“ Come on you’ve got to admit its, grotty.” Mary moaned.
“No it’s not, it just needs some work that’s all.” Peter argued.
“Yes! Like sending in the bulldozers to flatten it!”
“ You always do that.”
“What?”
“You always look for the bloody faults, you never look at the potential.”
“What potential?”
Peter was silent for a moment.“We could take out that wall and make this one big room.”
“If you take out that wall, the whole place will come down around your ears.”
Ignoring her, Peter ploughed on. “We could renew the roof, extend the kitchen, put in a new bathroom, build a patio out back and sort out the garden.”
“The garden!” Mary retorted.“It’s not a garden! It’s a bloody mountainside.”
“Yes but look at the view.”
“What good’s a bloody view, if you haven’t a house to view it from.”
“ We can fix it up.”
“No we bloody well can’t!”
“Yes we bloody well can! Besides it’s the only one we can afford.”
“Yes” Mary sneered. “But what we can’t afford is the extra forty K we’ll need to fix it up.”
“Don’t be stupid, it won’t cost that much, I can do some of the work myself.”
She laughed a bitter laugh.“ Oh Yeah! And how long is that going to take? You don’t have the time.’
“Well, we could get a builder in and I could do some of the labouring jobs, that’ll save a bit.”
“Come off it, you work six days as it is. That only leaves Sundays; you wouldn’t save much working one day a week. Look! Buy the bloody house and bloody well live in it by yourself.”
With that she stormed off down the track to where they had left the car. Peter, forever the patient one, sighed and hurried after her.
He started the car and drove off in silence. Mary ignored him and stared straight ahead. Peter groaned inside, this was only the first cottage; there were ten more to see
