The keys to an unsolved mystery

After a few weeks, I feel the trauma of the experience has receded enough for me to tell this story.

It all started a little while before the lockdown. Remember those times? When we thought we could handle objects on supermarket shelves with no threat to life? When we used to shake people’s hands? Chat to them without masks? We were in the little town of Manises, not far from our home outside the fine old city of Valencia.

We were there to complete the latest round of formalities that Spanish residents have to go through, in order to obtain some document, whose precise nature I can no longer clearly remember, though it was doubtless immensely important and an essential ingredient for a happy life in 21st century Spain.

On the other hand, it may have been to pay some tax or other. That’s another activity that’s popular with the Spanish bureaucracy.

We took the opportunity to wander around the place a little and find out what it offered in the way of exciting amenities. This was useful, because we had only been there in the evenings to play badminton (another receding memory, still banned in these Coronavirus times). We hadn’t seen much of the rest of the town.

Then we returned to the car. Only to discover that the keys had vanished. Both of us had seen them go into Danielle’s bag. Neither of us had seen them come out. We’d been to few places where they could have been expected to fall from the bag. In fact, really the only place was the tax office (yes, I think it was that). We went back, but there was no sign of the key. We tried the police, but they hadn’t had anything handed in either.

So we had to accept the inevitable. Neither of us had ever lost a key before, but now we somehow had. It was a sad record to break but, hey, life is full of things that just happen.

Getting the car back was a little awkward, involving a return trip home by taxi to collect a spare car key, with the help of our neighbour, who holds a copy of our house keys. But it was done in time, and we quickly ordered another key for the car.

Two weeks later, it still hadn’t arrived, but the lockdown had. The garage shut down. We couldn’t collect the new spare key even when it did arrive.

Fast forward 100 days to the end of the strict ‘confinement’ we crawled though in Spain.

The glorious day eventually came when we could return to the beach. And with friends. Things weren’t quite back to normal, so if we had travelled in the same car as the friends, we would all have had to wear masks. So we took two cars. Which turned out to be quite fortunate.

Because after a seven or eight kilometre walk through a nature reserve and along a beach, we got back to the cars, only to discover again that the keys were no longer in Danielle’s bag. We all searched. We took everything out of the bag, turned it upside down and shook it. No keys fell out.

We went back over the walk, with no greater success.

It seemed extraordinary. Having never previously lost a key in our lives, we had now managed to lose two in just over three months. I won’t hide it from you: it was a pretty depressing discovery.

To misquote Oscar Wilde, to lose one key may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness.

Our friends were immensely kind. They took us first to the garage. The new key was available, but not usable, since it has to be programmed first. We had to find a way to get the car to the garage, which isn’t easy without a working key. While there, we ordered yet another key, to make sure we had a spare again.

Then our friends took us home, which at least didn’t take them too far out of their way: they live just half a dozen doors away from us. We walked disconsolately indoors. Danielle decided to get something out of my bag.

And found – the car keys.

It remains a complete mystery how the keys moved from her bag into mine. But somehow they did. We’ve decided that this is an enigma we’re never going to solve. Any more than the mystery of how it never occurred to any of the four of us on that walk to look in my bag for the keys, after not finding them in Danielle’s.

Another lift from our friends enabled us to collect the car. And the very next day, we had a call from the garage. The new key had turned up just 24 hours after we’d ordered it, unlike the previous one which took at least two weeks. So we couldn’t cancel it.

Three of a kind: an insurance policy

I’ve been back to the garage and got both new keys programmed and usable. So we now have three keys for the car.

Which may be just as well. With our track record, a bit of an insurance policy against key loss feels like a good investment.

The key is in the lock you choose

Moving house is never easy. Especially if it takes a car trip a couple of thousand kilometres long. With two dogs.

Don’t get me wrong. It can be a lot of fun. Especially as the many stops we had to make, given that we had two dogs with us, were in wonderful places. Still, it’s tiring, and tiredness takes its toll.

We’re back in Valencia for a longer trial of life in Spain. I’ve even planned a couple of business trips away from the city, to see how well things go if I base myself here for work. And, of course, we have the dogs to see how well they take to life in Spain. They’d never been out of Britain before, so we’re keen to see how they cope with the change of culture. Environment. Language.

But the first failure of adaptation was my own. As I said, the trip, though fun, had been tiring. Then, on the morning after our arrival, we went out for a five or six kilometre long walk in the Turia park, that follows the bed of the river that formerly flowed through the city. At the end, Danielle sent me home with the dogs and the two loaves of bread we’d bought.

As I turned into our street, I saw a man fiddling with a street door lock. It’s been a while since the system that allows us to buzz people in from upstairs has failed, so I thought he might be working on that. I tried to ask him in my broken Spanish.

‘Someone broke the lock,’ he told me.

Now, I remembered having trouble with our front door lock before and having to call a locksmith out. I assumed the problem had returned. A bore, especially if it meant replacing keys, but it was good of this neighbour to be doing the work himself.

Getting into the building wasn’t straightforward, as he’d laid all his tools on one of the steps. Getting past with small dogs was a daunting task, but he kindly pushed things aside to let us through.

I climbed up the two floors and stood at the front door of the flat. It has two locks. But on going out, I’d deliberately locked only the lower one. I tried to insert the key. Imagine my bewilderment when I couldn’t even get the key into the lock.

There were several keys on the bunch and I tried them all. None fitted. I could get the key for the lower lock pretty well into the upper lock, but it wouldn’t turn. There was no way of getting into the flat.

I noticed that a towel I didn’t recognise was hanging over the bannisters behind me. Had someone turned up to return a towel for us and found the same problem? Or even, got in and changed the lock, leaving the towel outside?

I know that such an explanation made little sense but nothing was making sense to me any more.

Eventually, I gave up and went looking for Danielle at our local supermarket. I waited patiently outside, and the dogs waited impatiently, whimpering occasionally, until Danielle eventually appeared. I explained my predicament.

‘What? The key doesn’t work?’ she said. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘Nor do I,’ I replied.

‘And what’s all this business about the towel?’

‘No idea. It’s just hanging there.’

‘I hope we haven’t been burgled.’

So did I.

But I had another cause for anxiety. I’d asked for some important papers to be sent out to us, to the address Danielle had given me for the flat (I keep forgetting it).

‘By the way,’ I said, ‘you told me we lived at number 6.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we do.’

‘No. It’s clearly marked 4 outside.’

‘What? All the papers for the purchase of the house must be wrong, then. The deeds. The whole lot.’

She stopped and gave me a long, hard look.

A terrible realisation was beginning to dawn on me.

On the way back, we stopped outside number 4.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘the door doesn’t even look the same. And surely you’ve noticed that we don’t have the same tiles along the corridor.’

I had to confess that I hadn’t. But it’s true that when I looked at the entrance hall of number 6, there weren’t any. And, to my immense relief, when we got to the second floor, the key slid easily into the lock and turned without a problem.

I never did work out what the towel on the bannister was for, though. There wasn’t one at number 6.

Toffee and Luci on their new couch-from-home

Meanwhile, the dogs seem to be settling in with far fewer problems. But more about that in the next post.