The gardener and the sailmaker waved to me. She was effortlessly stylish and he had no front teeth and this is why I went downstairs and invited them in.

They told me that they knew each other many years ago when they lived as neighbours in our alley. His shop was at the west end in the level below ground. This is where he kept his sewing machines. She didn’t say where exactly she had lived. They both knew the woman who used to live in this house. It wasn’t the first time that someone tried to get my attention by announcing that they knew the woman who used to live here. Once, during the first summer I was standing in front of the stove. The barn doors were open and so an older woman—a little worn—stopped and tapped on the glass of the interior french doors, the ones that came from the farmhouse that belonged to Pepe’s grandmother. I know the person who used to live here. She shouted. I opened the front door. With one eye on the boiling pot I asked if she knew Pepe. No. Was it Marijn then? No. Daphne and Tim?

She shook her head and waved her hand dismissively before wishing me a nice evening and continuing on. She seemed disappointed, like I didn’t know enough. Stung slightly, I closed all of the doors on the front of the house and went back to the stove. When I met the gardener and the sailmaker I realized that they were describing the woman the glass tapper knew.

The sailmaker told me that she was such a nice woman but he couldn’t believe how she lived. When the house was hers, she lived here with children in a series of small, dark, enclosed rooms. There were no windows in the roof then and the floors also had different levels, even though the house on the outside was more or less the same shape. The bathroom was in the very rear of the ground floor where the washing machine stands now, next to the wall-mounted water heater. When I was installing clothes rails and shelving, I remember looking at the brick wall and seeing the residue of a grid pattern on brick that might have belonged to tile. The sailmaker told me that the house then was packed full. It was difficult to move around and you couldn’t figure out where to sit or sleep. After a particularly nice summer evening and a neighbourly bottle of wine, he described how the woman who lived here told him to stay the night instead of going home. He welcomed the gesture but couldn’t figure out for the life of him where he could lie down. The woman’s children, without beds of their own, slept in chairs and on sofas and occasionally also in the alley when the weather was nice.

The gardener said that she remembered the woman crying when she had to move. The house was barely holding together. The man who owned it received a small monthly rent from her so that she could live in it with her children and sleep without any beds but he wanted to be done with it all. So did the municipality, I’ve heard. It could have been demolished but wasn’t. I told the gardener that everyone I know who has lived in this house has cried over it. Marijn was holding back tears the first time I met her. She stood at a distance from me and the house like she was trying to stop herself from trying to take it back. Pepe told me that they had almost broken up because he wanted to leave the house and she couldn’t bear it. They had a child here and didn’t split up then but they have since. I know that Tim cried here for different reasons. The house was his but it was different to live with than he wanted it to be, and he was also different in it than he wanted to be. When he came back for the first time after leaving he described a psychic relief at the house being so changed from the way it was when he was here with his sister and a friend. I remember seeing them all with some others one evening when I walked down the alley before the house was ours. The barn doors were open then too and they were all gathered around a long table under low light in a way that made me feel good about our decision at the time. I wanted to know what it was like to live in there. I didn’t wave or tap on the glass but sometimes I wish that I had. From the outside, this house in particular has never been truthful.