Key with pink bow and banner on ribs

You asked me in the car why I wanted the old key from the Harcourt Road house, and I lied and said it was for the bow. It was not for the bow. Dad hung it on the nail by the scullery door for thirty years, and the ribbon on it was the faded pink he tied the morning Mum left. He swore it was only a lucky ribbon, the sort you put on a parcel. I never believed him, and I never asked what it was for either.

Yesterday I took the key to Pritchard's on the High Street, the locksmith who still keeps his blanks in tins sorted by number. He turned it over in his fingers and said the bit was worn smooth on one side, the way keys go when somebody turns them the same way every day for years. Then he pointed at the little heart stamped near the teeth and said it was a mark cut by hand, and that Dad must have paid extra for it. I had not known that. I suppose I had never looked closely at anything Dad made a fuss over.

So I am sending you the key, not as a wedding gift, since that is already in the boot of your car, but because you will need a door that opens when you come home late and cross. Dad's words on the banner, Always a Lesson, Never a Failure, I used to think were just the sort of thing he said over burnt toast. Now I think they were a promise he made to himself, and he kept it better than most men keep anything.

Keep the key. Lock the front door behind you tomorrow, then unlock it for whoever comes up the path late and wet from the rain.

Love, Jo