In the autumn of 2013 – a few weeks before my twins celebrated their third birthday – I took them up to our fifth-floor rooftop terrace to help load laundry into our washing machine. While my son was stuffing dirty clothes into the machine, my daughter ran back into our apartment, shut the door to the roof, and locked it. As she stood behind the glass door, laughing, I realized that I was now trapped on the roof with my son, with no phone, and my husband not due back from work until the evening. Although I asked my daughter over and over to turn the key back, the lock was stiff and she couldn’t do it.

I began to panic, conjuring up nightmare scenarios. I was afraid that my daughter would fall down or through a gap in the slatted stairs leading to the roof as I had (naturally) left the child-safety-gate open.

Just another attempt to launder more shekels...