Abracadabra, the Disappearing Dependants Trick

Sunscreen. Check. Water bottles. Check. Snacks. Check. You might think we were preparing for a day at the beach. But no, we’re doing the rounds of the rental open for inspections. Agents don’t show houses during the week, preferring to wait until Saturday when all the desperate would-be renters can visit en mass.

Navman is in charge of finding the quickest route between inspections. Nevertheless, at the third house, the agent is making as hasty an escape as a short tube of black polyester and three-inch stilettos permit. She scrambles into her BMW, pretending not to see us as we pull in front of her.

I jump out and she reluctantly rolls down the window.

‘Sorry, I’ve locked up and,’ glancing at her watch, ‘I’m due at my next property.’

‘We tried to get here on time,’ I fail to control the whine in my voice. I must avoid sounding like a whingeing tenant.

My husband smiles winningly. She seems to soften before spotting the kids slapping each other in the back of the station wagon and her face hardens.

‘Sorry. If it’s still vacant, come next weekend.’

It’s easy to spot the next house. Traffic is at a standstill in the ‘quiet cul-de-sac location’ so we park around the corner.

The kids devour packets of chips and argue in air-conditioned comfort while we queue to inspect the house. Potential tenants eye the competition as the line shuffles toward the front door.

Surprisingly, the house actually resembles the photographs on the website. This is less common than you might imagine. Photographers are the magicians of the real estate industry. There had been no sign of the crowd of statues surrounding the pool in their naked, armless glory in the online pictures of the previous house. And miraculously, the electric blue shower recess with its rows of massage spouts like the gills of a particularly unattractive sea creature had been made to disappear from the bathroom.

We eventually make it inside the ‘perfect family home’. The experience reminds me of seeing the ‘Mona Lisa’, squeezed shoulder to shoulder with the rest of Europe for a glimpse of something you have been told is amazing but turns out to be much smaller than you expected.

We ask for an application.

‘Do you have pets?’ the agent asks before unclipping the forms.

Naturally, we lie. A landlord will always choose an applicant without the potential for a flea infestation.

Still he hesitates, looking us up and down.

‘Kids?’ he asks.

‘No,’ we chorus.

If estate agents can make statues disappear we can perform the same trick with offspring.