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overturned, and the livestock grazing lazily in the lush pasture.
    “This is beautiful,” Martin said.
    “It’s in there,” Alison replied, gesturing out her window. All along the other side of the road was a grey corrugated fence. Over the top of the fence Martin could see the arms of diggers and the tops of trucks. When they turned into it, they went under a big archway with NEW ACRE across it in embossed metal. Martin pushed himself further back into his seat when he saw what the men and the machines had done. The road turned to a flattened dusty path, and the shells of houses were being constructed. Big lorries with extendable arms trundled past men with fluorescent jackets and helmets.
    “They’re nearly all sold,” Alison said excitedly. “Another six weeks and the whole estate will be finished. Can you believe that? It’s so quick.”
    Scaffolds stood like brittle iron frames, thick pipes were snug in trenches, piles of earth like sentries guarding the plot. All of the houses looked exactly the same, regimented like a newly constructed army, red brick and narrow, roofs tall and steeply angled, standing to attention side by side with just enough room for a cat to squeeze between them. The thin porches over the front doors were like the visors of blackjack dealers. Next to the driveway was a thin rectangle of grass, a bright green ticket beside the smooth black tarmac.
    “It’s so nice out of the city. Wait till you see inside. It’s this one, number eleven.”
    Martin and Alison got out of the car and walked to the front door. She took out a set of keys and let herself in. Straightaway they were in the front room, with a staircase right in front of them.
    “The front room gets all the light, there’s no entrance hallway to eat up space and light. Isn’t it nice? This staircase gives you a great storage area underneath and on this side, we can have a feature wall. You know? Some really nice textured wallpaper to contrast the walls.”
    Martin was uncomfortable, like he had wandered into a shop he didn’t want anything from but couldn’t see an exit. It had the personality of a new cardboard box. They walked through the front room and to the kitchen at the back.
    “Oh look, the kitchen is already fitted, and it’s bigger than you’d think, isn’t it? From the front?”
    Through the window he could see the back garden; a narrow stretch of grass with a wooden slat fence around it. There were young trees planted at the end, their branches thin and small, trunks as thin as his wrist, except for one in the middle, which was thicker, whose green branches swept down toward the ground, like the skirt of a girl that was being twirled.
    “It’s got three rooms upstairs,” Alison said. “You can have a room for your writing.” Martin followed her up the stairs and looked out the window of the back room, down onto the back garden and over the fence into the other gardens with the same young trees growing at the end of the green strip. This was the only one with the thicker, taller tree. Alison was still talking from the other room.
    “This one is definitely the master bedroom. The wardrobes are sunk into the walls.”
    From here he could see the layout of the estate and the countryside beyond. Martin knew that all of the construction he could see from the window was all based on plans which would result in buildings identical to the one in which he stood, slotted together like the cells in a beehive.
    Alison’s voice came to him again. “It’s great, I love the fact that it’s brand new. I will have to show you the contract.”
    Martin considered this. This space where he stood now, elevated from the ground, had not been occupied before. The first ghosts to haunt this place would be theirs. Martin began to see the potential of a soulless shell. They could fill it with themselves, grow a new soul within it. There was nothing here to connect him with a past, only a future.
    “And the attic, the attic is