A Key Requirement

Picture the scene: we have just been driven home from our first Bootcamp session. We are exhausted, achey, red-faced, sweaty and are longing for a shower, a bite to eat and to collapse on the sofa in front of some mindless TV. We gingerly haul ourselves down from the truck and limp towards the front door, our tired muscles protesting with every step. We turn to wave goodbye as the truck drives off and we are left in darkness – the beam projected by the streetlights in Karratha is similar to that from a Victorian gas lamp and we had neglected to turn our outdoor light on before leaving. The Husband searches in his back pocket for the key he had earlier removed from the ring – apparently he doesn’t like the jangling of a bunch of keys in his pocket as he runs but, he assures me, he did check that the key he took was the front door key.
He finds the key, opens the outer fly-screen door, and tries to locate the lock in the virtual darkness. He finds it and attempts to enter the key. It doesn’t work. So he turns it the other way round and tries again. It still doesn’t fit. Starting to panic slightly now, he tries two or three times more. Not being able to see what he is doing, I am oblivious to The Husband’s rising fear. I assume that he simply can’t see what he’s doing and therefore is struggling to locate the lock. He turns slowly and looks at me and, even in the half-light, I can see that something is the matter. “What?” I say, noting the alarm in his face, “What’s wrong?” Without a word, he closes the fly-screen, pushes the key into the lock and turns it easily. I don’t understand at first but slowly the realisation dawns on me. “You’ve taken the wrong bloody key haven’t you?” I ask, accusingly. He closes his eyes for a moment. “Yes,” he says quietly, “yes, I must have done.”

Images of stepping into a torrent of cool water, washing away the grime and easing the ache of my sore muscles flash through my mind and then immediately disappear. I will not be showering myself clean, drying myself with a fluffy towel, pulling on my pjs, and collapsing in front of the telly any time soon. The urge to say “I told you so” was just too great – I had, after all, tried to persuade him to take the entire set of keys (there are only four small ones). I am not ashamed to admit that I launched into a bit of a tirade and even felt a few tears brim in my eyes. I was tired, hungry and dirty and we were locked out of our house less than a week after moving in. Oh, the shame of it. To make matters worse, we had nothing with us except the useless fly-screen door key. We had no money, no phone, no car. The Husband saw no option but to either kick the door in or break a window but I was adamant that he would not be doing anything of the sort. For one, we would have to pay an extortionate fee to get either door or window mended and we would be in an unsecure house overnight (24 hour services don’t seem to exist in Karratha). Secondly, we were new and were standing outside an unlit house. I had visions of neighbours hearing the smash of broken glass or the splintering of wood, prompting them to look out and see two unknown shadowy figures before immediately picking up the phone to call the police. Cue sirens, flashing lights, the entire street out on their drives and burning humiliation. Besides, he tried to ram the door with his shoulder and it didn’t budge an inch. The upside is that we now know that our front door is pretty secure.

I ordered him instead to run to the house of the man he shares a truck with (the very same whom we had waved off so cheerily minutes before) and ask to use his phone and his work contact numbers to get an approved locksmith out. Exhausted from Bootcamp but knowing from one look at my face that he had no choice, he set off down the road, leaving me on my own in the dark. I used the time to stretch down and hummed to myself as I went, trying to fill the deathly silence. It wasn’t long, though, before something else filled it. I began to hear strange noises. A rustling in the front garden, from behind me by the bin, from the roof over the driveway. I couldn’t see a thing so I could only imagine the worst . Spiders? Snakes? Then came the sounds of dogs, of werewolf-like howls. Were these wild dogs, about to pounce out from the darkness? Or perhaps some sort of wild desert beast prowling the streets? My imagination ran away from me, conjuring up all sorts of terrible images in my head, for the forty minutes it took for The Husband to return. By this point I was seeing the headlines in the papers – ‘Brit Mauled To Death In Mysterious Night-time Attack’ – so was overjoyed to see the bright headlamps of the truck pull into the drive.

His calls had produced nothing but answering machines so he had borrowed some tools with the idea of somehow jimmying a lock in the back. Minutes later, he appeared from the side-gate with a triumphant look on his face. “You did it?” I asked, tentatively, not wanting to raise my hopes prematurely. “Yup,” he said, a grin plastered on his face. My heart soared but I checked myself momentarily. “What’s the damage?” I asked, soberly. “None at all,” he replied, “the side door was unlocked.” Yes, we had almost broken into our own house, had cried and fumed, had run and embarrassed ourselves with tales of our stupidity, had scared ourselves witless on our drive, and it was all for nothing. We learnt two things that night. 1) Always check that all the doors and windows are locked and 2) Always check that you’ve got the right key. And yes, The Husband now takes his entire key ring out with him each time. I have to say it - I told you so.