Fourteen Keys

After their aunt Rosalind died, Beth and her brother Matt went to clear her 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 bag with fourteen keys. Each key had a paper label with a street name, but no number.

“Fourteen streets,” Matt said. “Fourteen secret houses?” Beth laughed, but not completely. Rosalind was a librarian with very little money. She never bought a dishwasher. “Or fourteen jokes,” she said. On Saturday afternoon, they tried the key marked Quay Street.

It opened 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: “Need a quiet hour? This place is for you.” 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 quiet place I have.”

Over the next three weekends, they visited the others: a workshop where an old man fixed clocks for nothing, and a spare room above a bakery for a girl who practised the cello. Each time, someone was happy to see them. The old bank papers showed payments for every place from Rosalind’s money, and that explained the missing dishwasher.

At first, Matt wanted to sell everything and share the money. Now he was not sure. “If we stop paying,” he said, “fourteen people lose the only place that is theirs.” “And if we don’t,” Beth answered, “we lose most of what the flat is worth.”

At the bottom of the bag, they found a fifteenth key with no label, and a folded note. “Not for the flat,” it said. “For one of you. Find a new street and use this key to help someone there.” Matt looked at Beth. Beth was already looking at the map.