Who really owns the Charming House?

The story so far: Charles Laurence, on holiday in the Turks and Caicos two years ago, fell in love with a dilapidated beachfront house on the tiny island of Salt Cay. It was once the property of a local Lothario called Felix Lightbourne...

Porter Williams III, barkeeper at Porter's, poured too much rum and offered a look of devilish amusement as I announced that I had found a house that I must make mine. Heads nodded knowingly along his bar.

"I call it the charming house," said Debbie Been, Salt Cay's go-to entrepreneur who owns the dive shop and the harbour-side bistro and does a bit of real estate on the side. The name has stuck: the Charming House. The next day we wrestled with a rusty padlock to get in and opened up the shutters.

The south windows look over Talbot Street to the ruin of the old

Government House, all rusting tin and wind-stripped paint and magnificent colonial veranda louvred to catch the breezes. It was a house to distill the spirit of the Caribbean of Graham Greene and Derek Walcott. I looked from the old Government House to the ruined Charming House and failed to control the impulse.

Debbie called Felix Lightbourne's daughter Merlyn and we had a deal in no time. I would fly home to New York and wire the cash: Merlyn would sign contracts and submit the deed to the Land Registry. It would take "about three weeks". I should think about getting plans drawn up and permits granted for refurbishing the house.

Three weeks turned into six weeks which turned into six months. "Island time," I was told. "Be patient!" Finbar Dempsey Esq, the island's top lawyer, was soon too busy with bigger deals to take