The Turn of the Key
“Well, I’d best be away to my bed.” He stood, stretching so that I heard his joints click. “Thanks for the meal, it was nice to have someone to talk to.”
“Same.”
I stood, suddenly self-conscious, as if he had been reading my thoughts.
“You’ll be all right?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Well, I’m just over the garage, in the old stable block if you need anything. It’s the door around the side, the one painted green with a swallow on the plate. If anything happens in the night—”
“What would happen?” I broke in, surprised, and he gave a laugh.
“That came out wrong. I just meant, if you need me for anything, you know where I am. Did Sandra give you my mobile?”
“No.”
He pulled a leaflet off the fridge and scribbled his number in the margin, then handed it to me.
“There you go. Just in case, like.”
Just in case, what? I wanted to ask again, but I knew he would only laugh it off.
His gesture had been meant as a reassuring one, I was sure of it. But somehow it had left me feeling anything but.
“Well, thanks Jack,” I said, feeling a little awkward, and he grinned again, shrugged himself into his wet coat, and then opened the utility room door and ducked out into the rain.
*
After he had gone I made my way into the utility room myself to lock up. The house felt very still and quiet somehow, without his presence, and I sighed as I reached above the top of the doorframe for the key. But it wasn’t there.
I patted my way along the doorframe, feeling with my fingertips among the dust and little crunching lumps of dead insect, but there was nothing there.
It wasn’t on the floor either.
Could Jean have moved it? Or knocked it down while dusting?
Except, I had a crystal clear memory of putting the key up there after Jean left, just as Sandra had instructed, to keep it handy in case of an emergency but out of reach of the children. Could it have fallen down? But if so, what had happened to it? It was large and brass. Too big to go unnoticed on the floor, or to fit up a Hoover pipe. Had it got kicked under something?
I got down on my hands and knees and shone my phone’s torch under the washing machine and tumble dryer, but could see nothing under either, just flat white tiles and a few dust bunnies that quivered when I blew them aside. It wasn’t behind the mop bucket either. Then, in spite of my doubts, I went to the cupboard where the downstairs Hoover lived—but the dust chamber had been emptied. There was nothing in there. It was the bagless kind with a clear plastic cylinder that you could see the dust circulating in—even setting aside the question of whether the key could have got inside, there was no way anyone could have tipped out a big brass key without noticing it.
After that I scoured the kitchen, and even checked the bin—but there was nothing there.
At last I opened the utility room door and stared out into the rain towards the stable block, where a light had come on in the upstairs window. Should I call Jack? Would he have a spare key? But if he did, could I really bear for him to think me so disorganized and helpless that I had waited only ten minutes before taking up his offer of help?
As I was wavering, the light in his window went out, and I realized he had probably gone to bed.
It was too late. I wasn’t going to drag him out in his nightclothes.
After a last glance around at the yard directly outside the door, in case the key had got kicked outside somehow, I shut the door.
I’d ask Jack in the morning.
In the meantime, oh God, what would I do? I’d . . . I’d have to barricade the door with something. It was absurd—we were miles away from anywhere, behind locked gates, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep well if I felt the place was insecure.
The handle was a knob, not the kind you could put a chair under to stop it from turning, and there was no bolt, but at last, after a lot of searching, I found a wedge-shaped door stopper in the Hoover cupboard. I rammed it firmly into the gap beneath the door and then turned the doorknob to test it.
Somewhat to my surprise, it held. It wouldn’t stop a determined burglar—but then very little would. If someone was really set on breaking in they could just smash a window. But at the very least, it did give the impression that the door was locked, and I knew I would sleep more soundly because of it.
When I went back into the kitchen to clear away the pizza box and our plates, the clock above the stove read 11:36, and I could not suppress a groan. The girls would be up at six. I should have been in bed hours ago.
Well, it was too late to undo that. I’d just have to forgo a shower and get to sleep as quickly as possible. I was so tired, I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be a problem, anyway.
“Lights off,” I said aloud.
The room was instantly plunged into blackness, just the faint glow from the hallway illuminating the concrete floor. Smothering a yawn, I made my way up the stairs to bed, and was asleep almost before I had undressed.
When I woke, it was with a start, to complete darkness, and a sense of total disorientation. Where was I? What had woken me?
It took a minute for the memory to come back—Heatherbrae House. The Elincourts. The children. Jack.
My phone on the bedside table said it was 3:16 a.m., and I groaned and let it fall back to the wood with a clunk. No wonder it was still dark, it was the middle of the fucking night.