The Phantom Visitor!

The shag carpet had dried out and my downstairs neighbour had forgiven me for turning her ceiling into a shower. I was still getting use to the longer commute, almost four hours a day, during which time I often found myself thinking that it would take me less time to get to France, Belgium or Germany than it would to get home. Although I laughed at this little factoid, I also found it rather depressing. Even more depressing though was the cost of riding the crammed sardine can.

During the week, we would leave the apartment at 7:00am and I would get back from work at around 7:30pm. Every so often, I would get the feeling that my pots and pans had moved around the kitchen. On a couple of occasions, I found an empty toilet roll on the side of the bathtub, no toilet paper in sight, when I was pretty sure I had just started a fresh roll. I put it down to not being a morning person, requiring several cups of industrial strength coffee to get the neurons firing.

There is also a genetic component to the whole memory thing, my father, grandfather and great-grandfather all suffered from Alzheimer’s, which can be hereditary. So I did, and still do, find myself wondering about my own memory. Then there were the times when my apartment would smell of roast lamb and neither my son nor I eat red meat, but I put that down to my downstairs neighbour.

Six months after moving into the apartment, I found myself between jobs and applied for housing benefit to tie us over. An inspector came around to check out the apartment and as he was leaving, he asked me if I’d ever applied for housing benefit before. He was very insistent, wanting to know if I rented the apartment furnished. He was sure he’d come to my apartment before, furnished exactly the same way, only it was a man claiming benefits.

This encounter got me wondering if someone was using my apartment as a pied-à-terre during the day; it would explain my things moving around. Whoever this person was, he would have had to spend time learning my routines and habits, not to mention the risk of being caught if I came home unexpectedly during the day. It couldn’t just be about a kitchen and toilet paper; I didn’t even have a television – still don’t.

A couple of weeks later, I was home catching up on mundane chores. My mother was taking me to Tesco for my weekly shop. There was a time when I could remember what I needed without a list, these days I had to walk around the apartment writing one, which was why I knew for sure that I had six full toilet rolls.

An hour later, when we got home I needed to go to the toilet and was more than a bit surprised to find six empty toilet rolls neatly lined up on the side of the bathtub, all traces of the paper was gone! Not owning a cat, I couldn’t logically explain it away.

I contacted the rental agency and explained what I assumed was going on. The agency admitted that it was possible that an old tenant still had a copy of the key. I requested that they change the lock for security reasons. On principle, they agreed to the idea, but it would be at my expense not theirs, and that is where we disagreed.

I had a theory that I wanted to check out, so I took the next day off as well. I spent the morning reading and waiting for my phantom visitor. At about 11:00am I heard someone come up the stairs and stop in front of my door, followed by the jingling of keys. I slowly got off my sofa, put down my book, and tiptoed to the corner of the living room door, giving me the best view of my front door. I could see a medium sized male form on the other side of the opaque glass.

I had left my key in the lock making it impossible for the person on the other side to insert their key, and I had an extra Yale lock on the inside, with no exterior lock. I waited silently while the shape on the other side of the opaque glass tried to insert his key. I heard a male voice curse, try to insert his key again, before retreating back downstairs using some very colourful language as he went.

I rushed over to the window and watched as a brown haired, medium built man, walked quickly down the path, shaking his head and obviously still cursing. My first reaction was to laugh, but I still didn’t know why he took the toilet paper and left the empty rolls behind, such a give away, and I will probably never know.

What I did know for sure was that a man had a key to my apartment and had been hanging out there cooking and doing something to my toilet paper. This wasn’t a comforting thought, I didn’t get why anyone in his right mind would go to such length for a pied-à-terre. I suspected that my phantom visitor would not be coming back in a hurry even so I was getting my lock changed, and sooner rather than later. I wrote to the Agency informing them that a man, with a copy of my key, had tried to gain access to my apartment while I was there. Under the circumstances, I would be calling out a locksmith and sending them the bill – which they eventually agreed to pay!