We were standing in the tiny hall: me, Catriona, Annette and her toy Yorkshire terrier, Ahmed. It was our first Airbnb booking and Annette was welcoming us to her humble home. She was a mature, careworn, attractive French woman with a modest disposition and she spoke pretty good English. Her husband would be coming back from his work shortly and when he did she would introduce him to us, she said. Had we found the flat easily?
Not that easily, in truth. The photo had suggested a house on a residential street, but a friendly black woman carrying a bag of laundry, who candidly admitted that she didn’t know her left from her right, had beckoned us through a communal doorway into a chilly concrete basement and sent us upa concrete ramp. From here we were directed by a wizened old woman into a block of what might have been social housing. But to keep the small talk brief we said that, yes, we had found the place with no trouble at all. Then Catriona pretended to admire the little dog, which, if shorn of its hair, would have been the size of a rat. The dog was in a self-absorbed, miniature world of its own andI could find little affection for it either.
Annette produced a pair of keys and an electronic disc and began to explain which door was opened by which key. She was interrupted by a knock at the door. Ah, this must be her husband now! She opened the door to reveal a long lean man with a long, deadpan comic’s face, who went straight into this pantomime slapstick business of not recognising the people crowding the hall, or indeed his own house. He rubbed his head in confusion, gaped about him, then wandered away to scrutinise the numbers on the other landing doors, finally hammering on the farthest one as if panic-stricken.
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