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Locked in the bathroom
When my then-boyfriend David and I bought our flat, there was a period of time when we were still living at his place while we did up the new place. One evening, after a long day of sanding, David took a shower and went off to meet his book group. I went in to take a shower after he'd gone, and as the door clicked shut behind me I realised my mistake. We had taken the handles off the doors to sand them, and not put them back on. I was now locked in the bathroom. It was a small bathroom, L-shaped, with the door at the end of one branch of the L and some plumbing for a washing machine that we hadn't put in yet at the end of the other branch. The shower was in the corner. There was no loo. Nor were there any windows. I guess this is when I find out if I'm claustrophobic, I thought. I made some calculations: David would be at his book group until about midnight. He would then go home, not here. All would depend on what happened once he got home and found that I was gone. Would he be worried straight away or would he think I'd gone out with a friend? Would he realise that I would never go out with a friend without telling him where I was? Anyway, he'd text me, which would be no use, because my phone was in my bag which I had left outside the bathroom. When he didn't get a reply, he would do one of two things. He would either start to worry, and then go to the last place he'd seen me, which was this flat; or he'd assume I was fine and go to bed, only realising that I was missing when he woke up the next day and discover that I still hadn't come home. Either way, he would eventually come and rescue me. The question was when. I estimated that my best case scenario was about 12.30am; at worst, maybe 8.30am. It was currently 7.30pm, which meant that I was going to spend between five and thirteen hours locked in the bathroom. I didn't panic. I knew I wasn't going to die. I hadn't had any dinner, which I bitterly regretted, but I had eaten a giant bag of cassava chips which, only minutes before, I had felt disgusted about, and I was now deeply thankful for. Life lesson: never turn down cassava chips. There was a tap, so I could get water, and though there was no loo I could always piss in the shower, and - though I deeply wished it would not come to that - poo in the bin. (It didn't come to that, though we should draw a discreet veil over what happened in the shower.) I tried yelling and banging on the floor to summon our downstairs neighbour, but nobody came. Then I tried to figure out if I could use anything as a replacement door handle. I spent many fruitless minutes trying to use a prong from the plug of the hairdryer as a lever inside the hole where the handle should be. I knew it wouldn't work, but what else did I have to do? I contemplated breaking down the door. How much would a new door cost? A couple of hundred euros? No way of googling it. But I thought that breaking a door down was probably harder than it looked in movies. Maybe it would break in a jagged way and I would accidentally gash open my arm or leg on a huge shard of wood. Knowing that David would be coming eventually, it didn't seem worth the risk. So I settled down to my five-to-thirteen hours of captivity. First I took a really long shower. At least half an hour. I washed my hair and rinsed and repeated and left the conditioner on as a masque the way that I am never patient enough to do. Then I dried and styled my hair really, really slowly. And then... Right, I thought. There is absolutely nothing to do in here. Nothing more than the back of a shampoo bottle to read. But I have been in boring situations before. If I were on a long haul flight right now, I would be trying to sleep. It would be the wrong time of day for me to sleep, but I would be trying to persuade my body that it was in a new time zone. And this bathroom is far more comfortable than an aeroplane. No turbulence for a start, and because we don't have a washing machine yet, I can stretch right out. This is first class travel. It wasn't that comfortable though. For a start, it was an Amsterdam evening in early April, which - for those not familiar with Amsterdam - means that it was freezing, and the heating wasn't on, plus by a quirk of design, the extractor fan was operated by a switch outside the bathroom, so I couldn't turn it off. All of the warm air generated from the shower was quickly sucked out of the room. The floor of the bathroom was a cold, hard tile, and all I had in there with me was my dirty clothes, David's dirty clothes, and two damp towels. It wasn't the comfiest bed I have ever slept on, and I kept changing my mind about the relative value of warm clothing, floor insulation, a 'blanket' and a 'pillow'. Nevertheless I made a nest of sorts, switched the light off, lay down and tried to convince myself to sleep. Time crawled. I'm so glad I did all that meditation practice, I thought. At least I'm used to sitting around doing nothing. And also: so, I guess I am not claustrophobic then. Sometimes I would doze a bit. Other times, I would get so cold that I had to get back up, switch on the hairdryer and blast myself with hot air until I was warm enough to lie down again, while the extractor fan sucked all the heat back out of the room. I looked at my watch many times. If I had a single interesting thought or insight in the whole of that time, I don't remember it. Finally, at about 12.30, I heard the chirp of my phone as it received a text message. David. I jumped up and switched the bathroom light on, my heart pounding. Come on, I thought, figure it out, figure it out. Think about the bathroom, think about what we did today, think about the door handles. Come and get me. Agonising minutes passed. Then I heard my phone ringing. Great, I thought, you're worried. Worry harder. Panic. Panic and come here immediately. At 1.15am I heard the sound of David running up the stairs to the flat, calling my name. I yelled back, I'm here, I'm here, I'm in the bathroom! He opened the door and I leapt out into his arms. When David tells the story, what he always says is that he can't believe how happy I was when he got there. You were like a dog, he says, who'd been left locked in the house all day, when its owner comes home. Bouncing up and down with a big smile on your face, and talking and talking and talking. [That bit is probably not like a dog]. I wouldn't have been happy. I would have been furious. I would never have stayed in there. I would have broken the door down. But I knew you were coming, I say. That was what made the difference. I wasn't scared. I knew eventually that you would come and you would let me out. I didn't know when exactly, but I knew you were coming. I knew that I was safe. And I knew that it would end.
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