Locked.

The routine for Tuesdays usually includes a visit from my friend and her three-year-old grandson after they have been to the storytelling session at a nearby library.

So on Tuesday morning, before she leaves home, my friend phones to check that we’re on. She’s bright and sparkly. I, with a head full of blocked sinus and a bad night’s sleep behind me, am less so. They’ll arrive about 11.

Just before 11 I flick on the kettle to boil and put out a plate of biscuits. The grandson likes a Hot (tepid) Chocolate and we drink Formosan tea. Afterwards we go out and play with the dog.

Time moves on. My friend is a late-ish sort of person, so at first I’m not concerned. She’s doing a few things on the way, I imagine, and they always take longer than she anticipates. As the morning ticks away, worry creeps in. This is too late without her letting me know what’s happened. I ring her mobile – it’s in fact left behind, at home, on the charger – and leave a message. I begin to wonder if my head was so cloggy that I have mistaken our arrangement. Was I supposed to meet them somewhere else? Did we perhaps say we wouldn’t catch up today?

The doorbell finally rings and it’s almost midday. There they are, on the other side! The grandson presents me with a plastic bag of “flowers but not flowers for you”.  His grandmother, looking extremely rattled, says they stopped at the fruit and veg. shop to get me some flowers, but the flowers were terrible so they got me some punnets of berries instead.

And then they went back to the car.

The grandson likes to click the key button to unlock the car, which he did with his usual aplomb. He climbed into his seat and his grandmother strapped and buckled him in. She didn’t have a jacket on, so because there wasn’t a pocket available, she took the keys and threw them onto the front seat. She shut the back door and went around to her door.

It was locked.

Somehow,  and maybe it was because one of them had given the key button an extra click, the car had silently and efficiently locked itself. With the grandson inside and the grandmother outside.

The grandmother was shocked. She panicked. She went into the store, looked around at the chaos of people, and went out again. She tried to encourage the grandson to unbuckle his seatbelt, but while he knew what to do, his fingers weren’t strong enough to complete the task. A woman – with two small children and a baby! – pulled into the adjacent car park. She was approachable and immediately sympathetic and resourceful. She had a mobile phone and she used it to call the roadside assist.

The grandson, inside the car and buckled up, was quite happy and interested in the proceedings. The grandmother, outside the car, was deteriorating.

The roadside assist van arrived about the same time as the police car, ambulance and fire truck did. Overkill? The grandmother was told that this is now standard procedure when a child is locked in a car. Even if the child is not abandoned but has a frantic grandmother right there, at the window, the whole time.

The roadside assist man managed to lever open a space next to the window and fish the keys out. The car was unlocked. The police – because it is also standard procedure – took down the grandmother’s details and that of the parents – as much as possibly could be given without a mobile phone to give up the phone numbers. The helpful mother went in for her shopping and the crowd that had gathered went back about its business.

The well-shaken grandmother sat down, in the absence of any decent brandy,  to her cup of tea while the grandson reported, simply and factually, that a man had got the car unlocked. He ate a piece of fruit and a biscuit, and slurped his drink. We decided it might be wise if the grandmother reported the incident to the parents before the police did. She made the calls while the grandson and I went outside to run around the pathways and throw the ball for the dog.

We noticed the grandson had the car keys in his hand. “I need to lock the car up, ” he said.

We gently prised them from his firm little grip, and resumed the games.