Horrible sounds

‘snick’   That such an innocuous, harmless sort of sound can bring instant fear into your hearts is almost impossible to imagine.    Nevertheless, it is with absolute horror and with that harmless little quiet sound echoing in our ears, as deafening as a multitude of foghorns blowing in unison that my husband and I look at each other.   For an instant no words need to be said.  The realisation of what has just occurred happened instantaneously and simultaneously.  Then…   ‘Please tell me that you have keys?’  This from my husband, frozen in mid-step.   My hand still rests on the door handle, the metal of it cold in my palm, my fingers curled around it.  The door handle of our front door.  The, and this is the vitally important part, the very locked door handle.   Already the mosquitoes are starting their feeding frenzy on my ankles, my exposed ankles as I had decided to put on a skirt for the first time this Spring.   “I thought that you had one” A remarkably stupid thing to say, given that it is extremely obvious that no, keys are something he does not possess at that moment in time.   This is quite a way from our usual house-leaving ceremony which consists of him going out the door first, me asking ‘have you got keys?’ and double checking even if he says that he does by waiting until he unlocks the car or I know for a fact that keys are in my hand.  Not in my bag, but ready, in my hand, unable to make their escape for this very reason.  My greatest fear is that we will lock ourselves out of the car, which has only 1 key, or the house.  Now, with one terrible little sound, I have managed to do both in one fell swoop.    We cannot get into the car.   We cannot get into the house.   So, after one phone call to our agent and instructions on how to get to the out of hours key keeping person, I embark on a mission to gain the means to re-enter our house.  I do this alone and in the dark as my husband, having climbed up to our balcony to check if the screen door was miraculously unlocked, cannot now get down again without breaking a limb, or the air-conditioner and it’s a race against time to get back to him and let him in before the mosquitoes finish him off.   The next day, itching ferociously around the ankle region (and arms, and neck…) I go to shut the door to the house and pause…   ‘Have you got the keys?’  He just beats me to it.    The answer, thankfully, is yes.