Houses were never left empty in this city,” observes Áine, the protagonist of Róisín Lanigan’s debut novel I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There. Every potential London rental property, however dispiriting, seems to be snatched up in a panic moments after it is advertised. Usually, there is barely a day or so of grace period between the old tenants setting off in their rented vans, and the new ones arriving in theirs.
So why, then, is the flat that Áine is viewing with her boyfriend Elliot eerily free from any sign of life? Why is it still on the market a fortnight after the listing appeared online? Why is the rent just about affordable, in this “boujee” enclave of the capital, where stylish parents dress their equally stylish babies up like “tiny Copenhagen-based fashion influencers”? There is something about the space that unnerves Áine; a sense of “wrongness persisted despite the ticked boxes and the beautiful bay windows”, Lanigan writes.
