Our Landlady Escaped

Last night we got a call from our landlord who has power of attorney over our landlady (who unfortunately is in a nursing home with dementia.) That was subject to change last night, when he informed us that she had escaped, and was probably making a beeline for our house. The kicker is, she's escaped from the nursing home before and she can be prone to violence.

Okaaaayyyy, wish we'd known that before we moved in.

So we're at home, trying to pretend that everything's cool and we can just watch television without keeping some part of our attention on the front window to check the gate.

I see someone at the gate and the gate opens.

shit.

murasaki_1966 had kindly agreed to put her life on the line and keep Nancy occupied while I go into the bedroom and ring the police. I assume Llyn's reasoning is that she's dealt with her grandmother's dementia so knows what to do, or else she naturally assumes that I'll piss Nancy off and she'll go at me with an axe (not that that has happened before, well, not with an axe anyway)

There's someone at the door.

I can't find the phone in the bedroom (I thought Llyn had put it on the bed, when she'd put it on the dresser - male pattern blindness strikes again.)

Llyn answers the door and it's a policeman from Ashfield, who effectively repeats the story Arthur told us and gives us the number of Ashfield police station. Arthur had told us to ring Burwood police station. I start to wonder if there's going to be jurisdictional issues.

Two hours of Hitchcockian suspense follow until we get a call from Arthur that she's been picked up in Croydon.

Phew.

(In a way, we were hoping she'd make it to our place so at least she would be safe.)

One of the odd things is that we had to develop a cover story to explain what we were doing in her house. "We are visitors from the future" probably wouldn't have helped.