Little fingers get everywhere don’t they, and when you’ve got small children following you around for twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, it doesn’t take many trapped-in-door incidents to put you on edge and alert to the danger in everything you do.

I’ve trapped fingers in doors, toes in doors, feet in car doors. It’s easily done, they’re like lightning and they get everywhere, like rabbits, but there was no lasting damage, it’s more the shock that upset them, and us.

But it’s been quite a while now, our children aren’t that little anymore, and they move through the house with all the stealth and grace of a marching band, so it’s rare that I might close a door on one of them. Indeed, what’s more likely is that they’ll close the door on eachother, we are not yet through the slamming doors in each others faces stage of child development.

We do have to keep all of the doors closed though. We have a bunny and not all of the house is bunny proofed, and the bits that are get frequently dismantled. It’s a ceaseless task which I would compare to the painting of the Forth Bridge, but that’s an obsolete expression now that they have finally finished painting the Forth Bridge, for now.

This morning however, as I closed the lounge door behind me, I caught a glimpse of a little hand on the door in the periphery of my vision, and I immediately stopped the door from closing any further. When I looked down to see whose fingers they were, I saw as they were withdrawn from sight on other side of the door. It was in that moment that I realised that my children were both at school and I had just returned from the school run, and besides, our children are bigger now, and have themselves learned not to put their fingers in the path of a closing door. This hand was much littler than any hand I knew, and was positioned much lower on the door. This hand could only belong to a preschool age child.

A chill ran down my spine. I’ve been watching too much horror on the TV, clearly. It puts ideas in your head and you start imagining things that aren’t there. But I was certain that this was there, and, I’m not saying that the house is haunted, but it would tally with the sound of children laughing in the night when everyone is asleep.

I knew that I was alone, but I couldn’t leave the matter uninvestigated so I opened the lounge door fully to see who or what was there, but the room was as empty as I expected. On the back of the door, however, was the explanation I was looking for. Hanging from the door handle was a small pink MacDonalds plushie, with a pink little hand reaching out.

So that just about covers it. The plushie hand had swung out as the door closed and was spotted in the corner of my eye. Except, I didn’t see a finger protruding as the door closed, I saw a hand, a full four fingers, gripping the edge of the door, didn’t I?