Sounds of an old house: a haunting memoir
by J. Ashley-Smith

I’ve moved house maybe fifteen, twenty times since I left home, but my parents have never moved. They still live in the house I was born and grew up in, on the outskirts of Cambridge in the UK.

It’s the only detached house on a street of Edwardian terraces and townhouses made of bricks that must once have been a chalky yellow, but are now grey with age and the soot of a hundred years-worth of car exhaust fumes. White and pink rosebushes line the short path from the pavement and trail around the front door, partially obscuring the name etched into the sandstone lintel: Rose Holme. It’s a small, simple, beautiful house. The inside front door has panes of green and red stained glass, and blue glass corner-pieces with white stars. In the afternoon, sunlight shines through them and paints coloured shapes on the walls and floor of the entrance hall. The house smells of books and old wood, of the drying hop vines my mum hangs from the bannisters.