An Angelic Sale
by Fabienne Clarke

The first weekend we put our house on the market, we got an offer but it was too low to make it worth our while moving; then came a second, which was higher, but still off the mark by £5,000. The estate agent was putting pressure on us to accept, as he thought it was a genuinely good offer and especially taking into account that the chain was very short. He did suggest that we could always accept the offer anyway and if we did not find the house we were looking for ourselves, we could always retract from the sale. This did not feel good, it did not seem an honest thing to do, so both my husband and I agreed to decline. The following morning, all the gloomy headlines about Northern Rock came out, and we were told that the offer still stood and we would most probably regret turning it down in the circumstances. But we stuck by it, we did not want to make a decision based on fear or dishonesty. I have to confess that I did ring a medium I had seen a few months back, just to confirm that we were doing the right thing; he told me that we would get the extra £5,000 we needed on our next offer.

Three days later, a lady wanted to view the house. I was making myself scarce in the garden whilst the estate agent showed her around; I was reading Healing with the Angels, by Doreen Virtue. As she came in the garden, the lady remarked on the fact that she was reading the same book, and that was that! She came back the following day with her sister and Dad, who told me as he was leaving that it would be interesting to share a conversation on the topic of the book I was reading (yes, still the same one!). One hour later, we got the offer we were hoping for!