When is a piece of rope not just a piece of rope?

Part 2

Early the next morning we were woken by the phone ringing downstairs. Now we have phones upstairs but they didn’t ring and I couldn’t work out why. The problem was  that they are cordless and don’t work if the power is off where as the one down stairs is plugged directly into the phone line and still works without power. But in my sleep dazed state this didn’t register. If it had I may not have spent the early hours of that morning lying awake worrying about a conspiracy occurring. But just then, having being woken so abruptly, all I could think about was the curious incident of the man and the dog the day before. 

Anyway to get back to the phone call, it turns out it was the company that monitors our alarm, they had rung  to say that their equipment indicated the power was off and did we have any perishables. Well as I looked up at the light that I had just turned on, beaming down on me, to say I was confused is an understatement. I had no idea what the man was talking about, the power was clearly on and why on earth would he ask about perishables anyway. He monitored the alarm not the fridge. I could think of no logical explanation for any of it and added to the man with the dog I couldn’t help but think there was something weird going on. Maybe he wasn’t from the alarm company at all. Maybe there was some conspiracy and someone was out to get us. Only the worst case scenario, you’ll notice. But in my defence, I should say again here, I was half asleep.