The sound of a key in the lock of the front door.

An expectation my husband will appear a moment later.

A thought that his key isn’t needed; I’ve already unlocked the door. In the same instant, surprise; he’s already home-it’s usually at least another half hour from now. Traffic must have been better today. No worries, the coffee machine is on and warmed up.

The scraping, rattling sound of the key in the lock persists.

It’s too early. It can’t be him.

I open the door.

Two men. One shorter than the other, who I don’t really notice because he’s standing to the side. Taller, slimmer. Possibly younger. He’s also looking at the man with the key.

With a slight inflection to push the statement toward a question, I say, ‘I think you have the wrong apartment…?’

Surprised eyes dart to the number displayed on a glass plate to his left, then to the tag on the key in his hand.

‘Oh. Ten-o-one.’ He is addressing the man beside him perhaps, but not me.

Without acknowledgment, they turn and move away toward the elevators. I close the door.

Perhaps mild embarrassment explains the lack of a simple ‘sorry’? Or some other apology for trying to get into the wrong apartment — this apartment, our home?

Perhaps it’s arrogance, or a myopia of sorts? Driven from basic manners by single-minded focus on the next commission, desperate to be the agent from the swollen list of people ‘authorised’ to take the key from security, show a prospect an apartment and, God willing, close the deal.

Had he turned the handle and found the door unlocked, would they have just walked in?

Late one night, not long after we’d moved in, another wrong key was tried in the door.

The group of males is loud, speaking a language I don’t understand. Possiblythey’re ‘home’ from a night out.

Woken, I wait.

My husband is travelling for work.

The door won’t unlock no matter how many times they loudly try. Thankfully.

After a while, someone has an epiphany; they are in the wrong place. Laughter.

The echo of loud voices in the corridor recedes.

Like the key-holding companion of the taller, younger man, the apartmentthey are looking for probably has an extra zero or an extra one, and is nine or ten floors above us here, in 101.

‍