Linda can be kind, sometimes. I mentioned Alex would be home this weekend but I was scheduled to work on Saturday and she swapped the day with me. Days off at weekends are rare and precious. It really helped, as it let me schedule three apartment viewings for us.

The first looked good, from the outside. It was a basement flat two towns over, but well located for buses and trains for us to commute. It’s hard to know where he’ll be commuting to, but if he can get into Dublin city centre that opens up loads of connections so it seemed like a perfect solution. It was an Edwardian house on a hill, hence the basement and I had high hope of original period features.

As we waited for the landlady to arrive I chattered to Alex about how the period features would make up for the whole living...

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