Edinburgh, Scotland
A note on finding another home and the days in between.
The envelope from the landlord’s agent sits beside the bread bin, with a jar of instant coffee resting on one corner. The notice gives a date twelve weeks away. The landlord intends to sell the second-floor flat in Bellevue.
In the kitchen, the boy stands with the fridge door open, staring at the middle shelf. He is twelve, wearing his damp football kit.
“Are we definitely staying near school?” the boy asks, pulling out a carton of milk.
“That’s the plan,” his father says, looking up from his phone. “Anything that keeps you on the same bus route works. Pilrig, Canonmills, maybe near Leith Walk.”
The boy drinks straight from the carton, sets it back, and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “Callum said there’s a flat going in his stair on McDonald Road.”
“I saw that one,” the father says. “It’s a short-term holiday let. They want fourteen hundred a month.”
The boy takes his kit into the hall to drop by the washing machine.
Over the following weeks, the search settles into the household routine. In the evenings, after making dinner, the father sits at the kitchen table with his laptop. His browser toolbar holds a folder of bookmarks for mid-market rent developments and private lets.
An application for a mid-market rent flat near Easter Road requires three consecutive payslips, proof of address, bank statements, and a landlord reference.
The father collects the files on his desktop. On a Tuesday night, he spends twenty minutes trying to re-upload his bank statement because the file exceeds the application portal’s file size limit. He compresses the PDF, uploads it again, and receives an automated confirmation screen.
The next morning on the bus to work, he begins working out where their furniture might fit in the Easter Road flat. The second bedroom is narrower than his son’s current room, with barely enough room for his desk. He considers whether they would need to sell the low bookcase in the hallway or if it could fit along the far wall of the living room. The bus reaches York Place, and he gets off and walks to the office.
By the time the boy’s football team reaches the third round of the local autumn cup, the Easter Road provider has offered no response beyond the initial acknowledgement.
On Friday afternoon, the father takes an hour off work to attend a block viewing for a two-bedroom flat on Brunswick Street. Seven other prospective tenants wait on the stone stairs in the communal tenement entrance. When the letting agent arrives, she leads the group inside, six at a time. The rooms are clean, but the back bedroom faces a narrow lightwell and receives little daylight. The rent is higher than what they currently pay, but within reach.
He completes the online application that evening while his son sits in the living room eating a bowl of cereal and watching videos on his phone. The system requests an employer reference, which he enters before clicking submit.
Two weeks later, an email confirms the Brunswick Street flat has been let to another applicant.
The father looks at a listing further down towards Restalrig, outside their preferred search radius. The rent is slightly lower, which would give them a little more room in the monthly budget. He pulls up the Edinburgh bus map on his monitor and traces the route his son would have to take each morning. It would mean changing buses or taking a longer walk to a direct stop, adding time to his winter commute. He closes the transport map and leaves the browser tab open on the listing without filling out the enquiry form.
On a Saturday morning, the father and son walk down to the supermarket on Leith Walk. The boy picks up a packet of crisps and a bottle of orange juice. Outside a community centre, a noticeboard holds advertisements for choir rehearsals and local lets. The father stops to read a handwritten index card for a flat near St Clair Street, but the phone number listed has been crossed out with a marker.
“Is that a flat?” the boy asks, holding the orange juice under his arm.
“It was,” the father says. “Come on, let’s get going.”
They walk back up the hill towards Bellevue, disagreeing about whether Hibs need a better striker or simply need to create more chances.
Later that afternoon, the father sits back down at the table. He opens his bookmarks and refreshes the search page. He checks the Easter Road application he submitted several weeks earlier. The status still reads “Pending Review.” No new two-bedroom properties matching their area and budget have been listed since morning.
From his bedroom down the hall, the boy calls out, asking if the HDMI cable is in the hallway cupboard.
The father leaves the laptop open on the table, stands up, and goes down the corridor to help him look.