Free From Under the Overcoat by Sue Orr

guess what I’d done.
    When she had finished inside, she went out to the garden shed. She dragged the old lawnmower out. It took her twenty minutes to mow both the back and front lawns. The random bits of junk she piled inside the shed. She went out to her car, and came back with a toolbox. It took her ten minutes to put the gates back on their hinges.
    I felt a lump in my throat. Mrs Button was right; it wasn’t a good idea to stay. It already wasn’t our house any more. It belonged to people who cared about what others thought. That’s how it felt to me. I did the eyeballs-up thing, and managed to stop the tears.
    I made a big deal about saying goodbye to Mrs Button, and I left half an hour before the open home.

    ON THE OTHER SIDE of our back gate, in the park, was an enormous oak tree. Its roots were so close to our boundary that they had grown under the fence, lifting it slightly off the ground. The tree had millions of branches thick with leaves. Some of them hung over the fence, into our property.
    I’d left our house through the front door. Then, checking that Mrs Button wasn’t watching, I raced to the end of the road, round the corner and into the park. I climbed the oak tree.
    From the highest branches I looked into our house. I had never seen it from this angle. I watched through the leaves as Mrs Button walked around outside to the back of the house. She had a screwdriver in her hand, and I wondered what she was up to.
    She stopped outside the first set of downstairs windows and poked the screwdriver in between the woodwork. She prised and pushed until they opened up and folded back. They weren’t windows, I realised. They were big opening doors. I’d never even noticed.
    Mrs Button put the screwdriver down on the lawn, and pulled the doors again. They opened right back, on both sides. You could see everything inside our house — into the big lounge, the little table and chairs. Light flooded the rooms.
    On she went with her screwdriver. More doors sprang open, this time revealing the kitchen. The tiled floor, the old coal range, and Mum’s modern stove sitting next to it. It looked like a doll’s house — one of those old-fashioned ones with the whole side of the house opening up.
    Mrs Button disappeared back inside. She next turned up at my bedroom window. I knew that one couldn’t be a door — there was no balcony. I could see her pushing hard from the inside, then the window popped open. She pushed it right back. Then she did the same in Mum’s room. You could see everything in the two rooms; they were at the exact same level as my branch. I pulled back into the leaves of the tree, in case Mrs Button saw me.
     
    IN A LITTLE WHILE , people started to walk through our house. Just a few at first, but soon there were lots. From the tree, I watched as they moved in and out of our rooms. It was as though the house had been sliced open. You could follow the progress of these strangers as they wandered around.
    I thought I would feel funny — upset — but I didn’t, not at all. This tidy, spick and span, shiny house that had been opened up for the world to see wasn’t ours. That wasn’t the way we lived. And I knew that once these strangers worked out that the house was falling to bits, they’d leave and we could get back to normal.
    I tried to keep an eye on the ones who went round twice, who might be serious about buying. What I would do about them I wasn’t sure, but it was important to know who they were.
    There was another reason I was watching. I wondered whether my father might come. I kept expecting to see one of the little toy-sized men turn around and be him. It was a stupid idea and I knew it wouldn’t happen, except I kept thinking that it would.
     
    IT WAS NEARLY TIME for Mrs Button to close up our house. A man arrived. I could see clearly into the kitchen, where Mrs Button had laid out her paperwork on the table. She was just gathering it all up to put in her bag when he walked