The small key

On my keyring there's a small key that opens nothing. It was already there when I rented the flat, and I suspect it lived on other keyrings before: its brass is worn down by fingers that aren't mine.

I tried locks, padlocks, letterboxes. The meter cupboard. The locker at the pool. The storage-room drawer that was never mine. Nothing.

One day, tidying up, I slipped it off the ring and left it in the kitchen tin, with the loose buttons and the dead batteries.

That night the house creaked differently. Not much: the way a conversation creaks when someone walks in who knows how it ends. The tap dripped with a rhythm that sounded learned by heart. And the hallway, I swear, grew longer: I measured it with my feet and got thirteen steps where there had always been twelve.

In the morning I put it back on the ring, between the front-door key and the letterbox key. The hallway went back to its twelve steps. The tap fell silent.

I don't know what that key locks. I only know that, as long as I carry it, it stays locked.