Two Turns of the Key
(The M5 south of Taunton, forty minutes out of Bristol. Rain.)
Aurora: The back door isn’t locked.
Gideon: It’s locked.
Aurora: I don’t think it is.
Gideon: You said you’d lock it. In the kitchen. With the kettle on.
Aurora: I did lock it. I remember locking it.
Gideon: You remember saying you’d lock it. That’s a different sentence.
Aurora: It’s the same door.
Gideon: It isn’t the same claim. Remembering to lock the door happens before. Remembering locking the door happens after. One of them is only a plan.
Aurora: Okay, professor.
Gideon: I’m just telling you which one I heard.
Aurora: I’ve got the key in my hand and it’s cold. Two turns. It sticks on the second one.
Gideon: It’s been sticking on the second turn since March. It needs oiling. You’ve just described every Tuesday of your life.
Aurora: That’s not fair.
Gideon: That’s exactly why it isn’t evidence.
Aurora: Fine. Do you remember locking it?
Gideon: No. I remember not locking it, because it wasn’t my turn.
Aurora: So we’re both useless.
Gideon: I’m not the one who—
Aurora: Do you remember turning the oven off?
Gideon: I remember to turn the oven off. Every single time.
Aurora: There. That’s my point.
Gideon: That is my point. You’ve just made it for me, in my own words.
Aurora: Ring the neighbour.
Gideon: Which one?
Aurora: The one with our key. They water the plants.
Gideon: They’re in Spain until the ninth. They told me at the bins on Sunday.
Aurora: Of course they are.
Gideon: They did offer to leave the key with somebody. I said we’d be fine.
Aurora: You said we’d be fine.
Gideon: I did say that, yes.
(A mile of rain. Neither of them says anything.)
Aurora: There’s nothing in the house anyway. A television and my mum’s chair.
Gideon: The chair needs mending, so honestly they’d be welcome to it.
Aurora: Don’t.
Gideon: Sorry.
Aurora: Turn around.
Gideon: We’ll miss the ceremony.
Aurora: I’d rather miss the ceremony than sit through it wondering.
Gideon: Last summer we stopped to check twice. Both times it was locked. Both times.
Aurora: And then we stopped checking, and now here we are, on the M5, in the rain.
Gideon: Junction 25, then.
(Eighty minutes later, back at the house. Aurora tries the handle.)
Aurora: Locked.
Gideon: Yep.
Aurora: Two turns. It sticks on the second one.
Gideon: I heard.
Aurora: So I did remember.
Gideon: You remembered doing it, and you were right. I never once said the door was open.
Aurora: You made us drive eighty minutes back to a door you thought was locked?
Gideon: I thought I’d remembered right. That you said you’d lock it, and never said you had.
Aurora: And?
Gideon: And I had. Remembered right.
Aurora: Get in the car.
Gideon: Do you want to look at the gate while we’re here? It needs painting.
Aurora: Get in the car.