Seventeen Old Terrace

A modest terraced house squeezed between two similar neighbors on a quiet residential street in Streatham. The pebbledash exterior shows years of wear, the brown front door slightly ajar as Kathleen hesitates before stepping inside. Thin lace curtains in the front window filter the dim evening light, casting strained shadows across a small entryway where a brass coat hook gleams dully. The scent of boiled cabbage and old carpet cleaner lingers in the stale air, thickened by the immediate tension of Kathleen's arrival—the only sounds the distant hum of a kettle and the rattling of a windowpane. This is a place meant to disappear into the rhythm of ordinary life, its four walls offering fragile sanctuary from forces that move beyond its innocent borders.