Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
Surprise
I don’t have to use the combination code lockbox to locate the key because the box is empty and hanging open; when I try the handle of the door, it gives.
Maybe someone’s come ahead to make sure everything’s all set up for me? Left fresh towels and linen on the bed, milk and bread in the fridge – a bunch of daffodils on the kitchen table, even? A ‘Welcome to Loor’ box of chocolates and a bottle of wine?
I go in and see that directly opposite the entranceway is the bathroom – weird feng shui, surely.
I run in and relieve my bladder. My eye catches movement on the bathroom window: fat, bloated blowflies – at least a dozen of them. A clutch of eggs must’ve just hatched.
Hastily, I reach forward to open the bathroom window and hope they’ll find their own way out. If not, I’ll have to deal with them later because I don’t think I have the energy to chase down flies and wrangle them now.
After washing my hands, and shutting the flies in the bathroom, I walk into a very small but scrupulously clean kitchen. There are no daffodils on the table.
Optimistically, I open the fridge to check for milk to get me through the first day or two.
No milk. No anything, except a squirty bottle of mayonnaise and a jar of homemade blackberry jam.
Not ready to give up the dream, I look in the breadbox and cross my fingers for a loaf. Even half a loaf. A single bread roll would do.
No bread.
Neither does the kitchen table have any chocolates or wine adorning it.
Clearly that was just the embarrassing wishful thinking of a mere child. I’m not living in a movie; this is real life where you have to buy your own wine, and your own bread and milk for that matter, and where all you can expect in the way of a warm welcome is a family of blowflies.
The kitchen leads onto a large living room, prettily decorated with seashell-print cushions, ceramic lighthouse lamps and a rectangular mirror with a chunky frame made of bleached driftwood. It’s the sort of décor that I imagine a posh person would consider kitsch and one step up from ‘roughing it’.
At the end of the room, there’s an uncarpeted staircase, painted white, and right next to it, a closed blue door. The striped roller blinds in the living room are likewise closed, but when I go to open them, my eyes begin to sting and water. There’s a smell. It’s something minty. No, not minty – eucalyptus. Very much like… Vicks VapoRub.