Wrong House

By Jane Goodhew

As she approached her home, she knew intuitively that there was something amiss.  She went to put the key in the door but there was no point as the door was already open but that would never happen because she suffered from OCD and had not just checked and double-checked so many times that the door was locked.  What should she do next, go in or first call the police and tell them there had been a break-in?  She decided against the latter as if she did not go in, she could not be certain that there had been anything stolen and perhaps she had checked it so many times she had in fact unlocked it?  That was a possibility.

She took out her personal alarm and went inside.  What she saw was not what she had been expecting; it had not been a burglary in fact far from it as nothing was the same as when she had gone away.  Absolutely nothing!   She went from room to room and not one was even to her taste or even from the 21^st Century but more from an age long gone.

Thick or floral floor-length curtains hung from each window, lamps were strategically placed on highly polished half-moon wooden tables, and wall holders held candles some by the doors so they could easily be reached in case the gas was cut off?  What was she thinking, gas light, she had electricity!    The carpets which were in the centre of a parquet floor were also heavily patterned the type she would never be seen dead with in her ultra-modern home.  There were also ceiling-to-wall bookcases, numerous hard-backed and very dull looking not quite the Mills & Boon or Agatha Christie that she was used to reading.  She kept pinching herself thinking it must be a dream and eventually she would wake up in the shower like Bobby in Dallas.  No, she was already awake, and nothing was making the slightest sense to her what could she do, phone the police, and say what.

“Well officer my house has either been taken over by the disgusting taste brigade or has become a stage set for the latest film.”    She would solve this mystery herself, she had yet to fathom it, but she would.  It was then that she remembered she had given permission for her house to be used for the remake of yet another Dickens novel as she had been away for some time.

Copyright Jane Goodhew