Being ill somewhere that is not home is a discombobulating experience. I remember dappled trees on the wall, classical music and hushed voices: the apartment a peaceful, fragrant tomb. The city felt far away. Raffy, his girlfriend, his sister and I lay on the sofas and worked through the classics: Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, ET – we sobbed our way through, eating pints of ice cream and takeout noodles.
And then, one morning, I woke, a bit peaky looking – as my granny would say – but human once more. I unfurled from a nest of blankets and the welcoming sofa. Apologising for being the worst house guest ever, I hugged my hosts and left, pallid but grateful.
I’ve been looking for the sofas ever since. They were deep and squashy, but with a firmness that meant you could exit them with ease. Their pillows were plump and feathered. I hunted high, I hunted low, I bought without sitting on them, based just on a tantalising picture: a newbie error. Gustavian, modular, fringed, kilim clad, the sofas arrived in procession over the decades. Often, they were the wrong size and, like a philistine, I chopped their feet off to get them through a door.
I learnt through this trial and error that I admire a sofa that looks like a finely upholstered Edwardian matron. But what use posh upholstery, if the bones are made from MDF? A sofa to my mind needs to have a hardwood base to be the unsinkable Molly Brown of the sitting room. You must be prepared for animals to do potentially unspeakable things on it, or for visiting children to upend their drinks in its vicinity and for the sofa to emerge, victorious. It’s imperative to that end that it has a pattern or washable upholstery, or is covered by a throw. It can’t be precious; it has a job to do. After 25 years, my own pin-up sofa has arrived, courtesy of Nick Plant Furniture. Bespoke, it is all the things I’ve yearned for. Soft, shapely, neat of foot. It fits.
No one is more grateful than the dog. She lies splayed in the middle of it, snout reverently pointing to heaven. As Nancy Mitford wrote in The Pursuit of Love, ‘Life is sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake, and here is one of them.’
