A Recent (mis)Adventure - Part 3

We’d knocked on two doors without any luck. The first was answered by an elderly lady who was clearly surprised to see two strangers on her threshold at 7:30 in the morning, the confusion compounded by the odd enquiry as to the taxi parked in front of her house. No, she didn’t know who it belonged to.

The second door remained unanswered despite multiple attempts.

“This is nuts! We’re never going to figure out who the taxi belongs to!” I said, throwing my hands up in the air, the complexity of the situation starting to gnaw at my patience, “We don’t even know for sure if that’s the taxi she was in last night!”

We were in the heart of Area 14, a strange land to both Daniela and me. The surrounds appeared relatively benign although somewhat dishevelled and weather-beaten. The silence, closed doors and drawn curtains, however, gave the place an air of furtiveness, like untold secrets were being held tightly in locked chests beneath old floorboards or at the back of dusty closets.

Frustration was starting to run high, and not just because of the unanswered doors – my friend Elle’s partner had been messaging me constantly for the last half hour asking for updates on whether we’d been able to get the phone back. I’d chosen to ignore his manic behaviour; I got that he was dealing with her meltdown at home but he needed to leave me be so I could focus. 

The truth of the matter, however, was that I was annoyed at myself. I’d genuinely thought we would turn up at the address identified by the Find My Phone app, knock on the door, ask politely for the return of the prized item, walk away with it firmly in our grip, smiles beaming across our smug faces, and bask in the glow of Elle’s effusive gratitude. 

How naïve!! 

“What do you want to do?” asked Dan, her supportive presence a godsend.

“I don’t know. I mean, are we sure it’s definitely here? How accurate is the app?”

Doubts started to well up inside me. In an almost desperate act, I pulled up the Find My Phone app once more, looking for some kind of reassurance that we were in the right place. 

“Oh no!” I cried out. “It’s moved!!!”

“What?! What do you mean it’s moved?!”

“It’s not showing at this address anymore!” 

The situation had taken a dramatic turn. Why had the phone moved from the location it had been steady in since I first looked it up over thirty minutes ago? Who had taken it? And what was their motivation? Fear that the scene had just turned sinister began to grow in the very place all my worries tend to present themselves – my knees.

“Where has it gone?” Dan moved in close to look at the app.

“It looks like it’s just a few hundred metres away.” I said, my knees feeling a renewed wash of cold blood as I noticed something else…

“It’s showing up in a local school.”

…to be continued...