Flatmate

It was a bright and breezy early autumn day, warm in the sun, parky as soon as a cloud drifted across the sky in front of it. It was my third Sunday in Prague and I was determined not to waste it. I’d looked up at Petrin Hill many times as I’d criss-crossed my way across town and today was the perfect day to climb it and look down on the ‘City of Spires’.

I love to walk around cities. Just point myself in a direction and then get lost in the beauty of the place, the sights, the smells, the sounds, the buildings, the people, the traffic. That day I walked for hours until finally my feet begged me to go home and rest.

But home was weird, it was eerily quiet. I’d been expecting a cheery welcome from my new flatmate Jason, a friendly smile from behind his bottle-bottomed glasses, but Jason was nowhere to be seen and his door was  firmly shut; exactly as it had been when I’d left that morning.

He must be out I thought to myself and proceeded to make myself a cup of tea, tune into Sports World on the World Service and rest my weary feet.

But something was troubling me, Jason’s coat was hanging in the hallway, it was too cold a day to go out without a coat even for a northerner like Jase. More than that nothing looked touched from when I had left the flat in the morning. The kettle wasn’t hot, there were no dishes in the sink, the shower didn’t look like it’d been used. Surely Jason hadn’t spent the whole day asleep!

That threw up a tricky question, in the mornings when I go to work before Jason I try to be as quiet as possible, I think it’s only fair, but surely he can’t expect me to be quiet at 5 in the afternoon, can he?

‘Sports World’ came and went, ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ was only half listened to as I ironed my shirts for the next day, but Jason’s door remained firmly closed. I must admit I was now slightly worried. What should I do? Should I knock and find out if he is okay? I’ve never been one for lie-ins, did people really spend all day in bed asleep? Would people laugh at me if I knocked to find out if he was okay only to find he had been asleep? I’d be known as a drama queen forever?

On the other hand was it any of my business? He was only my flatmate for Christ sake, we were thrown together by happenstance, we weren’t brothers or best friends, he was just a slightly quirky bloke living in the same flat as me.

By 7pm I had convinced myself that I had to knock. What if he was ill and needed help, wouldn’t I want him to do the same for me?  I had been running through the pretences upon which I could justify myself to a bleary-eyed bear who I had just woken from his Sunday hibernation. I’d decided on an invite to a pizza place… it was time for dinner and I was going anyway.

I knocked, gingerly at first, but when there was no answer  I rapped the door a little harder.  Still nothing, just silence, eerie silence Now I wished I hadn’t bloody knocked, now new questions were swirling round my head, no longer illness but death.

I wandered away from the door thinking to myself. Should I go in, what if he were dead? What would I do? Foreign country, foreign language how would I report it, who would I call?  I made a decision I was going in.

Just as I was about to lean down on the handle, I heard a key in the front door, I jumped back from Jason’s door and tried to look as innocent as I could. The front door swung open and there stood my gormless flat mate in a his big winter coat, a shopping bag in each hand and his normal cheery smile.

‘Good day?’ he said to me completely unaware that anything might be untoward.

‘Not bad.’ I replied as nonchalantly as possible, relief coursing through my body. ‘You?’

‘Yeah good.’

And with the phatic conversation over we retired to our rooms.