‘Is there a secret passageway behind that door?’ said the weirdly difficult Kiwi as she eyed a door marked ‘private’ leading off the central staircase.

‘Yes, sort of,’ I said. Behind that door is the rear part of the house, unrenovated. So if you open it, the secret is you fall into a gap in one of the smashed floorboards, trip over a box of books or ten, fall against a stack of mattresses and tumble down a rickety staircase that lands you in the boiler and machinery room, where you will find the unfathomable clutter that is the builder boyfriend’s...