Lock in a thick, brick wall

Again, I found myself standing in my pyjamas on a Saturday morning staring at the brick wall. My eyes were still squinted, yearning for their prior state of sleep but I knew that today was the day. Today had to be the day. There would be no going back to bed this morning. I headed downstairs to the kitchen and flicked the switch on the kettle, pouring a heaped spoonful of coffee in the cafetiere and putting two slices of bread in the toaster. As I waited for the morning machines to fulfil their purposes, I looked around at the half painted kitchen and semi-built flat pack table. I should be getting on with putting the rest of my new house together, I thought but for some reason the only thing my mind could focus on was the lock in the thick brick wall of my new bedroom.

I had moved into my first house about six weeks prior and I had kept myself busy with DIY since moving in. It went well at first; I liked having projects to keep me busy and stave off loneliness but around 3 weeks into my new responsible adult life, I had someone come round to look at the faulty radiator in my bedroom.

‘Yeah that’ll have to come out’ the radiator man said, I think his real name was Kevin but to me he was the radiator man. He scratched his nearly bald head and pulled a screwdriver out from the toolbelt around his waist, ‘I might as well take it now and you can call me to fit the new one - there’s no point keeping this one here it’s just making your painting a hassle by the looks of things.’ He nodded to the variety of coloured patches on the adjacent wall, each of which was a slightly different shade of green.

‘OK’ I said, ‘sure, take that one now and I’ll order a new one. I guess this’ll mean I have to choose a colour before the new one arrives now.’ I said with a smile because I was a terrible decision maker and there was nothing like a good deadline to help me make up my mind. I went about my business downstairs in the kitchen whilst the radiator man carried out his work.

‘I’ll see you later then’ he said as he made his way to the front door ‘oh you might want to try one of your keys in that brick behind the radiator, it’s probably empty but I once saw an episode of cash in the attic where an old lady found a necklace under a floorboard when she was renovating her kitchen. It turned out to be worth five grand’.

‘What? I mean great for her, but what do you mean a key for the brick?’ I asked confusedly. The radiator man showed me back up to my own room and there it was behind where the broken radiator had previously hung, a small metal box with a keyhole sat in the wall in place of a brick. I stared at it as the radiator man continued to tell me more about the various cash in the attic episodes he favoured until eventually I zoned back in.

‘Right, well goodbye then. I’d go for the dark green if it were me’ he nodded again to the paint samples on the wall and showed himself out.

I remained staring at the brick for some time as I racked my brain. The only keys the estate agent had given me were for the front and back door, one for each. I grabbed the keys from the pile of clothes they had somehow hidden themselves under and tried them in the lock. No, not even close. Well, perhaps they still have the key at the estate agents - maybe it got mixed up with someone else’s keys or was left loose somewhere, I thought. I went to the hallway and rummaged through the messy drawer of the hallway table until I found my black leather bound address book. I think I was probably the only person in their twenties to own a physical address book but I’m glad I held on to the tradition of writing certain things down on paper.

It wasn’t what I used to store my friends' contacts in, I kept those in my phone like a normal person but instead I wrote down the addresses and phone numbers of various shops or businesses I came across in my travels. I started keeping it when I lost my phone and was without one for a brief week as a 19 year old travelling in Wales one summer. As I waited the week for my new phone to come into stock at the local Argos, I also had to plan the following week’s activities before my friend Stacey arrived to help me explore. I made reservations at a few restaurants and bars and I bought the book there simply to write down the details in case I needed to change the bookings when Stacey arrived. I didn’t think much of it at the time but when I went on a family holiday to the same town a year later, the little black book came in very useful. Since then, I’d used the book to write down any contact details of little coffee shops, bars and restaurants both to help me remember my travels in a minute kind of detail that photographs don’t recall, and to help me retrace my steps if I ever went to the same place twice. Now, as a settled down adult, I found myself writing down the numbers of estate agents and plumbers instead. ‘Oh I’d best write down the radiator man’s number whilst I’m here, he seems to do a good job’ I thought. I traced my fingers up the black elastic band holding the book shut and opened the yellow-white pages. I flicked through until I found the number for G.Harold Estate Agents. After a brief 3 minute conversation, I was told that there were definitely no more keys relating to my house on Carter Street in their office and they too had been unaware of the lock in the wall.

On that Saturday morning three weeks later, I still hadn’t opened the lock and it was driving me crazy. It penetrated my thoughts day and night. I would be at work when suddenly a new method of breaking the lock would enter my mind and I’d have to excuse myself to scribble it down somewhere before I forgot it. In my dreams, I was tortured by giant keyhole shaped doors that wouldn’t open, no matter how hard I pulled. The rest of my DIY had been forgotten, I was frozen. I breathed out. OK, I thought to myself, I’m going to go about this calmly today. I will try everything I’ve thought of in the past week and if none of it works then I will just call the radiator man and get him to put the new radiator up so that I can forget about it.

The new radiator had actually arrived 2 weeks prior, so I was becoming acutely aware that I was quite obsessed with this brick. I had to open it. Even if all I found was a big empty space, that was better than not knowing. Looking back now, I think what I really wanted to know was whether I had made the right decision in settling down and growing up or if I still had some further journeying to do. Though I was happy at buying my first home, it wasn’t exactly what I had imagined my life would be like. Instead of living in a country far away, with a multitude of friends, a good bit of money, a handsome boyfriend and a great deal of happiness, I was five minutes down the round from my childhood home and my parents, had a few leftover friends from school, single, a boring job that involved staring at a screen all day and about as much happiness as a bee whose honey has just been stolen by a scary man in a white suit. It was true that I had done some travelling - I had my little black book to prove it, but it wasn’t particularly far afield and never for longer than a few weeks at a time.

I wasn’t sure I had made the right choice; if I was in the right place and I truly believed that a life of travel and happiness was a fantasy for children, then why did I need to open the lock so badly? I wasn’t sure if I hoped for something amazing to set me free or something empty to prove my sad, sensible life was right but either way I needed to know what was on the other side of the little door. For the next three hours, I yanked at it with a wrench, I tried the hairpin trick and the tennis ball and stick trick, I tried hammering it until the neighbouring brick started to crumble slightly and I thought best not to knock the whole house down and finally I tried yelling at it. None of this worked. In a pool of despair and yearning, I began to flick through the pages of my little black book again. Who had I become? Old before my time, spending my life doing DIY and paying bills rather than living. As I thought about my existence, my eyes settled on a number for the Ivy Corner bakery in London that I had once visited for a cooking course. I remembered the delicious crème brûlée that I had made and the head chef made a great show of it, telling the rest of the class that it was as close to perfect as a novice could get.

Blowtorch. The thought struck me like lightning; I could use a blowtorch to melt the locking mechanism and then prize it apart. I threw on my trainers and headed out to the hardware shop. There had to be a blowtorch in here somewhere, I thought as I entered like a madwoman; wide eyed and messy. I headed straight to the baking section, taking no prisoners and elbowing an elderly gentleman as I hurried past. There it was before me on the top shelf just next to the muffin tins and the cake stands; a beautiful, powerful blowtorch. I rushed to the till, paid its price and hurried back home. I kicked off my trainers and sped back to my bedroom. I ripped off the packaging and flicked on the switch until a hot blue flame appeared; my saving grace. Without giving myself a chance to think about the fact that this was probably quite dangerous, I held the flame inside the keyhole. I stared at the glowing light until I heard a ‘click’ noise from somewhere within. Quickly, I grabbed my hammer and using the crowbar end stuck it between the door and the frame and yanked and yanked and yanked until I crashed backwards to the floor.

The door was open. I’d done it! I rejoiced merely at the fact it was open but when I came to, I looked closely at the brick shaped box. There were piles upon piles of what looked like £50 notes in there. I pulled out the brick shaped safe and to my amazement, it was a drawer as long as the thickness of the house from inside wall to outside. It was jam-packed with money. I held a few notes up to the light and sure enough, the Queens lovely head shone through, telling me they were real. To be precise, after making a few phone calls to check that you could still spend notes this old and contacting my solicitor to check that there was no other claim to the money, I found out that there was £20,000 in that brick safe. All of it was mine; my house, my brick, my money.

So, thanks to the lock in the thick brick wall, my little black book and an obsessive determination to find out if my sheep’s life of normality was emptier than actually living, I came into £20,000 that day. I still have my first home but I rent it out to someone else now and I use my unexpected lot and go wherever the wind takes me. Even when it feels like a hurricane, I’d rather be in the midst of a storm than staring at a brick wall, hoping for something different.