'Kate, Jack's one of my salesmen,' Ted said.

'Sales team,' Jack put him right. From his air of amused patience, I gathered it was a regular correction. 'And you are?'

'Kate Brannigan,' I said. 'I'm an accountant. I'm putting together a package with Ted. Pleased to meet you, Jack.'

Ted looked astonished. Lying didn't seem to be his strong suit. Luckily, he was standing behind Jack. He cleared his throat and handed me a bulky blue folder. 'Here are the details you wanted, Kate,' he said. 'If there's anything that's not clear, just give me a call.'

'OK, Ted.' I nodded. I had one or two questions I wanted to ask him, but not ones that fitted my exciting new persona of accountant. 'Nice to meet you, Jack.'

'Nice. That's a word. Not the one I would have used for meeting you, Kate,' he replied, a suggestive lift to one eyebrow.

As I walked back across the reception area and out to my car, I could feel his eyes on me. I felt pretty sure I wouldn't like what he was thinking.

I pulled up half a mile down the road and had a quick look through the file. Most of the properties seemed to be over in Warrington, so I decided to leave them till morning. The light was already starting to fade, and by the time I'd driven over there, there would be nothing to see. However, there were half a dozen properties nearby where Ted had fitted conservatories. He'd already visited one of them and discovered that the conservatory had gone. On my way home, I decided I might as well take a quick look at the others. I pulled my A-Z out of the glove box and mapped out the most efficient route that included them all.

The first was at the head of a cul-de-sac in a nasty sixties estate, one of a pair of almost-detached houses, linked only by their garages in a bizarre Siamese twinning. I rang the bell, but there was no response, so I walked down the narrow path between the house and the fence to the back garden. Surprise, surprise. There was no conservatory. I studied the plan so I could work out exactly where it had been. Then I crouched down and scrutinized the brickwork on the back wall. I didn't really expect to find anything, since I wasn't at all sure what I should even be looking for. However, even my untrained eye noticed a line of faint markings on the wall. It looked like someone had given it a going over with a wire brush – enough to shift the surface grime and weathering, that was all.

Intrigued, I stood up and headed for the next destination. 6 Wiltshire Copse and 19 Amundsen Avenue were almost identical. And they were both minus conservatories. However, the next two remortgages I visited still had their conservatories firmly anchored to the houses. I trekked back to my car for the fifth time, deeply depressed after too much exposure to the kind of horrid little houses that give modern a bad name. I thought of my own home, a bungalow built only three years before, but constructed by a builder who didn't feel the need to see how small a bedroom you could build before the human mind screams 'No!' My lounge is generous, I don't have to climb over anything to get in and out of bed and my second bedroom is big enough for me to use as an office, complete with sofa bed for unavoidable visitors. But most of these overgrown sheds looked as if they'd have been pressed to provide one decent-sized bedroom, never mind three.

The irony was that they were probably worth more than mine because they were situated on bijou developments in the suburbs. Whereas my little oasis, one of thirty 'professional person's dwellings', was five minutes from every city centre amenity. The downside was that it was surrounded by the kind of inner-city housing they make earnest Channel 4 documentaries about. The locale had brought the price down far enough for me also to afford the necessary state-of-the-art alarm system.

I decided home was where I should head for. Darkness was falling, so I wouldn't be able to continue my fascinating study of late-twentieth-century bricklaying. Besides, people were getting home from work and I was beginning to feel a Utile conspicuous. It was only a matter of time before some over-zealous Neighbourhood Watch vigilante called the cops, an embarrassment I could well do without. I drove out of the opposite end of the estate to the one I'd come in by, and suddenly realized I was only a couple of streets away from Alexis's house.

Alexis Lee is probably my best friend. She's the crime reporter on the Manchester Evening Chronicle. I guess the fact that we're both women who've broken into what is traditionally a male preserve helped build the bond between us. But apart from our common interest in things criminal, she's also saved me more money than anyone else I know. I can think of at least a dozen times when she's prevented me from making very costly mistakes in expensive dress shops. And, at the risk of making her sound like a stereotype, she's got that wonderful, rich Liverpudlian sense of humour that can find the funny side in the blackest tragedy. I couldn't think of anything that would cheer me up faster than a half-hour pit stop.

The earlier rain had turned the fallen leaves into a slick mush. As I braked gently to pull up outside Alexis's, I swear my Vauxhall Nova went sideways. Cursing the Highways Department, I slithered round the car and on to the safer ground of the driveway. I grabbed at a post to steady myself, then realized with a shock that this particular post wasn't a permanent fixture. It was supporting a For Sale sign. I was outraged. How dare they put the house on the market without consulting me? Time I found out what was going on here. I walked round to the back door, knocked and entered the kitchen.

Alexis's girlfriend Chris is a partner in a firm of community architects, which is why their kitchen looks like a Gothic cathedral, complete with flagged floor and vaulted ceiling with beams like whales' ribs. The plasterwork is stencilled with flower and fruit motifs, and there are plaster bas-relief bosses at regular intervals along the roof truss. It's an amazing sight.

Instead of the Quasimodo I always half-expect, Alexis was sitting at the pitch-pine table, a mug of tea at her elbow, some kind of catalogue open in front of her. As I came in, she looked up and grinned. 'Kate! Hey, good to see you, kid! Grab yourself a cuppa, the pot's fresh,' she said, waving at the multi-coloured knitted tea cosy by the kettle. I poured myself a mug of strong tea as Alexis asked, 'What brings you round here? You been doing a job? Anything in it for me?'

'Never mind that,' I said firmly, dropping into a chair. 'You trying to avoid me? What’s with the For Sale sign? You put the house on the market and you don't tell me?'

'Why? Were you thinking of buying it? Don't! Don't even let it cross your mind! There's barely enough room for me and Chris, and we agree on what's an acceptable degree of mess. You and Richard would kill within a week here,' Alexis parried.

'Don't try to divert me,' I said. 'Richard and I are fine as we are. Next door neighbours is as close as I'm ever going to let it get.'

'And how is your insignificant other?' Alexis interrupted.

'He sends you his love too.' Alexis and the man I love have a relationship that seems to me to consist entirely of verbal abuse. In spite of appearances, however, I suspect they love each other dearly; once I actually came upon the two of them having a friendly drink together in a corner of the Chronicle's local. They'd both looked extremely sheepish about it. “Now, about this For Sale board?'

'If s only been up a couple of days. If s all been a bit of a rush. You remember Chris and I talking about how we wanted to buy a piece of land and build our own dream home?'

I nodded. I could more easily have forgotten my own name. 'You're planning on doing it as part of a self-build scheme; Chris is going to design the houses in exchange for other people giving you their labour, yes?' They'd been talking about it for as long as I'd known them. With a lot of people, I'd have written it off as dreaming. But Alexis and Chris were serious. They'd spent hundreds of hours poring over books, plans and their own drawings till they'd come up with their ideal home. All they'd been waiting for was the right plot of land at the right price in the right location. The land?' I asked.