The Girl Before

“1. Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life.”

The first question on the application for One Folgate Street appears both as the first chapter heading and in Emma and Astrid’s narrative of applying to live in the home. This sentence frames the novel, implying that thinking about possessions in one’s life is an essential philosophical tension of the text. This question is reflected in the plot as each character wrestles with making decisions regarding their possessions and relationships.

“The upper floor is reached by the most crazily minimalist staircase I’ve ever seen. It’s like something hewn into a cliff face: floating steps of open, unpolished stone, with no handrail or visible means of support.” 

Jane describes the staircase when she sees it for the first time on her tour of One Folgate Street. Although Jane describes the staircase with a positive tone in this quote, she’ll soon learn that Emma died by falling down these stairs. Her note that there is no handrail “or visible means of support” foreshadows Simon’s death on the stairs.

“It’s like an upmarket prison cell, Simon comments.” 

Simon’s early comment on One Folgate Street’s capacity to feel like a “prison cell” hints at the eventual way that both Emma and Jane will feel trapped by the house. The aspects of the house that are “upmarket,” including the stairs and technological features, end up being the very things that make each woman feel unsafe later on.