latchkey

I spent middle school as a latchkey kid, riding two public buses to get home and once there, often ended up spending evenings alone and warming up a frozen TV dinner.

The ensuing years of living a financially strapped life in a single-mother household, being a latchkey kid who came home and was kept company by snacks, solidified my relationship with food.

They went upstairs without using the lift, and he let her and himself in with his latchkey.

Could it be possible that some thief had stolen the latchkey from Knight, and used it when Mrs. Ellsworth's house was robbed?

It made her feel less to blame for her carelessness in the matter of that latchkey.

Still worse was the remembrance of Mrs. Ellsworth's latchkey, the keeping of which had been accidental at first.

The central figure, wearing pince-nez and waving a latchkey, is formidable rather than repellent.