The Saturday viewings

The schedule had six addresses and one afternoon, and it was kept in full.

A company moved a manager across the country and paid the agency to sort out housing in a single weekend. Cléo took the schedule because corporate lettings is her book. Hamilton came along because three of the six need two people: they are empty, the owners are away, the keys are in keysafes, and the office rule is two agents in any empty property.

The rule exists because of theft, not because of anything else.

The two of them have worked in the same room since 2022 and had never spent an afternoon alone.

Six viewings in one afternoon is a bad number, and everybody at the agency knows it. Getting between two addresses on a Saturday takes twelve to thirty minutes, a proper inspection takes forty, and the arithmetic does not work under any circumstances. It works because people cut corners: they skip checking one thing here, they trust the photograph in the listing there, and they write no observations in a box they never looked at.

What follows is what was not done at each one.

13:00. Eighth floor, seventy-four square metres.

They did not open the living room curtain.

They opened everything else: windows, kitchen cupboards, the consumer unit, the shower valve to check the pressure. Cléo photographed the skirting in the smaller bedroom, which has a damp patch about forty centimetres across, and noted on the sheet that the patch was dry to the touch.

The curtain is heavy blackout, and the two of them agreed you could judge the light from the balcony. It took forty minutes.

14:10. Ground floor with a garden, ninety-six square metres.

They did not read the water meter.

It was the only item on the list left blank. The meter sits in a recess behind the side gate under a stuck iron cover, and Hamilton said he would sort it on Monday through the supplier's app, which is true and is what he would have done anyway.

The garden has a fig tree far too big for the space and a stone path that was slick with algae. Cléo nearly went over, and he caught her arm, and the two of them laughed the way two people laugh when one of them nearly goes over.

Nothing happened there. It is written down because it reads as though something did.

15:00. Twelfth floor, sixty-one square metres.

They did not take the main lift.

The block is from 1978 and the main lift has its service on Saturdays, so the two of them took the goods lift, which is narrow, has no mirror, a rubber floor and one weak yellow light. Twelve floors in it takes fifty seconds.

For those fifty seconds neither of them spoke.

The flat is good. Morning sun, new floor, an allocated space. Cléo already knew it was this one before the door opened, because she saw the plan on Thursday and she has been doing this for eighteen years.

She did not say so to the client afterwards. She said all six deserved consideration, which is the thing you say.

15:50. Third floor, fifty-eight square metres.

They did not finish the inspection.

There was building work going on in the flat across the landing, with a tile saw running, and a tile saw in the corridor of an old block is a noise that makes conversation impossible and gives you a headache in seven minutes.

The two of them went back down, arranged to return on the Tuesday, and struck the address off the day's list.

That opened up forty free minutes in the diary, between four and twenty to five, and the two of them had a coffee at a place on the corner, at an outside table, and talked about whatever two people from the same office talk about when there is finally nobody from the office with them.

He has been divorced since 2023. She never married and hates being asked.

Neither of them mentioned the thing that was happening. Nobody ever does.

16:40. Fifth floor, eighty-eight square metres.

They did not shut the front door.

That is procedure and it is taken seriously: an empty property left on the latch is an invitation. The door stood on the latch from sixteen forty until ten to six, unlocked, with the keysafe key still in it on the inside.

The flat has two bedrooms, not a stick of furniture in it, and the echo that only empty flats have, which makes any sound at all seem bigger than it is.

There is a deep overhang on the living room side that throws a shadow across the floor at five in the afternoon. There is a mirror fitted in the hallway that the owners did not take, and that catches the whole living room from the wrong angle.

The viewing sheet for the fifth floor is filled in, in her handwriting, as far as the box marked general observations, which was left empty.

Neither of them took anything out of the flat, which is what the two-agent rule exists to prevent.

17:30, moved to 18:05. Penthouse, a hundred and thirty square metres.

They did not view it.

They arrived twenty-five minutes late and the caretaker had already gone with the key, because the arrangement was until six. Cléo rang twice. The sixth address was pushed to Monday and the client did not mind, because the client chose the twelfth-floor one, as she had known since Thursday.

On the Monday the two of them went back to the same room, to the same desks, which are four metres apart.

The report on that Saturday afternoon runs to two pages and lists five properties inspected out of six, with one outstanding meter reading and a revisit booked.

It is all correct. There is nothing missing from it.

And the one thing the two of them did that afternoon that appears nowhere in that report happened on the fifth floor, with the door on the latch, between sixteen forty and ten to six.