Actually, this was an exercise for my current writing class. Our teacher suggested several topics. One was a scene about a married couple buying a new house. The wife is thrilled about the house, but the place is terrible. The husband doesn't like it at all. The task was not to tell that the house is terrible as well as not to tell that husband hates it.

I came up with this scene, which is a modern AU, where Edith and Bertie are visiting Locksley (fanon name for Anthony Strallan's house).

There could be more... What do you think?


The New House

Locksley – the name sounded strange, but had been written in huge letters all the ad, Edith had found online. It had popped up right there on the real estate website, where she had been looking for their new home.

Locksley.

Pretty pictures of a pretty house somewhere in the middle of Yorkshire. A bit old fashioned perhaps, but nice.

It wasn't easy to get there. Taking the train to Rippon and then… a long way by car.

Arriving at the entrance of the estate, they had to open a rusty, old gate. The lane towards the house was not easy to use due to the jungle of plants and trees growing all over it. But finally, there it was.

Locksley.

"It's pretty, isn't it?!" Edith got excited. She could not stop starring at the façade and the windows starring down at them like hollow eye sockets.

"Do you have the key?" Edith asked.

"I don't think we'll need it," Bertie replied. He went to the door, which might have been green or perhaps light blue in former times, and opened it with a single move.

They entered Locksley.

Inside it was dark. Nobody had opened the windows for ages. One could smell it. Bertie heard a rustling noise. Was it a mouse? Or something bigger? He couldn't say.

"Oh, look, a library!" Edith's voice got over excited. "Imagine having tea in the library!"

Bertie entered the room, his wife was standing in. He could say from one look only that it would take ages before anybody would have tea in this library.

There was a huge hole in the ceiling and quite some damage done by the water from the leaking roof.