I was living in a squat in Ealing when the key came through the door. Hang on. Let’s roll back a bit. The sea of bodies parted, he was six foot seven and had the face of an angel, we hugged hello and maybe we hung out a bit on that pulsing psychedelic dance floor and then we went our separate ways. The next time we met was by firelight in the woods near Newbury where a camp was set up to protest the building of a bypass. People were living up a trees and refusing to come down, I’d driven out in my camper to join the fight. It was night, dark, mud and dirty faces. I parked and approached the first circle of flickering warmth and there he was on the other side. This third meeting proved too much for both of us. Fate, we agreed, was at play. I was determined, he was hesitant. He’d had other plans involving Sinéad O’Conner. I shaved my head again to look more like her. It did the trick. He took me to see the rhododendrons bloom in Windsor Great Park. We listened to Mike Scott and The Waterboys. I met his friends. He was in a band, he lived in a squat in Ealing, a two-hundred-year-old factory of bricked up doors, freezing water, a maze of narrow stairs. I moved in and signed up at a music school thinking maybe this is it, this other thing I’ve been searching for. I sang a bit and was bad at it and shivered in the rigged-up shower cubicle and smoked spliffs at the rickety kitchen table picked up from a skip and one day a key came through the door. Hold on a minute. How did they find me, these people who sent it? It was a squat, right? Nobody knew I was there, I hadn’t told my parents as I’d moved and moved and moved again. Yet there it was, a large brown envelope heavy with a key which slipped out onto my lap. The factory was quiet, my friends all sleeping, my boyfriend, that six-foot seven angel quiet in our basement room and I was alone at the rickety kitchen table. I pulled out the letter that came with it, a letterhead I knew. The lawyers who handled my father’s affairs by extension handled mine. It said Dear Eleanor, your house is between tenants, would you like to come and see it? The key was fairy tale, huge and heavy, iron and rusted, teeth to fit an ancient lock. Had I told my friends that squatting wasn’t my only option? Did they know I had money? I put the letter away and turned the key over in my hands.
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Mmmmm.......the key to the future!! xxx
Interesting !!!!!