Dying in the Dark by Sally Spencer

of the Croft Estate
Two hundred exciting new executive houses
Show-house now open
Prices reduced
    â€˜Phase Two!’ he said disgustedly.
    There had
been
no Phase Two – or even any talk of one – when he had bought his house in Elm Croft a couple of years earlier. One of the things which had attracted him to that particular property was that it was on the edge of the estate, with an uninterrupted view of the moors.
    â€˜And there’s no chance there’ll be any more building in front of it, is there?’ he’d asked the estate agent, before handing over his deposit.
    â€˜There’s
always
a chance,’ the agent had replied, in the exaggeratedly frank way that such agents had. ‘When you think about it, Mr Rutter, there’s always a
chance
you’ll be struck by a meteorite or win a couple of hundred thousand quid on the football pools. But it’s not something you can spend your life worrying about, now is it?’
    â€˜Even so—’ Rutter had said doubtfully.
    â€˜You soon learn
never
to say “never” in my line of work,’ the agent interrupted, ‘but as far as I know, all that land beyond the estate is owned by an old farmer who’d rather cut off his own leg than sell a square inch of it.’
    The old farmer’s determination to hold on to his land – if such determination had ever actually existed – crumbled little more than a year after the Rutters had moved in, and the bulldozers arrived less than a week after that.
    Furious, Rutter had gone to the Croft Estate office and demanded to know what they hell was going on.
    The
new
plan, he was told, was to build three more ‘crofts’ – Birch Croft, Sycamore Croft and Ash Croft.
    â€˜But you need have no worries about feeling hemmed in,’ Mr Sexton, the building manager, assured him. He pointed to a plan on the wall of his office. ‘The next row of houses will be facing the other way, so the bottom of your garden will be touching the bottom of the garden of the corresponding house in Birch Croft. And it’ll be a
big
garden, Mr Rutter.’ He laughed. ‘You’d almost need to mount an expedition to get from the Birch Croft house to yours.’
    Rutter failed to see the humour. ‘When does work on Birch Croft actually start?’ he’d asked.
    â€˜Oh, not for a while yet.’
    â€˜But the bulldozers are already there.’
    â€˜Ah, I see what you mean. It’s Ash Croft – what you might call the outer ring of houses – which we’ll be building first.’
    â€˜And why might that be?’
    â€˜Because they’ll be the easiest ones to sell. Because they’ll be the ones with the …’
    He stopped suddenly, as if he’d said more than he’d intended to.
    â€˜The ones with the uninterrupted view of the moors,’ Rutter said, finishing the sentence off for him.
    â€˜Well, yes, that’s right,’ Sexton admitted.
    â€˜Just like I had, when your agent sold me my house.’
    Sexton shrugged. ‘What can I tell you, Mr Rutter? Times change. Things move on. It’s the way of the world.’
    â€˜So because you want to sell the houses on Ash Croft first, I’ll be forced to live next to a building site for at least a year?’
    â€˜You’ll soon get used to it,’ Sexton said, with the indifference of a man who held all the cards. ‘Besides, it probably won’t be anything like as noisy as you seem to think it will.’
    Now, nine months later, Ash Croft was completed – though the houses had not been selling half as quickly as Mr Sexton had clearly anticipated. And soon – out of the morass the builder had created while constructing it – Birch Croft and Sycamore Croft would begin to rise.
    Rutter had gradually come to terms with the situation. Sexton had been right about the fact that the large gardens would mean there was a considerable