The Re-Set

Sunday Surprises

"Come on in...I need to shut the gate behind us?" Felicity said, as I followed her up the stairs to the top of the house, actually the second long flight of stairs, and into what I presumed was her room, on the top floor of her massive home. I stepped past her, glancing around, whilst she closed a wooden gate fixed right at the top of the stairs. It was the sort of barrier parents put up to stop toddlers throwing themselves down the stairs, or wandering into a dangerous kitchen full of dangerous things, and hurting themselves.

"Why?" I asked, rather puzzled, looking at the thing. Both of us could have climbed over it easily enough, although it would have been quite precarious, landing on the top step. I could not understand why it was there.

"Why what?" She responded, smiling at me as the latch clicked into place.

"Why do you have to shut the gate?"

"Oh...it's the safety system...the alarm would go off, downstairs, if the stairgate isn't locked shut...make yourself at home, I don't suppose lunch will be ready for a while." Felicity said as I took in my luxurious surroundings. Her room was in the loft space, with sloping ceilings and massive roof windows, all along one side, divided up into what looked like three separate areas as far as I could see. The stairs opened up onto a sort of sitting area, with two sofas, a bookcase and a square wooden table with four chairs. Then, to the left, there was what looked like a study area, with a pair of desks, a computer and educational posters on the walls, including a map of the world and the periodic table. And over to the right, a sleeping area with two cabin beds built into what looked like cupboards, wardrobes maybe, and drawers with a door at the very end, which had to be a bathroom, I guessed, because there was no way anyone would have so much space and not include some convenient facilities. I moved across to the wall, next to the stairs, and stared at some sort of console fixed at about head height, to me. It was some sort of control unit, with buttons and a big LCD screen, currently displaying the date and time for all to see. "Oh...don't touch that Olivia...it is just the intercom...Mummy can turn it on...from downstairs...if she needs to talk to us at all...but if you fiddle with it, the settings get messed up and she gets cross?"

"Stairgates...and an intercom?" I said, in disbelief, glancing around some more and spotting what looked like a camera set high on the wall above us. "Isn't that a bit much?"

"It is two floors down...so, the intercom comes in handy...and I've been in this nursery since I was little, so the stairgate was fitted then, to stop me falling down the stairs, I suppose?" She shrugged, apparently not bothered by my surprise, or the childish restrictions her room seemed to impose on her. She even called it her nursery, which was really quite embarrassing for a girl of her age. "My father loved gadgets...he installed the whole system when I was born, so that Mummy could keep an eye on me...even if she was in the kitchen or somewhere?"

"But you still have to shut the stairgate?" I commented, following her across to the sofas and sitting down, sweeping my stupid dress beneath me, to avoid getting into a tangle. Felicity was wearing a dark green dress, which matched the horrid coat she had worn to church, plus tights and shoes like mine. Nice little girls, dressed up for church and lunch with the family. It made me feel sick to my stomach, and I wanted to puke. I was already working out how I could put dad off Caroline.

"Mummy can unlock it from downstairs...it's really no big deal? It's just the way the system works?" She suggested, sounding just a little bit defensive, so I let it go. Even if I did find it a little bit weird that we were effectively locked into a room she still seemed to quite happily call her nursery, which was embarrassing to say the least, under electronic surveillance, even if the actual physical barrier was quite easily surmountable for anyone over the age of five. "Uncle Charles says that you have been at Redstone since you were three?"