Page 28 of The Do-Over

‘So we both sell up, buy something at auction like these guys have, do it up, make fat profit, rinse and repeat.’

‘Are you mad?’ I ask her incredulously. ‘These people have all got experience, well, most of them. If we tried something like this, we’d probably end up with aGrand Designs-type disaster.’

‘You’ve got experience,’ she counters.

‘What?’

‘You did this place. And it’s stunning; you know how much I love your house.’

‘Yes, but I was lucky because I knew exactly what I wanted, and I had a good architect and a superb builder.’

She stares at me, excitement written all over her face.

‘You’re serious, aren’t you,’ I sigh.

‘There’s no harm in looking into it, right?’

It’s hard to refuse her when she’s this excited. ‘OK, let’s talk through how it might work,’ I offer. ‘Part one is we both sell up, right?’

‘Yes. It shouldn’t take long. Do you remember me telling you about the guy who came and valued my house a couple of weeks ago?’

‘Oily Pete?’

She giggles. ‘If you’d seen him, you’d realise how well that nickname fits him. Anyway, he was saying that there’s a lot of demand for properties round here at the moment. He reckoned he could even get a bidding war going on for my house, and it would probably sell in less than a week. And my house isn’t a patch on yours. He’d wet himself if he saw this.’

An image of a smarmy man in a suit with a damp patch at the crotch comes into my mind, and I hastily push it out.

‘OK, so Oily Pete has done the business and we’ve sold up. Where do we live while we’re tracking down this holy grail of a building project?’

‘I don’t know. Like I said, this idea isn’t fully fledged yet. We could rent somewhere, I guess.’

I think about her suggestion for a moment. ‘I don’t think that would work.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the letting agency would want to do credit checks and stuff. Neither of us being in any form of employment is going to be a red flag, I reckon.’

‘OK, park that one. I’ll think about it some more.’

‘Fine. Up pops the perfect property. We do our homework, we go to the auction and, incredibly, we win without going over our set budget.’

‘God, we’re good,’ Rebecca enthuses, punching the air. ‘Totally winning at life already.’

‘Slow down, tiger,’ I tell her with a smile. ‘Now we’ve got to find an architect who can turn our vision into drawings, get the relevant permissions if we need them, and find a builder who’s actually going to turn up and not charge us so much that we walk away with a thumping loss. A lot of the people on the programme are already in the trade, or have people who will do the work for mates’ rates. And we’d probably need to live there while the work was being done, to save money. I remember what it was like when I was doing this place up. It’s not a lot of fun. Oh, and we’ve got to do all of this without falling out.’

‘We won’t fall out.’

‘We might. My experience is that wherever there’s money and investment, there’s huge risk of conflict. What if I have my heart set on gold taps for the bathroom, but you want to spend the money on mood lighting in the kitchen?’

‘We have both.’

‘We’ve only got the money for one.’

‘Then we discuss like rational people and reach a compromise.’

‘Which is?’

‘The mood lighting, obviously. Gold taps are naff.’

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