I thought it would only take a morning, but I seem to have been sitting in the cupboard  under the stairs all day long. Just me, my radio, and half a tin of white emulsion paint.

 “I don’t know why you feel you need to paint the cupboard under the stairs so urgently,” my husband said mildly.

 I explained that I could hardly help him put together the new bedroom furniture he was absorbed with. That we had swept through the downstairs of our new house in the three weeks we had lived there with gallons of fresh paint. That the cupboard under the stairs was the only part of the ground floor left to do.

 And I tried to justify painting the glory hole cum coat cupboard that no-one but us would probably ever see by making the excuse that it was dark in there, had probably never been painted since the house was built in 1921, and that the dingy green walls seemed cold and gloomy. When our new house was going to be bright, and cheerful, and much loved!

But the truth of the matter was that I loved that cupboard under the stairs! Mainly because it was just like the cupboard under the stairs in my Grandma’s house, when my brother Mark and me were growing up. We had loved that, too.

 So in many ways it was this other cupboard under the stairs that had convinced me  Sunnybrae, 119, Station Road, Westrill, was the perfect new home for the Glover family. That’s me, Clare, my husband Simon and our six year old daughter, Amy Rose.

Like most young couples, we had saved and sacrificed and struggled to afford a home of our own. We had bought a flat when we married, and it was not only because it was on the ground floor and near the town centre that we had stayed there so long, struggling with a pram and drying nappies, as we saved up for our dream home. A nice semi-detached, with three bedrooms, central heating and a time saving, gadget filled kitchen, was our dream. But we had married very young, while Simon was still a student. Then we had found Amy Rose was unexpectedly on the way…..and maternity leave from my job at the travel agents, all the expense of having a baby, had made a big dent in our savings, and a change of plans.

 Not that we would have changed a thing, as it happens! We loved each other, and we loved Amy Rose, whose big dark eyes and naturally serious expression would so readily dissolve into giggles and dimples. But young primary school teachers like Simon don’t earn a lot, and neither do secretaries who work part time because of baby, so our saving slowed down as house prices rose. And Amy Rose was six, and happily settled at Westrill Junior and Infants School, before we dared to even think about house hunting………

 Simon and I  talked about it a lot. Sat down and worked out figures. Talked to our building society and bank manager. The result was that our Christmas present to each other was the promise, and our new year resolution to find, a lovely little house for the three of us; and perhaps for a little brother or sister - in time.

 We read the local newspapers diligently. Peered into estate agents windows, pored over details. Went everywhere with a tape measure, and got to know, it seemed, every street, and every available three bed roomed semi, within a ten mile radius!

 What hard work, and what a worry! Some houses were too small - others too large.

 any were just too expensive. We loved one house - but the traffic was too noisy and too close to the front door, and would be a frightening environment for one little girl and her protective mum! Another was on a corner and had only a tiny triangle of back garden: hopeless for a daughter who loved to run around and play at being, riding, and racing ponies.

After many weeks of this, we were starting to despair. Just as our own estate agent had predicted, we had sold our compact, convenient little flat to a young engaged couple - just like we had been when we found the flat! - within days of the saleboard going up. But where were we going to live?

 And then, just as we were starting to panic, and completely out of the blue, Sunnybrae turned up. Or, rather, Mr and Mrs Drake turned up at Westrill World Travel, where I had worked since leaving school. It was a dank March day, with rain sheeting down, and the Drakes were in no hurry to leave, waiting for the weather to break before they dashed to the car park, having happily booked their three weeks in Bermuda.

 So they waited, and chatted, and when they - naturally enough - asked me what I was going to be doing for my holidays this year, I told them that a holiday was not on the cards, because all our cash was spoken for. To buy a house.

 They sounded interested, so I told them about our hunt for a new home. About how our house was sold. And how the new owners were now keen to finalise the sale so they could name a date, get married - and move in! I told them about our dream house, with it’s gadgets and garden, and central heating. And about our fruitless house hunting.

 “Have you looked at a house near us? Sunnybrae? It’s been empty for ages…….” they said.

 They told me about it. I listened politely, but it was nothing like the perfect house Simon and I had in mind! For this was a terraced house, unmodernised - only one family had ever lived there since it was built. No central heating, no smart kitchen, no gadgets. But the only thing that stuck in my mind, and made me even consider it, however briefly, was that the price was cheap, well within our budget, and that a quick completion now could solve all our problems.

 Mrs Drake - keen to have nice young neighbours, she said - even dashed across to the estate agent to get me a copy of the details. Which I showed Simon at home that evening.

 “Not what we’re looking for at all,” he said, after a cursory glance at the paperwork.“I agree. But we’ve looked everywhere else. And Station Road is quiet now there’s no station. It’s handy for Amy’s school……”

 My voice trailed off. I was no more enthusiastic than Simon about it. But he humoured me, and hugged me, and smiled, and said: “Let’s go see, then!”

So it was without any real expectations we visited Sunnybrae on Saturday morning.  

First impressions were no help. An overgrown green privet hedge leaned inwards, making the front of the house dark and grim. The paintwork was dull, the stained glass grimy. The hall was filled with yellowing junk mail, and the house smelt cold, unloved.

 “Great possibilities….scope for improvement…..vision needed…..” Barry Taylor, the estate agent reeled off professional enthusiasm as we toured the house. Three bedrooms and a boxroom. A huge attic. Sitting room and dining room with bay windows. A long thin kitchen overlooking a long thin garden, with a garage at the end of it.

 “A lot of work,” said Simon, sounding dispirited.

 “An adjustment in the asking price may reflect that,” said the estate agent hastily, clearly keen to sell.

 We looked at each other. Sunnybrae was a long way from our vision of a dream home.Barry Taylor struggled with the back door lock, and we moved out into the tangled and overgrown garden. There was a blue brick paved yard, and dead things in pots under the kitchen window.

 We surveyed this faintly depressing view. An overgrown lawn, straggling rose stems….a forsythia offering the only sign of life with some early growth and a few brave yellow flowers.

 Simon sighed deeply, and I could sense his disappointment. Almost for something to say, to avoid having to make yet more polite conversation with the estate agent, he turned to Amy Rose.

 

“What do you think, darling?”

Our daughter turned thoughtfully on her heel, slowly surveying the house and garden with her usual intense and thoughtful gaze.

  “It looks like Sleeping Beauty’s castle,” she offered finally, surprisingly. “All waiting to be woken up, and loved again. I‘m going to find Prince Charming, and see if he can sweep all these cobwebs away!”

 And she was gone. Back into the house.

 We three adults looked at each other.

 “Well!” said Barry Taylor, sounding as flabbergasted as he clearly felt. “At least someone likes the old house!”

 “Our daughter is  six going on one hundred and six,” I said with a smile. ”You can never predict how she will react about things. She has a mind of her own.”

 Barry nodded politely as he and Simon wandered down the garden path to the garage, deep in discussion, and I left them to it, going to find Amy.

 

For a few moments I could not find her in the dark, cold house, and it was only when I stood in the hallway and called her name that she appeared. From inside the cupboard under the stairs.

 

“Look, Mummy!” she said excitedly. “A little den!”

 

Like all children, she had found her own special corner. And as I looked into that dark, empty little triangle of space, my mind went back to almost forgotten times, old memories, of a cupboard under the stairs, my own little den. And so much like this one.

 “It’s not a den, Amy. It’s a cupboard under the stairs. To hang coats - see the hooks? - and store shoes: that rail on the floor is for lodging shoes on.”

 “It is a den,” Amy argued. “It’s a secret place for a little girl like me.”

 I stepped inside. Drew the door closed. Instead of being frightened of the dark in a strange and empty house, my daughter giggled, warm and suddenly wriggling with laughter against me.

 “You know something, Amy? You’re right! I had a little den like this when I was your age……”

 

So we stood inside the cupboard under the stairs. And I told my daughter about my Grandma’s cupboard under the stairs - which had been just like this one - and how it had been a secret room, a smuggler’s cave, a space ship, an ice palace, and yes, even a princess’s drawing room to her Uncle Mark and me when we were growing up.

 I told her how we had played sardines and hide and seek in the cupboard under the stairs. Had hidden our secrets there, like birthday presents and forbidden sweeties.

I didn’t tell her about the boy who had given me my first kiss in the cupboard under the stairs. The boy I had had a teenage crush on, the boy who was Mark’s best friend. And who I had so much wanted to come to the family Christmas party the year I was thirteen. The boy I wanted to impress with my new blue frock and my trendy shoes.

 The boy I was sure I would love for ever…..and the boy who, on that day, as we crushed together playing hide and seek, had promised he would love me forever, too.

 But just for that moment I was thirteen again. And the memories rushed back as if fifteen years, grown up love, marriage, maternity and Amy Rose had never intervened.

 And I could feel again, in memory, the awkward brush of his lips on mine, the timidly held hands.

When we heard Simon calling, Amy and I tumbled out of the cupboard under the stairs like puppies, laughing together and breathless.

 And at that moment the sun came out. Bathing the hallway in spring sunshine, picking out the blue and gold stained glass that made up the bluebirds soaring across the front door and the side windows, sending their colour in shafts across our faces, transforming the house and showing us just how Sunnybrae had earned it’s name.

 Simon, Amy and I looked at each other, as if suddenly of one mind.

 “We could put a French window in the kitchen. Convert the attic into a super suite. Rip out the bathroom…….” Simon said thoughtfully.

 “I’ll help!” Amy offered enthusiastically.

 “Mark will help us. There’s nothing quite like having a brother who is a plumber at a time like this,” I said.

 “It’ll be a lot of work. Take ages…….” Simon warned, trying to cool his growing enthusiasm.

 “What does that matter? We’ve got a lifetime,” I said. Reached out, and took the hands of my husband and daughter....

 

And that was how Sunnybrae became our new home. And why I have spent most of today sloshing white paint around the cupboard under the stairs.

Mark - and his mates - helped us replace the bathroom. Install central heating, refit the kitchen. It has been a hectic few weeks, and Simon and I have found muscles that ache in places where we didn’t know we had muscles!

But Sunnybrae is being transformed. And we love it here. Even if it wasn’t the dream home we had in mind, it has become the dream home of our reality.

 I can hear Simon’s key turn in the front door as he and Amy come home from school.

 And I have finished painting.

 Amy gives me a hug.

 “That’s pretty!” she says, surveying my handiwork. “Now my den looks more like a snow cave, or a princess’s parlour. When it was dark green, like before, it was more like a cave under the sea….”

 She goes off happily to put her school bag away, and Simon puts his head round the cupboard door.

 “Den?” he asks. “What den?”

 “Don’t you remember? When Mark and I were little we always played in the cupboard under the stairs at our Grandma’s. Amy seems to have had the same idea.”

 He wrinkles his nose, concentrating, in a way that still made me smile, even after all our years together.

 “Is that what made you fall in love with this house, then? The cupboard under the stairs?”

 “Well……” I begin.

 “All our plans for our dream home? But at the end of the day the biggest selling point was the cupboard under the stairs?” he teases.

 I can feel my cheeks burning as my secret  - Amy’s secret - is revealed. But then Simon puts his arms round me, leans into the cupboard and against me, kisses me very gently.

 

“Don’t worry about it. Your secret’s safe with me. After all, it was finding you and Amy in this cupboard the first time we visited Sunnybrae that reminded me I owed a big debt to a cupboard under the stairs.

 

“Because it was in the cupboard under your Grandma’s stairs that I first got to kiss the girl I have loved all my life - and am planning to love forever more. And this funny little cupboard under the stairs reminded me of that day, all those years ago.

“So I thought it was an omen that we would be very happy here.”

 

“And so did I!” I gasp laughing, returning his hug and his kiss.

“Have I told you lately how much I love you, Mr Glover?”

“Oh, I think so,” he laughs softly. “But what’s more important, just at this moment, is that all this toiling away in this cupboard today tells old Sunnybrae just how much you love Sunnybrae, too.”

 I kiss him again. It isn’t hard to do.

 “Anyway…..” he says. “I found Amy coming out of this cupboard last night with your potato peeler. She said it was a sonic screwdriver, and she had been in there repairing the Tardis. I think Dr Who has claimed a new girl assistant.”

  “You see?” I laugh up at him. “It runs in the family! We all love our cupboard under the stairs!”

 “And our new house. But most of all, each other,” Simon says softly. And I reflect that there really is no place like home - nor having the people you love most of all inside it. Especially if a lowly cupboard under the stairs is the heart of the house. For a cupboard under the stairs brought Simon and me together. For our first kiss - and our latest.

 

Nowhere deserves that coat of paint more!