She sighed heavily as if trying to expel every last breath of air from her body, her head dropping down until her chin almost rested on her chest. Slowly, she lifted only her eyes and squinted into the dusty sunlight that illuminated the familiar landscape of the room. It was a real mishmash. Half Ikea, half Salvation Army. What a mistake it had been to rent a furnished flat - eighty pounds a month extra for a collection of second hand furniture that the landlord would never dream of having in his own home. ‘Charity shop chic!’ Daniel laughed, as Beatrice surveyed the room tearfully on the night they moved in. He seemed delighted to be living in a genuinely grotty place; so uncontrived, so real. Here he could finally feel like a struggling artist. But Beatrice was far less enthusiastic. She’d lived in places like this before and didn’t see the novelty of it. It was, quite clearly, a place where most traces of its former occupants could be quickly and easily removed. Everything was flimsy, cheap to replace and wipe-clean-able; from the plastic coving to the laminate floor. It could never feel like her home, because it didn’t seem to want her there, didn’t seem to want anyone there. It was prepared to fend off any attempts to make it cosy, comfortable, welcoming. For two years she tried to incorporate her own tastes, little things she picked up here and there, only for them to look like tourists in a foreign country.

Anaglypta paper smothered the walls of the living room, stealing precious millimetres from an already tiny space. Like an Artex ceiling (which the room also had), it was a real decorating faux pas. For those in the buy to let business however, it was a godsend for disguising uneven walls. It was for this reason that Beatrice and Daniel had been warned not to remove it. Mr Adams mumbled something about how it had been expensive and time consuming to put up only a ‘few months’ before they moved in. But Beatrice knew it was old and knew that it hid a multitude of cracks, chips and bumps. Sometimes she would sit and press its puffy, sponginess with her thumb, trying to permanently flatten it, only to see that it had re inflated moments later. And it was pink. Baby pink! She used all her imagination to try to think of what could possibly compliment layers and layers of plump, pink rainbows stretching from floor to ceiling. Hallucinogenic drugs perhaps? There was no point in trying to paint it either. It would take her hours and hours of filling in all the little indentations with the end of a paintbrush just to be left with different coloured rainbows. So she knew she was stuck with it; this thinly padded cell.

On top of the Anaglypta, Daniel had hung three of his own huge black and white prints. Beatrice couldn't decide whether or not this was a good thing. On the one hand, they did help to cover vast areas of pink rainbows but, on the other, they had only replaced them with unsettling images of, from left to right; some dead pigeons, rolls and rolls of fat belonging to some anonymous person and the inside of, what looked like, a stretchy tube from an old tumble dryer. Of course it all meant something, but Beatrice couldn't remember what. Daniel explained it differently every time and it all became a bit hard to follow in the end. They were not so much conversation pieces as argument pieces. Daniel said they ‘inspired debate’ and, on occasion, Beatrice had watched his eyes light up as unsuspecting guests entered the room with an 'Oh my God!' He pursued their opinion with vigour, only backing off if he had the slightest suspicion that they might actually like his work. A simple meal with Beatrice’s parents had once nearly caused him to pass out with delight, when her father stated that it wasn't his 'cup of tea' and that he was quite a fan of Constable. For the rest of the evening he shifted uneasily in his chair as he was forced to defend his fondness for 'nice countryside scenes'. Beatrice made countless attempts to change the subject, but Daniel was relentless. And so she had to endure the sight of her father sweating and grimacing as he searched for words.

Any decorative item that Beatrice bought would of course look understated when compared to Daniels photographs. But she seemed to go for things that were as bland as the prints were bold. She knew it. It was always her intention to return from town with a bright red throw or some kind of scary looking, African tribal mask thing, but she inevitably walked through the door clutching a bag of beige. Daniel never made any noise about it, because it was doubtful that he ever even noticed the numerous little things that she added; cream upon fawn upon oatmeal. What bothered him was the photo frame, covered in smooth, coloured pieces of glass, which sat on the window sill. A gift from her gran, whose face it surrounded, it had resided in her bedroom since Beatrice was ten and was one of the few things that she brought with her when they moved in; her one risqué item. She loved the way the dozens of differently sized clear pebbles caught the light, tinted it, and then splashed it across the carpet.

With its greens, blues, yellows and pinks, it clearly wasn't modern and minimalist, which Daniel could cope with. It was sentimental and personal but not to the extent that its appeal couldn't be understood by someone else. As far as Daniel was concerned, if it was going to be personal it should be hideously personal, kitsch even, because then it could be talked about and then all kinds of discussions could open up. But this strange object was neither one thing nor the other, neither cool and contemporary nor deliciously vulgar. He would eye it disdainfully whenever he passed it, like a first born child glaring at his newborn sibling, unable to fathom the appeal of it and desperate to pull chunks off it when Beatrice wasn’t there. It jumped back and forth between the prominence of the window sill and the obscurity of the bottom shelf of the bookcase, in a long-running and silent battle. It puzzled her that he cared so much about it – the way the room looked, all the stuff within it. She’d never known a man to be this concerned with interior design. If they had a place of their own, she wondered, would she ever be able to go to him with a bunch of colour charts or carpet samples and have him say ‘Oh, I don’t know. Just choose whatever you want.’?