“I'M sorry,” my landlady said (she wasn’t). “You’ll have to move out. Tomorrow. I’m going away and I just don’t trust you in my house.”

Looking back, the signs were all there...

1) My friend who came house-hunting with me said “don’t live with her, she’s mental”.

2) She was “prepared” to buy a single sofa bed for the room I was paying her £300 a month to live in but if I wanted a real bed I’d have to buy it myself.

3) When I parked on her driveway, Ford Fiesta creaking under the weight of my possessions, she asked if I would leave it all outside overnight because I’d “let the heat out” as I moved it all in.

But I’ve lived in a lot of horrible houses.

There was the flat where the housemates played opera full blast every Saturday morning until they fell out, stopped speaking and terminated our lease.

There was the “character cottage” in Carlisle with no downstairs windows or mains light (we wore head torches to read and stuck glow in the dark stars on all protruding surfaces. It didn’t work. There was no light to charge them).

It had blood-red walls and so much damp it was like having a third housemate.

It flooded shortly after we moved out, which can only have been an improvement.

Then there was the housemate who had an “indoors cat” which shed so much hair it was inch-thick in the cooker.

It was probably inch-thick everywhere else too, but you couldn’t see it because every available surface had been painted brown.

So even though my new landlady was a bit, well, odd, I was drawn in by the lure of her very pretty house.

I should have known better.

A week after I moved in, she said I’d have to sleep on the sofa for the weekend because her friends were coming and they needed the bed which I’d paid for.

Then she started putting everything I owned away, where she couldn’t see them.

Her jam was all right on the sideboard, but my peanut butter had to go in the cupboard.

Her shoes could live in the hall, but mine had to be out of sight.

I put my shower gel in the bathroom and she said: “Oh. You’re keeping your stuff in here, are you?”

I put a mug I’d broken in the bin and she accused me of deliberately hiding it from her.

But the cat incidents were the last straw.

Incident number one: I accidentally shut the kitten in the cellar for 10 minutes because I didn’t know he was in there. She came home and heard mewing and, well.

Obviously I’d locked the poor thing in the cellar on purpose so I didn’t have to feed him.

Then she went away for the weekend.

While she was away, the cat had an accident on her cream carpet. Incident number two indeed.

I did my best with a cloth and some Vanish but the poor cat had made quite a mess.

When she saw the stain (and I still can’t believe this) she accused me of making it, and then trying to blame the cat, because he couldn’t stand up for himself.

A week later I moved out. My new house was horrible (more ’70s carpets and no furniture) but at least my housemate was normal.

Every time I went to the kitchen and my tea bags were next to the kettle where I left them I felt a small shudder of relief.

All of which goes to show there’s more to a home than stripped floorboards and cream carpets.

I’m about to buy my first house and it’s a lesson we’re trying to keep in mind.