The Fourteen Keys

After the funeral, Ines and her brother Marc went to clear their aunt Rosalind’s flat. They expected dust, old tea towels and an argument about the clock. Instead, in the drawer of the hall table, they found a leather pouch with fourteen keys. Each key had a paper label with a street name, but no number.

“Fourteen streets,” Marc said. “Fourteen secret houses?” Ines laughed, but not completely. Rosalind had been a retired librarian who lived on a small pension and never bought a dishwasher. “Or fourteen jokes,” she said. On Saturday afternoon, they tried the key marked Quay Street.

It fitted a green metal door in a row of garages. Inside there was an armchair, a lamp and one old book. A note on the first page said: “For whoever needs a quiet hour.” Then a young woman in a nurse’s uniform appeared. “You’re not Rosalind,” she said. She sat in the armchair and cried quietly. “This is the only silent place I have.”

Over the next three weekends, they visited the others: a workshop where a retired watchmaker mended clocks for nothing, and a spare room above a bakery for a girl who practised the cello. Each time, someone was grateful. Rosalind had paid every rent from her pension, and that explained the missing dishwasher.

Marc had planned to sell everything and share the money, but now he hesitated. “If we stop paying,” he said, “fourteen people lose the only place that is theirs.” “And if we don’t,” Ines answered, “we lose most of what the flat is worth.”

At the bottom of the pouch, they found a fifteenth key with no label, and a folded note. “Not for the flat,” it said. “For whichever of you finds a street nobody has thought of yet.” Marc looked at Ines. Ines was already looking at the map.