Why would you abandon your house for 4 years?

[Tomatosoupandbread]

We live in a little hamlet. The largest house in the village had a lovely 50’s/60’s couple living in it. In 2020 they stayed there less and less, and we presumed they were isolating or caring for relatives. Since then they have come back to the house once for 2 days. The garden is obviously cared for, and nothing looks dilapidated, and there are still jackets on the backs of chairs, sun cream by the side of the kitchen window, it looks like they have just stepped out to go to the supermarket. What would the reason be for just upping and leaving your house, and 4 years later still not renting it, selling it or coming home for your belongings? I am so curious!

Maybe they won the lottery and have been living it up ever since.

i don’t think I’d stop to tidy up before fucking off into the sunshine if it happened to me 😁

Are you sure they’re not still in there? A couple in my hometown presumed to have returned to England where they were from originally, had actually not left, and died inside the house. Their bodies were discovered 2 years later

How did you come by all these small, personal details?

That would drive me mad not knowing 😆I am a little bit obsessed with abandoned properties and the stories behind them. There was a lovely house by my dds old school that I saw every day on the school run, clearly not lived in as newspaper on the windows etc but cared for and not neglected. I was so intrigued!

Maybe the place has sentimental value ie was a childhood home - so they don't want to sell it but have nicer/more suitable place that they live in.

Death or illness or it was their primary home and they had a second home elsewhere and they've now flipped it round.

Or maybe lockdown made them realise how isolated they were and they moved nearer to family.

Aliens.

Maybe they don't need to sell it and intend to pass it down when they die.

Or maybe it isn't theirs to sell, it's in some sort of trust or something

If it's being kept tidy then someone's keeping an eye on it.

I live in a hamlet, of course I’m nosy 😂😂. I walk the dog past their house three times a day, so you naturally notice comings and goings, cars on the drive etc. They had two cars with private plates so they were easy to recognise (also the only soft top car and Range Rover in the village) and no car has been seen on the drive since 2020 (to the point where other neighbours now use their drive as extra parking). Obviously someone is tending to the garden because the lawn isn’t overgrown. I just want to know 😂.

I think they probably have swapped to a second home.

The sun cream will be out date.

Do you never see the person tending to the garden? I'd happen to walk past with the dog and start a conversation....

I'd absolutely want to know, too.
There's a nice, decent street near me with one house totally overgrown so it really stands out. It's intriguing as to what circumstances have led to it. But a well-maintained yet seemingly abandoned house is even more interesting!

Hah! Nothing for it then but to start an affair with Mellors.

@Deadbeatex , that’s the thing, I have NEVER seen anyone doing the garden! The grass never looks freshly cut, it is always like a week or two post-cut, I thought possibly the next door neighbours were doing it for them. It is such a lovely house (stone built, garden front and rear, ivy covered, large drive, beautiful windows) that I sometimes daydream about living in it 😂.

who does the garden?

Well quite simply you are going to have to quit work, do all shopping online, only walk the dog up and down the road staying in sight of the house at ALL times and commence a stakeout 🤷🏼‍♀️ then get back here and let the rest of us nosy buggers know once you've interrogated the gardener 😜

are you sure they are alive?

ask the neighbours?

they are in prison?

Maybe you are living in your very own Trueman Show and they were extras.

It’s odd that despite passing the house so often you’ve never seen anyone gardening, though.

And yes, my first thought was the same as that of a pp. There was a specific case I was thinking of where an elderly couple who didn’t have much contact with the neighbours, and who had apparently given the impression they were planning to leave the country, stopped being seen and were assumed to have moved away. But they’d died in the house and not been found.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/22/bodies-of-couple-lay-undiscovered-in-irish-home-for-18-months

You’ll note that one of the reasons no one thought anything suspicious had happened is because they’d paid someone to cut the grass. Presumably it was a standing order and kept being paid.

And the house is a set piece with self-cutting grass. It sounds like it with all the detail.

Is the grass real or is it fake grass?

In a similar situation in my village they were mostly living in Hong Kong.

The house was for holidays and retirement.

Oh my goodness, they are probably dead upstairs.

Murdered by car thieves to explain the lack of cars on the drive.

I live in a small village so totally get the nosiness.