Blue Badge Co ad: Genuine RADAR Keys from Blue Badge Company

I stole a key from a café in Cornwall last summer. I'm not proud of it. The owner wrote me a letter three weeks later. It was the third day. We had been at the holiday park for three days and I had been living like a person in a holiday advert. You know what I mean. Walking along the harbour. Ice cream in hand. Not a care in the world. The kind of day out that happens to women in soft-focus shots on travel brochures and never to me, in my actual life, at home, where I am 51 and I have had IBS for eleven years and I plan every trip out around one question: where is the nearest toilet, and what happens if it's locked. On the first day I had assumed it was the sea air. On the second day I had assumed it was the holiday. On the third day, I sat in that little café at 4pm, having spent the whole day out without a single moment of panic, and I thought: it's the key. I need that key. Because on the first morning, my stomach had gone. No warning. And the girl behind the counter had seen my face, reached under the till, and handed me a key on a frayed blue lanyard. "Accessible loo's round the back, love." It opened the door first time. And every day after that, I'd gone back, and she'd handed it over without a word. The key had no name on it. I checked. There was no tag. There was no information. There was nothing on the lanyard. I asked the girl where I could get one. There was a pause. "I'm so sorry, I don't know. It's just the toilet key. It's been behind the counter since before I started." I asked to speak to the manager. I was introduced to a very polite man who said the same thing in slightly longer sentences. I asked if it was a special key. He didn't know. I asked if they sold them. They didn't. I went back to the cottage. My husband was reading on the deck. "I'm taking it home." He looked up. "You are not taking it home." "I am taking it home. I want it on record that I am about to commit a crime, and you cannot say I did not warn you." The next afternoon, I asked for the key. I went to the toilet. And instead of handing it back, I slipped it into the zip pocket of my handbag, under a folded rain mac and a packet of tissues. I walked out of that café. I felt my own heartbeat in my ears. We checked out at 10 the next morning. We drove home. I unpacked at 4pm. I put the key on my keyring. For three weeks, I said yes to everything. Then, on a Friday, the letter arrived. It was handwritten. Cream card. The holiday park's logo at the top. It was from the owner. "Dear Mrs McEntire� We were saddened to note, on the afternoon before your departure, that the key to our accessible toilet was no longer behind the counter. We do not assume the worst. Keys go missing, and we know our guests do not always notice what ends up in their bags. However, I write because if it is the case that you needed that key more than we realised, we would like the opportunity to offer it to you properly rather than after the fact. If you would be kind enough to confirm or otherwise, we will close the matter either way. With warm regards, [Name], Owner" I cried at the kitchen table. I had spent three weeks living like a normal person on a stolen key, and now the owner of a little family holiday park had written me a personal, handwritten letter. Not threatening. Not angry. Just kind. Politely asking whether I had taken the key to his toilet. I wrote back. I confessed. I sent a cheque. I asked, with the cheque, whether he could possibly tell me what the key was, because it was the only thing that had ever made me feel free. He wrote back a second letter, two weeks later. He returned the cheque. He said they'd already had a new one cut, and that I should consider the old one a souvenir. He asked only that I didn't make a habit of it. He didn't know what it was called. I didn't blame him. For seven months I lived on that stolen key. I treated it like a museum object. The lanyard was fraying. The metal was bent at the tip. Some locks it opened. Some it didn't. Every time it stuck, I felt physically ill. I knew, somewhere in the back of my head, that one day it would snap in a lock, and on that day I would have nothing. Then last October, a friend of mine, who had heard the stolen-key story at a dinner party because it is, frankly, the only interesting thing I have ever done, sent me a text. "I think I found your key. It's a RADAR key. Go to Blue Badge Co. You didn't need to steal it. You don't even need a Blue Badge." I went online. I read everything. It opens over 14,000 locked accessible toilets across the UK. No assessment. No Blue Badge. If you need it, it's for you. I ordered two. They arrived the next day. I put one next to the stolen key. Then I walked down to the accessible toilet at our train station, the one that's always locked, and the one my stolen key had never once opened. The new one turned first time. I went back and forth. Stolen key. New key. Stolen key. New key. The stolen one stuck. The new one, with its big easy-grip handle, opened every time. The thing I had thought was rare and unattainable and worth stealing from a family business in Cornwall was sitting on the internet for less than the price of two coffees. I have since ordered four more. One for my handbag. One for the car. One for my coat pocket. And one for my mum, who is 78, walks with a stick, and has started getting the bus into town again every Thursday. The stolen key has been retired to a drawer, where it lives next to my wedding tiara and my children's school reports. It is a relic. It belongs to a younger, more lawless me. If you are reading this, and you have ever stood outside a locked accessible toilet with your heart racing, thinking, "I would, in fact, steal that key," I want to spare you the guilty conscience. It's a genuine RADAR key from Blue Badge Co. It is not stolen. It's for sale, on the internet, for less than you'd expect, and you do not have to write a letter of apology to anybody. — Carol, 51, Leeds P.S. I have not been back to that holiday park. I want to. But I am not sure my photograph isn't taped up behind that café counter as the woman to watch. P.P.S. Get the genuine one. The cheap copies online don't fit half the locks, and I've lived that life already. Mine came with a free "Just Can't Wait" card too, and right now there's 10% off plus a free gift. P.P.P.S. Get two. Because the day yours arrives, your mum, your sister or your best friend is going to see it on your keyring and ask, with mild outrage, where hers is. This is what happened in my house. I have learned my lesson. Two keys. Always.