PP Coombs Ironmongers

I’ve cut keys on this street for fifty years. I know which locks were never meant to be opened.

A stranger walks in holding a key I made half a century ago — for my best friend, for a door I never saw the other side of. What follows isn’t a mystery I chose. It’s a promise made at five years old, on a rocking horse in an infant classroom, and never once expected to keep.

Some doors get bricked up because a man can’t bear what’s behind them. This is what happens when an old locksmith finally decides he’d rather know.