“No. 14 Wisteria Lane”

I came back because the letter said I had to.

Plain white envelope, no stamp, pushed under my London flat door in the middle of the night.

Inside, a single brass key and one line in my own twelve-year-old handwriting:

You left the lights on.

I hadn’t been back to Wisteria Lane in twenty-three years.

Not since the ambulance.

Not since Mum stopped speaking.

Not since Dad disappeared into the house and never came out again.

But the key fit my palm like it had been waiting.

No. 14 looked smaller than memory allows.

The purple wisteria that used to choke the porch had won; the flowers hung in heavy ropes, dripping perfume so thick it felt like drowning.

The estate agent’s sign was still in the garden, faded to ghosts: FOR SALE – OFFERS WELCOME – 1999.

The key turned without a sound.

Inside, nothing had changed.

Same green carpet, same smell of damp and lavender.

The hallway clock still read 3:17 (the exact minute the ambulance arrived).

Its hands hadn’t moved since the night I was twelve and screaming.

I should have left then.

I didn’t.

I walked the house like a tourist in my own life.

Kitchen: Mum’s “World’s Okayest Mum” mug on the table, tea long evaporated to a brown ring.

Living room: Dad’s armchair facing the television that still showed static snow.

Upstairs: my old bedroom door painted shut with layer after layer of wisteria-purple gloss.

I pressed my palm to it.

The paint was warm.

The door opened by itself.

My childhood bedroom had become a jungle.

Real wisteria had broken through the window, threaded the carpet, wrapped my old bunk bed like a coffin.

On the lower bunk lay twelve-year-old me.

Not a ghost.

Not a memory.

Me.

Same scabbed knees, same frightened eyes, same T-shirt with the dinosaur on it.

She sat up slowly.

“You left the lights on,” she said, voice exactly mine at that age. “Dad’s still looking for you.”

I tried to speak.

Nothing came.

She stood, barefoot on the flowering carpet, and took my adult hand with her small one.

“He’s in the attic,” she whispered. “He’s been waiting.”

I wanted to run.

My legs carried me upstairs instead.

The attic hatch was open for the first time in my life.

A ladder made of wisteria vines dangled down, impossibly strong.

I climbed.

Dad was sitting in the middle of the empty space, exactly as he’d been the night he vanished: forty-two years old, paint on his fingers, smiling like nothing was wrong.

Except the attic was full of doors.

Hundreds of them.

Free-standing, no walls, every colour I’d ever painted my bedroom growing up.

Behind each door: a different year of my life, playing on loop.

Me at seven, laughing as Dad pushed me on the swing.

Me at ten, crying because Mum forgot my birthday.

Me at fifteen, kissing someone whose name I’ve tried so hard to erase.

Dad looked up.

“I got stuck,” he said gently. “Every time I tried to leave, another door opened. I thought if I stayed long enough you’d come back and choose the right one.”

I started crying (ugly, adult crying).

“I’m sorry,” I managed. “I thought you left us.”

He shook his head. “Houses don’t let you leave if the story isn’t finished.”

Little me appeared beside him, holding the brass key.

“One door goes forward,” she said. “The rest just keep you here.”

I looked at the doors.

Behind one I could see tomorrow: me, older, happier, carrying a child with my eyes into a house that didn’t smell of lavender and guilt.

I reached for it.

Dad caught my wrist.

“Close the others first,” he said. “Or they’ll follow you.”

So I did.

One by one, I shut every door.

The sound of each latch was a memory folding itself away.

The swing.

The forgotten birthday.

The kiss I regretted.

Every slammed door from my teenage years.

When the last one clicked, the attic was empty except for us.

Dad hugged me so hard I felt twelve again.

Little me took my hand one final time.

“Lights out now,” she said, and vanished like breath on glass.

Dad walked me down the wisteria ladder.

At the front door he stopped.

“I have to stay,” he said. “Someone has to keep the house asleep so it doesn’t look for you again.”

I tried to argue.

He touched my cheek. “You were always the brave one.”

The door closed behind me.

The wisteria withered overnight.

By morning No. 14 was grey, peeling, ordinary.

The estate agent sold it six months later to a young couple with a baby on the way.

I drive past sometimes.

The hallway light is never on.

But every spring, for exactly one week, wisteria blooms purple against the bricks (impossible, defiant, beautiful).

And if you stand very still at 3:17 a.m., you can hear a man humming inside, painting doors that only open one way.

Forward.

I kept the key.

Some nights I hold it and remember:

The house remembers everything I tried to forget.

But it also remembers how to let go.