Three Slow Knocks, Our Family Code

Every family has small private languages. Ours was Dad's knock: three slow, two quick, always, on every door of my childhood — his 'it's me, don't get up' signature. Nobody else used it. After he died, the knock died; you do not inherit a thing like that, you bury it.

Two years later Mum and I moved cities — new flat, seventh floor, a building Dad never saw, in a city he visited maybe twice. The point being: no neighbour, no acquaintance, no plausible anyone had ever heard that rhythm.

The first time, Mum was alone. Three slow, two quick. She told me she was at the peephole in under two seconds — she had been carrying a laundry basket and simply dropped it — and the corridor stood empty end to end. Our corridor is a single straight run to the lift; the lift indicator, she swears, never moved from the ground floor.

I half believed her, which shames me now. Then it happened while I was there. A Tuesday evening, both of us reading. Three slow — I looked up on the first knock, because the WEIGHT of it was his, the deliberateness — two quick. I crossed the room fast enough to knock over a chair. Empty corridor. Still lift. Stairwell door closed, and it groans; it cannot be closed quietly; we tested afterwards, like scientists, like idiots.