Helen sighs. This means I’ve asked before. As we turn on to my street I realize how urgent my need to go is. I can’t wait any longer. “Drop me here,” I say to Helen, scrabbling at the door handle.

“Don’t be silly, we’re nearly there now.”

I open the door anyway and Helen stops the car with a jerk.

“What the hell d’you think you’re doing?” she says.

I scramble out of the car and make off down the road.

“Mum?” Helen calls, but I don’t turn round.

I hurry towards my door, body bent forward. Every few seconds an extra-hard squeeze of the muscles is required. The pressure in my bladder seems greater the closer I come to home, and I unbutton my coat as I walk, groping desperately for my key. At the door I shift from foot to foot, frantically twisting the key in the lock. Something is stopping it from turning properly.

“Oh, no, oh, no,” I moan aloud.

Finally I feel it catch and turn. I fall through the door and slam it behind me, handbag thudding to the floor. Clawing at the banister, I rush up the stairs, coat sailing away as I shrug it off. But I get to the bathroom too late. Hand on my waistband, I start to wee. I tear down my trousers, but have no time for the rest, and so sit on the loo, urinating through my cotton knickers. For a few moments I let myself slump forward, head on hands, elbows on knees, the sodden trousers clinging round my ankles. Then, slowly and awkwardly, I kick off my shoes and pull the thick wet fabric over my feet, dropping it into the bath.

There are no lights on in the house—I couldn’t stop to switch any on—and so I sit in the dark. And begin to cry.

The thing is to be systematic, try to write everything down. Elizabeth is missing and I must do something to find out what’s happened. But I’m so muddled. I can’t be sure about when I last saw her or what I’ve discovered. I’ve phoned and there’s no answer. I haven’t seen her. I think. She hasn’t been here and I haven’t been there. What next? I suppose I should go to the house. Search for clues. And whatever I find I will write it down. I must put pens into my handbag now. The thing is to be systematic. I’ve written that down, too.

I check that I have my key three times before I move off the doorstep. The pale sunlight slants on to the lawn beside me as I shuffle along the path, and the smell of the pine trees makes me feel optimistic. I don’t think I’ve been out for a few days. Something happened and Helen has been fussing. But it’s all a blank, which makes me feel dizzy.

I’ve wrapped up warm in a suede duffle coat, over a knitted sweater, over a wool dress, but I’m still chilly. I go past Carrow’s and catch sight of myself in the window. Back hunched, I look like a tortoise ambling along without a racing hare to spur me on. As I walk I check the pens in my bag and the paper in my pockets. Another quick check every few steps. The most important thing is to write everything down. For a moment, I’m hazy about just what it is I have to write, but the route I’m following reminds me. Past the last of the prefabs, which has been painted a sickly green and yellow by its owner. (Elizabeth laughs at its ugliness and says if she could find a ceramic replica it would be worth a fortune.) Then the back of a hotel, where the road is slick with a murky liquid (Elizabeth says it’s the tea dregs that are thrown out after breakfast), and under the beautiful acacia tree, stretching from a snail-covered front garden (Elizabeth’s taken cuttings every year, but they always fail).

Elizabeth’s house is white-painted, with double-glazed windows. The net curtains give it away as being the home of a pensioner, though of course I can hardly criticize, having them myself. It was built just after the war, finished in 1946 as part of a street of new homes, and the garden wall has never been changed. The first owner cemented coloured pebbles to the top and no one has ever removed them. Elizabeth wouldn’t dream of having them chipped off now. I was always curious about these new houses as a girl, and I remembered this one especially, because of the pebbled wall.

I ring the bell. “It echoed through the empty house.” The phrase bubbles up from somewhere, but bells always echo through houses, surely? Empty or not. I wait, and work a hand deep into one of the earth-filled barrels by the front step. These are usually crammed with flowers, but not even a green shoot breaks the surface now. Elizabeth must have forgotten to plant any bulbs this year. I pull my hand out quickly. I can’t think what it was doing in the soil. Was I just feeling for bulbs, or am I supposed to be looking for something else?

I face the door, wondering how long I’ve waited here. Five minutes? Ten? I check my watch, but it doesn’t give me any clues. Time is so elastic now. I ring the bell again, carefully making a note of the time, and then watch the second hand as it moves round. After five minutes I write: No sign of Elizabeth, and begin to walk away. Perhaps she is on holiday, as someone suggested. Or is staying with her son? But I would have written that down, I’m sure of it. I keep old notes like that. These little snippets of news are things to talk about, as well as information for myself. “Do you know, Elizabeth’s gone off to the South of France?” I might say to Helen, or “Elizabeth’s staying with that son of hers,” I could tell Carla. News of that kind is valuable. Helen has been known to stay an extra thirty seconds for it in the past.

So I know I’m not forgetting this time. Elizabeth must be missing. But all I’ve established so far—all I’ve proved—is that she is not at home this minute.

At the gate I have a thought, and I turn back to look in through the front window. Pressing my nose against the cool glass and cupping my hands round the top of my head, I can just see through the net curtains. They give the dark room a misty quality, but I can make out the empty chairs and plumped cushions. Her books have been pushed neatly into their shelves and her collection of majolica pots and vases and tureens stand in a line on the mantelpiece. “You never know,” Elizabeth always says, after she’s done laughing at my reaction to the veiny ugliness of a moulded leaf or the sick-makingly intricate scales of a fish, “one of them might be worth a fortune.” She can’t see the things properly, of course, only a vague brightness of the colours, but she likes the feel. The animals and insects in relief. She can trace the contours where they rise from the surface of the pottery, the glaze almost as smooth as a frog’s skin, almost as slippery as an eel’s. She lives in hope of discovering one that’s really rare. And the promise of money is the only reason her son allows her to keep them. Otherwise they’d be in the wheelie bin without a word.

I take out a thick pen and a bright yellow square of paper ready to articulate my meagre findings: Very tidy. No Elizabeth, no lights on. Backing away, I stumble into a flower bed, and my foot sinks into the soil, leaving a perfect print of my shoe. Good thing I’m not planning anything criminal. I walk carefully around the edge of the bed, to the side of the house, and look in through the kitchen window. There are no net curtains here and I can clearly see the bare wooden worktops and gleaming sink. No food out in kitchen, I write. No bread, no apples. No washing up. It’s not much, but it’s something.

I walk back home through the park. It’s not raining, so I may as well get some fresh air. The grass is slightly frosty and I enjoy feeling it crunch under my feet. Somewhere on the other side of the bandstand is a dip, like a meteor crater, filled with flowers and benches. Helen did that. It was one of her first big commissions, and though I don’t recall all the details, I do remember they had to move tons of soil. It’s a deliberate suntrap, and even tropical flowers thrive there. She was always good at making things grow. And she would know the best place to plant summer squash: I must remember to ask her when I see her next.

I’ve been walking past this bandstand for seventy-odd years. My sister and I used to come this way when we went to the pictures. They often had music on here during the war. To cheer everyone up. The deck chairs would be out and filled with men in khaki uniforms, hardly camouflaged against the bright grass. Sukey would slow down to hear the band and smile at the soldiers; she always knew one or two from dances at the Pavilion. I’d run back and forth between her and the gates, wanting to get into town, impatient to see whichever film it was we were heading for. I wish I could run like that now, but I wouldn’t have the breath.

At the steps out of the park I pause to look back; the sky has darkened and a figure kneels on the grass. The sound of a boy calling to someone from the bandstand makes me hurry, shivering, towards the street. On the third step down there’s a shiny bit of stone. My foot slips. I try to grab at the handrail, but miss it. My nails scrape along the brick wall and my handbag swings wide, pulling me with it. I land, heavily, on my side, clenching my jaw muscles at the pain in my arm. Blood rushes about my body as if it doesn’t know where it should be, and I find I am staring and staring, eyelids stretched wide, eyes drying.

Slowly the shock of it recedes and I can blink again, but I’m too tired to get up at once, so I roll over and rest where I am for a minute. I can see the rusty underside of the railing, and beneath that some gritty-looking paint which has been stencilled into the shape of a fox. There’s soil in the creases of my palm, though I can’t think where it’s from, and the sharp juts of the steps dig into my back. At least I have finally fallen. These steps have always been a worry. And I haven’t hit my head, though I’ve bashed my side and my elbow and will have bruises tomorrow. I can feel them spreading under my skin, staining me like blackberry juice. I remember the pleasure of studying my bruises as a child, the black and navy of them, the cloudlike shapes they made. I was always finding blotches on my hips from knocking into furniture, or purplish fingernails from getting my fingers caught in the laundry mangle. Once, my friend Audrey slipped while she was mucking about hanging over the edge of the East Cliff, and I got a dark line across my chest from smashing into the railings when I grabbed at her. And then there were the marks left by the mad woman after she’d chased me home.

I’d been sent out for groceries, and I found her at the counter. She was mumbling something to the grocer as I asked for a tin of peaches and Ma’s ration of cooking fat, and I stood away from her while the things were being weighed and wrapped, looking into a high corner of the shop. There was a strange aniseed smell, and somehow I felt it was coming from the mad woman, though perhaps it was just the jars of liquorice which stood along the windowsill. I paid and left and was holding the groceries against my chest, waiting for a tram to pass, when suddenly there was a great bang! on my shoulder. My heart jumped and my breath whistled in my throat.

It was her. She had followed me out and hit me with her umbrella. She always carried an umbrella, a shabby inky thing, half unfurled in a way that made it look like an injured bird. She used to stop the buses by standing in front of them and waving the umbrella, and then she would lift her dress and show her knickers. They said it was because her daughter had been knocked down and killed by a bus, before the war. People talked about it in whispers, or they made sly jokes, but if you asked a question you’d be told to be quiet, not to pry, just to keep away from her, as if she had something catching.

The end of the tram was trundling away at last, when bang! she hit me again. I leapt across the road. She followed. I ran up my street, dropping the tin of peaches in panic, and she chased me, shouting something I couldn’t catch. I got through the kitchen door, calling for my mother, and she rushed out to see the woman off and retrieve the peach slices.

“I’ve always told you, don’t look at her, don’t talk to her, keep your distance,” Ma said when she came back in.

I told her I’d done all that and she’d still chased me.

“Well, I’ve never seen her in the grocer’s before. We should probably fetch a policeman, but I can’t help feeling sorry for her. I suppose she doesn’t like seeing young girls about the place,” Ma said, peering out of the window, in case the woman was still about. “Because of her daughter being killed by that bus.”

My fault for being a young girl, I thought. But I wondered later if she’d just been hungry and had wanted my rations. There was a bruise on my shoulder for weeks after that, dark against my pale skin. It was the same colour as the mad woman’s umbrella, as if it had left a piece of itself on me, a feather from a broken wing.