Last Saturday night, I came home from a party and found that my key wouldn't turn in the door. Someone had locked it from the inside. I waited for an hour, my mood boomeranging between peaks of hope and pits of horror, for the emergency locksmith to arrive. Once we were inside it was obvious that my feeble but furious attempts to shove the door in coupled with my loud and creative swearing at the key that wouldn't turn had disturbed someone mid way through burgling my home. My iphone was gone and they had made a start on my bedroom drawers and wardrobe. Fortunately all of my jewellery is the kind that makes your fingers green, and the only non-clothes in my wardrobe are boxes crammed with embarrassing journals from my teens. They don't even have sentimental value, I just keep them here, out of sight, to protect the innocent.
Whoever it was had gotten in via the scaffolding, which has been erected by Hackney Council to allow me the pleasure of paying nearly £14,000 for new windows. Even to me, a non-criminal, the construction looks from the outside like a big public staircase leading to mine and all of my neighbour's back doors. I've been assured at every turn that it's totally secure, and indeed, when I phoned the building company on Monday to let them know someone had climbed up and broken in, they were still trying to convince me that 'you'd have to be Spiderman to get up there!'. Spiderman has obviously had a serious fall from grace.
It had been a fun but freezing cold evening, and I was so itchy to get back to the comfort of my flat that I had left the party early. But now that I was in, I didn't want to be there at all. I felt like I was still outside, in a public space. Going to sleep in my bed that night, after the police had been and gone, I felt like I was going to sleep on a parkbench. Not just vulnerable, but visible too. Someone has been looking in my windows as though they were browsing a shop on the high street.
I still don't feel right. The builders have nailed my windows shut and there's a massive padlocked bolt across my balcony door, but that won't bring my privacy back. I come straight home from work every day, get into bed and fall asleep with all the lights on. Even while sleeping I'm constantly alert, like a snoozing night watchman. Worst of all, what I had once reassured myself was irrational paranoia about every single
bump or creak I heard after dark has
now been validated. It's going to take a while before this place feels like home again.
