shudder violently, shaking and ringing like a bell. My husband raised an eyebrow when I told him; friends offered up the bus route on our road as an explanation. It didn’t feel like a haunting, just a physical manifestation of the gloom that had settled in our rooms.