Keyblade, heart and three figures line sketch

The lost property cupboard came down off the top shelf on Tuesday, and I have not stopped thinking about it since. Mr Pryce says nobody has claimed a thing since the spring floods, so the rule is that whatever is left goes to the first person honest enough to say so. Under a folded timetable from 1962 I found a key as long as my forearm, iron gone dark, its bow cut in the shape of a heart with a scrap of blue thread still knotted through the ring.

With it was a card, soft as cloth, with a sketch on it. Four-pointed stars sat above a pile of clouds, and three heads rose over the clouds as though they were looking out of a train window. One had hair like a hedge in a gale. One glanced back over his shoulder. The last was grinning as if he had just won an argument he had started. Underneath, in careful capitals: MEET ME WHERE THE LILIES GROW. I know the lilies. They are the wild ones behind the goods shed that nobody has cut back since the war.

Last night I took the key up the platform after the milk train and tried it in the old brass lock on the footbridge gate. It would not turn. Mr Pryce held the lamp and said nothing, which is his way of being kind. Then I thought of the heart and pressed the bow flat against the hinge, the way you would press a button you did not expect to work. The gate gave with a long groan.

Beyond it the embankment was full of white flowers, nodding in the lamplight, and a single blue thread lay across the path like a sign. I did not go through. I left the key in the gate and walked back to the box with my heart going like a shunter. I think someone is still coming for it, and I want to be the one who is there when they do.