The Turn of the Key

As Sandra shooed the dogs into the garden, I made my way back into the old part of the house, with the same strange sense of jolting dislocation I had felt before, going the other way. The soaring glass ceiling abruptly lowered to wedding-cake-style frosting. The echoing sound of my kitten heels on the concrete floor changed to the soft click of parquet, and then the hush of carpet as I began to make my way up the staircase. At the first landing I stopped. The door closest to me, the baby’s room, was still ajar, and I couldn’t resist—I pushed it open and stepped inside, smelling the good, warm smells of clean, contented baby.

Petra was lying on her back, her arms and legs thrown out froggy-style. She had kicked off her blanket and, very gently, I drew it back over her, feeling her soft breath stirring the fine hairs on the back of my hand.

As I tucked it around her, she startled, flinging up one arm, and for a moment I froze, thinking that she was about to wake and cry. But she only sighed and settled back down, and I padded quietly from the room and up to my luxurious, waiting bedroom.

*

I tiptoed around cautiously as I washed and brushed my teeth, listening to the floorboards beneath my feet quietly creaking and not wanting to disturb Sandra below. But at last I was ready for bed, my alarm set, my clothes for tomorrow neatly set out on the plump little sofa.

Then I realized, I had not drawn the curtains.

Wrapping my dressing gown around myself, I walked across the room and tugged gently at their fabric. They didn’t move.

Puzzled, I tried harder, then stopped, peering behind them in case they were somehow fake, ornamental drapes, and I was really supposed to use a blind. But no, they were real curtains, they had real runners. Then I remembered—Sandra pressing something on the wall, and the curtains swishing closed, then open again. They were automatic.

Shit. I walked across to the panel beside the door and waved a hand in front of it. Instantly it lit up with that confusing configuration of squares and icons. None looked like curtains. There was one that might have been a window, but when I pressed it, cautiously, a blast of jazz trumpet split the silence, and I hastily stabbed it with a finger.

Thank God it cut off immediately, and I stood for a moment, waiting, poised for a wail from Petra, or for Sandra to come pounding up the stairs demanding to know why I was waking the children, but nothing happened.

I returned to studying the panel, but this time I didn’t press anything. I tried to remember what Sandra had done earlier. The big square in the center was the main light, I was fairly sure of that. And the mishmash of squares to the right presumably controlled the other lights in the room. But what was that spiral thing, and the slider to the left? Music volume? Heat?

Then I remembered Sandra’s comment about the voice settings.

“Shut curtains,” I said in a low voice, and somewhat to my shock, the curtains whisked across with a barely audible swoosh.

Great. Okay. That only left the lights to figure out.

The bedside light had a switch, so I knew I’d be able to handle that one, and the others I managed to figure out by trial and error, but there was one lamp by the armchair that I could not manage to extinguish.

“Turn off lights,” I tried, but nothing happened. “Turn off lamp.”

The bedside lamp extinguished.

“Turn off armchair lamp.” Nothing happened. Bloody hell.

In the end I traced the cord back to an oddly shaped plug socket on the wall, not like a normal appliance socket, and pulled it out. The room was plunged instantly into darkness so thick, I could almost feel it.

Slowly I groped my way back across the room to the foot of the bed and crawled into it. I was just snuggling down when I remembered, with a sigh, that I hadn’t plugged my phone in to charge. Shit.

I couldn’t face contending with the lights again, so instead I switched on the torch on my phone, got out of bed, and began to rummage through my case.

The charger wasn’t there. Had I taken it out already? I was sure I’d packed it.

I tipped the bag upside down, letting my possessions tumble out onto the thick carpet, but no electrical wire came snaking out with the other belongings. Shit. Shit. If I couldn’t charge my phone, I’d have the world’s most boring journey tomorrow. I hadn’t even brought a book—all my reading matter was on the Kindle app. Had I forgotten it? Left it on the train? Either way, it clearly wasn’t in my case. I stood there for a moment, chewing my lip, and then opened up one of the drawers in the bedside table, hoping against expectation that a previous guest might have left a charger behind.

And . . . bingo. Not a charger, but a charging lead. That was all I needed—there was a USB port built into the socket.

With a sigh of relief I untangled the lead from the leaflets and papers in the drawer, plugged it in, and attached my phone. The little charging icon illuminated, and I got thankfully back into bed. I was about to turn off the torch and lie back down when I noticed that something had fallen out of the drawer onto my pillow. It was a piece of paper, and I was about to screw it up and throw it onto the floor, but before I did, I glanced at it, just to check it was nothing important.

It wasn’t. Just a child’s drawing. At least . . .

I picked up the phone again, angling the torch at the page, looking more closely at the picture.

It was hardly a work of art, just stick figures and thick crayoned lines. It showed a house with four windows and a shiny black front door, not unlike Heatherbrae. The windows were colored in black, all except for one, which showed a tiny pale face peeping out of the darkness.