“I know I kept it safely,” I announced, with the confidence of a man who had just made a terrible mistake. My wife looked up. After years of marriage, she knows that when I say something had been kept safely, we should cancel our appointments for the afternoon.

There are two places in every home. The place where something belongs, and the safe place. The first is generally accessible to everybody. The second is protected by a security system so advanced that even the person who put it there cannot penetrate it.

A document lying on the dining table can be found immediately. Put it in a special envelope, inside a particular folder, in a carefully chosen drawer, and it enters a witness protection programme. Its previous identity is erased. Nobody knows where it lives.

“What exactly are you looking for?” my wife asks. This is a reasonable question, but dangerous. If I tell her, she will ask where I last saw it. If I knew where I last saw it, I would be there, looking pleased with myself.

Instead, I begin opening drawers with increasing authority. The first drawer is opened hopefully. The second, thoughtfully. By the sixth, I am conducting a raid. Old spectacles, expired warranties and a charging cable belonging to a phone used in 2011 are brought out for questioning.

Then comes the accusation. “Somebody has moved it!” I declare. This mysterious somebody has lived in our house for decades without paying rent. He hides keys, finishes biscuits and puts my reading glasses in places where I would never put them, such as on my head.

My wife usually allows the investigation to continue until I have established that the household is full of irresponsible people. Then she walks across, opens one drawer and produces the missing object.

There should be a law against this. At least let her pretend to search.

“It was right here,” she says, which is a particularly cruel thing to say to a man who has just examined that drawer three times. I inspect the object suspiciously. For one brief moment, I consider asking whether she has been carrying a duplicate.

Technology has made matters worse. Earlier, I misplaced papers. Now I misplace files named Final, Final Revised, Final Latest and Final Use This One. Somewhere on my computer is the correct version, surrounded by its ancestors and several descendants nobody remembers creating.

Perhaps we need fewer safe places and more ordinary ones. Perhaps the keys could stay on their hook and the documents in their folder. There would be less excitement, certainly, but we might actually leave the house at the time we had announced.

This morning, I imagined I wrote down where I keep all my important things. A sensible list, carefully organised, which would end these searches forever. I finished it, folded it neatly and put it somewhere safe.

I think my wife has cancelled our dinner appointment..!

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