The House Has Fallen in Love

How it begins

Sofia Bell's kitchen moved six feet closer to the greenhouse overnight. The plumbing stretched to accommodate it, making a noise she would ordinarily have charged a landlord extra to investigate.

She found her breakfast table pressed against a window that had not existed yesterday. Beyond it, Leila Rowan was watering orchids in her dressing gown. Both women froze.

'Good morning,' Sofia said.

Leila looked at the new window, then at the narrow strip of garden that used to separate their buildings. 'Have you extended?'

'Not intentionally.'

Sofia repaired windows for a living. She knew the frame at once: old oak, narrow glazing bars, a catch she had replaced herself during the winter. It belonged in the attic. The attic, meanwhile, had become a breakfast nook.

The greenhouse misted. On its glass appeared a small heart, drawn from the inside by condensation. Sofia's house answered with the warm click of its radiators.

'Oh,' Leila said.

They had been neighbors for twelve years. They exchanged parcels, ladder loans and careful conversations over the fence. Last autumn Leila had invited Sofia to dinner. Sofia had said she was busy. She had been busy, but she had also spent the evening looking at a wall and wondering why saying yes had felt harder than replacing a fourth-floor pane in a crosswind.

Now the wall had taken matters into its own hands.

A door appeared beside the orchids. Sofia heard her spare-room cupboard sigh shut somewhere above them.

'We should stop this,' she said.

The new door drooped. Leila put down her watering can.

'We should understand it first.'

Sofia looked at the open space between their breakfasts. For years she had been grateful for the fence: friendly, definite, easy to maintain. Now two buildings seemed prepared to make an extremely public mess of wanting something different.

She reached for her measuring tape.

'Then we need ground rules,' she said. 'And possibly a structural engineer.'