The heart of the city holds just enough noise to be pleasant. People walk about, shop doors are open, smells of food from various restaurants mingle, creating a scent any hungry pedestrian can't resist. Different accents ring out periodically, tourists having found their way here, while locals walk with more purpose and certainty, and sound familiar to Lily's ears. The weather is fine, the breeze feeling lovely on her face.

She tries to focus on that instead of the pain in her feet and head, and the frustration building within her. But the slight frown makes its way onto her face anyway.

"Oh, come on, Lil," Liam says, slinging an arm around her shoulders. "Buck up. We'll find a place."

"When?" Lily asks, head turning as they pass a bakery, a chocolate croissant peeping out at her from the glass case inside.

"By the end of the week, surely," Liam replies, walking on obliviously and taking her with him. "It can't be that hard to find a decent vacant flat." Even as he says it, he doesn't sound so sure.

Lily sighs. "Well, evidently there isn't one where I need it to be." Hearing herself sound so grumpy, she takes a calming breath, trying to cheer up, to believe what her brother says, even if he doesn't quite believe it himself. "But maybe something will turn up soon."

Liam shakes her gently, smiling at her. "That's the spirit. You're starting to sound like you again."

She laughs. "I'm glad to hear it."

"And, hey, I know just the thing that'll make it all right as rain."

"And what's that?"

"Lunch," Liam replies. "I believe that Thai place is near here, and I haven't been in so long."

Lily just laughs and lets her brother lead her wherever it is he wants to go, soon burying herself in flat listings on her phone when they sit down in the restaurant. The site she'd been on hadn't turned up anything useful besides what they'd already gone to see in person today, so she tries a new site. She enters the location she needs — close enough to the city and her new place of work come Autumn — and begins searching. Some of the listings she's seen before, but there are a few she hasn't.

Nothing seems to be what she needs, budget and space wise, and she begins to despair again, but then one catches her eye.

221C Baker Street.

It seems like it's meant to be already, even before she looks at the details. Unfortunately, the waiter arrives and interrupts her before she can look more, and she finds herself impatient as she gives her order. Liam seems to take ages, bonding with the waiter over food and, somehow, sports. She would look at the listing while they talk, but Liam occasionally brings her into the conversation, and, anyway, she doesn't want to be rude. Finally, though, the waiter leaves, and Lily turns back to her phone.

Baker Street is, of course, in the right location, and the rent is slightly cheaper than she expected. It's a basement flat, with a big, plain sitting room, which connects to a kitchen and has a hallway with a spare room and livable bathroom going off it, and a big enough bedroom at the end, caddy corner to a utility closet. The back bedroom closet is also decent in size. There's no furniture, so she'll have to buy her own, but there is a fireplace in the sitting room.

She passes her phone to Liam wordlessly, a smile on her face. "Baker Street," he reads. "That's fitting. The flat, though... Well, the rent's within budget."

"I know."

"But it's a basement. That means mold."

"I'll take preventative measures."

"And no furniture, and it definitely needs to be renovated."

"I have enough saved to take care of all that."

"And would that money happen to be coming from your bakery fund?" Liam asks with a raised brow.

Lily shrugs, shifting in her seat. "Maybe." Liam gives her a pointed look, so she continues, "But school will start back up soon enough, and I'm still getting revenue from the book. I'll earn it back."

"You might need to pay for more than you think — not including those preventative measures you were talking about."

"Oh, I know." Soon, she's not in the Thai restaurant anymore, but in her little flat of dreams, eyes alight with ideas and plans and excitement. "And we'll have to buy paint to repaint the walls, and I want new countertops and maybe a kitchen island, and then I think I want to put my TV over the fireplace, so we'll have to install that, and I'll make that spare room my office, and-"

"So this is the one you want?" Liam asks, seeing the familiar look in her eyes.

"Well, we'll have to go have a look, but I think so, yes."

Liam sighs. "Alright. But think practically about this, Lil. Don't just run off with wild ideas of renovations and cute decorations and a brand new kitchen."

"Where's the fun in moving if you don't run off with ideas just a little bit?" Lily says. "And, anyway, I've been doing this adult thing longer than you have, so I don't know why you're lecturing me."

"Because you're you, Lil, and your head isn't always down here on Earth with the rest of us."

"You sound like Mum," she retorts with a laugh. "And, anyway, it wouldn't hurt to just look."

"I suppose," Liam agrees, just as the waiter arrives with their drinks.

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After leaving the restaurant, they walk further down the street before Lily stops and hails a taxi. When they get in the back, she says, "221 Baker Street, please."

"Hold on," Liam says to her as the taxi pulls out onto the street. "When you said you wanted to look, I didn't think you meant today."

"Why not today?" Lily asks innocently.

"You haven't gotten in touch with any landlord, for starters. What if no one's there when we get there?"

"Then we'll come back tomorrow." Though, she would much rather see it right this minute.

"And what if it's already rented out? They could've just forgotten to remove the listing."

Lily frowns. "Then we'll look for another one." But she still hopes for this one — the one that has everything she needs and so much potential. It's so bare, she can make it however she wants. And she knows that, if she can't have this one, every other place she sees will likely just be subpar in comparison. So, this one surely must be available, and Lily assures herself more and more of that with every passing second. She now has something to cling to.

They reach Baker Street — a nice little place, with tall buildings and people milling about. The 221 flats are evidently connected to everything else around them, the whole building white-bricked on the bottom, then with a small ledge of potted plants guarded by a black railing, then brown-bricked on top. Lily pays the driver, and then they get out, walking right up to the black door, with a step up to it and fenced-in grates on either side.

However, the door is unmarked.

"I don't think this is it, Lil," Liam says unsurely.

She frowns and steps back, going to the black door nearest to it and finds it to be 221B. It's right next to a sandwich shop called Speedy's, and Lily thinks of how convenient it is as she walks up the two steps and straightens the crooked knocker on the door — which gives her a little thrill, for how charming it is — before knocking.

After a few moments, an older-looking woman with short, dark blonde hair, pushed back in what Lily would call a fun grandma fashion, answers the door. She's wearing a faded blue shirt and dark pants under a pink apron, along with a wonderfully reassuring friendly smile. Lily likes her instantly, and returns the smile.

"Hello," she says — with more confidence than she thought she would, shaky as her voice was — holding out her hand. "I'm Lily Marlow."

The woman takes her hand, and Lily notes that she has a surprisingly strong grip. "Mrs. Hudson," the woman says.

"Liam," he adds, also shaking the woman's hand. He gestures to Lily with a nod of his head. "Her brother," he explains.

Mrs. Hudson nods a little, and Lily, fighting off another nip of anxiousness, starts in on what she wanted to inquire about. "I-I hope we're not troubling you or anything, but I came here to look at the flat next door, and I can't exactly find the entrance..."

"221C?" Mrs. Hudson asks slowly, with a bit of surprise.

"Yes, that's the one," Lily confirms. She pulls out her phone to show Mrs. Hudson the listing. "I saw it online here earlier, and I wanted to come have a closer look at it."

The surprise is still very much present. "You want to rent it?"

"I do." Very much so, she adds silently, fiddling with the buttons on her phone nervously.

"Well, you can have a look if you like," Mrs. Hudson says, stepping aside to let them into the foyer, consisting of a small fireplace on the right, a mirror over it, a set of ascending stairs in front, a decorative chair and a shelf overhead to the right of those, and, directly across the short hallway from those, a longer table with a lamp and a few other small things. "I'm the landlady here, so it would be me you want to talk to," Mrs. Hudson continues, "but, I must say, no one's come to inquire about that flat in ages. It's a basement one, and everyone's afraid of mold."

"That's what I told her," Liam says with a shake of his head.

"Of course, there's never been any in there when it's properly managed," Mrs. Hudson adds thoughtfully. "It's checked every so often, you know, and it's been alright. But people are still wary, and it isn't furnished, anyhow. And the rent used to be much higher than it was, but I've lowered it since. What amount did it say on the website?" Lily tells her, and she nods. "That's still the price it is now. I'd forgotten all about that listing, truth be told."

"Can we see the flat?" Lily asks, excitement building in her, though she wishes she hadn't been so enthusiastic until Mrs. Hudson replies.

"Oh, yes," she answers, as if only now remembering why they're there. She turns and walks down the hall. "The front door is just back here. Let me go get the keys."

She disappears into a windowed door labeled 221A for a few moments, during which Lily and Liam hear her searching. Then, she returns, closing the door behind her before unlocking the similar one to 221C across the hall. Lily and Liam follow her inside, and it looks just as it did in the pictures.

As they descend stairs, which creak rather romantically as they walk down, Mrs. Hudson talks. "There's a little garden outside, through the back door. We can look at it in a minute. I've got a clothesline out there, too, which you're free to use." Lily becomes particularly taken with the idea of a garden, and she pictures it for a moment.

At the bottom of the stairs are coat hooks on the wall in a sort of entrance area which, after they open the dirty, white door, leads into the kitchen and sitting room.

To the left is the kitchen, with a high window and the countertops that need replaced and no cabinets or appliances to be seen. On the far wall is a window with thin, faded curtains, and on the right wall is the fireplace, and then the hall next to it. Lily looks around, seeing not what it looks like now, but what she hopes it will look like after she's moved in.

"I could put the island there," she says a bit quietly to Liam, pointing to a spot in the middle of the room, and then excitement begins to overtake her. "And I could paint the kitchen light blue-" she thinks again, as she goes over to the counter that's left "- or maybe a light pink. Or yellow. But they do say blue is rather calming." She turns, leaving the train of thought there when she looks into the sitting room area, which isn't separated from the kitchen. "See, Liam, the TV can go there-" she points to above the fireplace, walking nearer to it "- and I can put little knickknacks on the mantel-"

"Lil, I think knickknacks are the last thing you should be worried about right now," Liam says, amused. It brings Lily back to earth, and she looks at Mrs. Hudson, worried she's irritating her with her ramblings, but she seems just as amused as Liam.

She leads them to the hallway, into the first room on the left — the spare room. "I could put the bookshelf here," Lily says, looking at the farthest corner on the left of the room. "I could get a big one, that goes all the way to the ceiling, that has one of those rolling ladders with it."

"But you hate heights," Liam points out.

She waves him off. "I'll get over it. It wouldn't be too high." She turns again. "And my desk can go here, in front of the window — though the sun might get in my eyes. Maybe I'll put it here instead."

The next room, also on the left, is the bathroom, which has less charming possibilities, but Lily dreams it up pretty nonetheless, with those quaint little pictures people sometimes put in bathrooms and a nice shelf for the towels in front of the door, where the wall pushes inward.

She quickly moves on to the back bedroom, which consists of simply a window on the far wall and a nice closet on the wall to the left. A thousand ideas run through Lily's head.

"I could keep my bed frame and just get new bedding to match the color I paint the walls — green? No, yellow... Or orange. Maybe blue. And then of course I'd keep my nightstand and dresser and things..." She finally returns to the present then, looking at Liam. "What do you think?"

"I think you like this place, and you won't settle for anything else," Liam replies smilingly. "And I think it'll be nice, once we fix it up. I think it'll suit you."

Lily smiles widely, and looks to Mrs. Hudson, who can't help but smile, too. "I'll take it," Lily says. "When can I start moving in?"

"Well, whenever you want, once we get some papers signed and all," Mrs. Hudson says, and then her smile falters. "However, I have to warn you, there's another reason the rent is as cheap as it is." Liam and Lily look at her, both obviously worried now, though Lily fights not to be. Mrs. Hudson sighs. "The upstairs neighbors can be described as..."

"Annoying?" Liam suggests helpfully.

"Well, sort of," Mrs. Hudson says. "One of them sometimes is, anyway. They're both mostly quiet, but there's no telling what could be going on up there at any given day — at least when they're home. They get some visitors, too, for their work, and there are some... interesting characters here sometimes." Liam raises a brow at Lily at that, but Lily only shrugs. Mrs. Hudson doesn't notice. "I love them both dearly, believe me, but I couldn't comfortably let you sign anything without warning you. Of course, there's a floor in between you, so it shouldn't be too bad. And with them here, I wouldn't worry about any real danger; they're prone to take care of that."

"I think it'll be just fine," Lily replies, before Liam can say anything. There aren't going to be many other options in the city that don't come with noise and "interesting characters," anyway. Definitely not ones with rent at this price.

Mrs. Hudson rememberers something. "Oh, and there's a little one, too — a three year old. She's sweet, but, of course, she's a toddler, and, you know, there are some people who don't care for children at all, quiet or not."

"Oh, I don't mind children," Lily replies, now fully at ease. "I'm a primary school teacher. I've taught Year One for the last few years."

"She's also written a children's book," Liam adds as he unfortunately loves to weasel that fact into any conversation he can.

"Really?" Mrs. Hudson says with a smile.

Lily shrugs shyly. "I just made up a little story for my students, and a parent suggested I get it published, so I figured I might as well try, and it just... worked out."

"It was a bestseller," Liam says, and Lily looks back at him pointedly.

"Liam," she scolds lightly, starting to become embarrassed.

Mrs. Hudson just smiles. "Well, if you have no objections to anything, I suppose we should go see the garden and discuss your lease."

Lily grins and follows Mrs. Hudson out, imagination drifting off to what her flat of dreams will look like once she's moved in.