Home alone.

The lid came off the other day. Like a loosened champagne cork, loudly and with gusto.

My friend was about to go home but first wanted to use the loo. She called out to me that she couldn’t get in the bathroom door. I investigated. She was right, the latch on the door was stuck and we couldn’t, for all our efforts, shift it. I got my trusty screwdriver and we took the handle off the door, but the latch remained in place. We couldn’t budge it.

Long story short we got the door open between our efforts and that of a neighbour, who happened to be nearby at the time. And as she was leaving, my friend remarked that it was lucky I hadn’t been alone and inside the bathroom at the time. I shuddered to think.

But think I did, over the following days and weeks. I couldn’t rid myself of the image of myself, stuck inside the tiny bathroom space, locked in. Two small windows, probably impossible to make my way through even if I didn’t have the screaming sciatica. A pair of nail scissors that may have helped with unscrewing the door, but probably wouldn’t.

I could’ve yelled and screamed for help of course. But would anyone have heard me? Maybe, but how long would that have taken?

I told the story again and again and somebody said I should always carry my phone with me, and someone else suggested I should get one of those alarms to wear around my neck that Mum had, in the end, the sort you can push a button on if you get into strife. Only she was 80 at the time.

The thing is, I live on my own. That, in itself, is not a bad thing. It’s hard and lonely sometimes, but it can also be good and almost luxurious at others. It’s how things have worked for me and I’ve gotten used to it. In the parlance so popular today, it is what it is. And I’m not complaining. But the thing is, when the lid came off, I saw only the problem side.

If, say, I got locked inside my bathroom, or fell in my garden, or was stricken with some terrible illness, or had a stroke, or suffered a burning at the fire, who would rescue me? If I couldn’t get to the phone, for example? Because no-one comes home to me every day. Because I don’t go to a job anymore, how long would it be before anyone noticed I was missing? People ring, drop in, email, message, text. But if I didn’t answer, would they think oh god, she’s stuck in the bathroom, better get around there quick smart? No. And would I want the emergency vehicles arriving every time I didn’t see the text or the message for a while? No again.

There’s a bit of space between the houses in my street, and it’s busy with cars here. The neighbours are friendly, when we bump into each other by fluke coming and going. But if I wasn’t about, they wouldn’t notice, as I wouldn’t if they were missing in action. It’s not the friendliest place I’ve lived by a long shot. Most of my family and friends don’t live in these parts. There’s a spare key, it’s hiding place known to few.

Living with someone/s doesn’t keep you safe from harm of course. There’s the woman who came home to find her husband still fallen at the bottom of the ladder he’d been climbing when she’d left for her day at work; there’s our neighbour who crashed through the ramp railing and lay on the cement path with her broken leg waiting hours for us all to get home from school; there’s the woman who was found unconscious at the bottom of her stairs.

Found.

Now normally, given that it is what it is, I don’t occupy myself overly much with the catastrophes that could be lurking around the next 24 hours. But while the lid’s off I obsess about them. Perhaps it’s because, in these past few years, I’ve gotten older and my body has shown how breakable it is.

When I walk in the garden, I watch every step I plant. I have the latch removed, and not replaced, from the bathroom door. I train myself not to click doors shut inside the house. I take the front steps in an orderly and aged fashion. I am careful, conscious and cautious.

I mention my spare key to a few more people. I discard the carry-the-phone-everywhere notion, after some deliberation. I may as well throw it in the rubbish bin from the get go. But I do have it nearby, within reason.

I banish the thoughts of my poor dog, who may or may not set to hollering with hunger.

I train myself to neither read, nor dwell upon, the stories of people found dead in their homes weeks after the event.

I’m getting the lid back on now. It’s taken a while. It felt a little out of control for a bit, and required some force. But the one thing I know is I don’t want to live step by careful pre-meditated step.

Well, not yet, anyway.

And with a bit of luck I’ll never be that old. Not. Ever.