I went to Elizabeth’s house. See?” I say, holding my notes up for Carla. She doesn’t look. I slap the bits of paper on to a little table and just miss knocking over my morning tea.
“So? She wasn’t in.”
“No, but there was no sign of her, either.”
Carla turns a page of the carers’ folder; she’s got some sort of flowery perfume on today and it clouds up around her with each movement. “Was anyone else there?” she asks, when she’s finished writing. Her eyes widen for a moment and I can tell there’s some awful story coming. “I’ve heard of cases where young crack addicts move in with old people,” she says. “They locked an old man in Boscombe in his room and asked all their crack-addict friends to smash the house up and”—she pauses, waving one hand in the air—“have orgies.”
I look at my notes. “But the house was very tidy,” I say.
Carla puts down the folder. “Well, there was an old woman who was bound in a basement, and the robbers took everything and then tortured her and locked her in, and nobody knew she was there. For days and days.”
I watch Carla’s face as she talks. Her eyebrows move up and down and the end of her nose turns pink. I wonder why she is so preoccupied with old people being locked in rooms. Neither of these scenarios seems very likely, but I write them down anyway.
“Perhaps I should go back to the house?” I say.
“No,” she says, her tone changing. “You mustn’t go out. Write that down.”
I sit for a while after Carla’s gone, staring into space, and then shuffle through my notes, making changes, putting Katy’s name above the list of subjects she’s studying at school. There’s a letter from my son, and a photo of him with his wife and children. The photo is neatly labelled on the back: “Tom, Britta, Anna, and Fred in the Mecklenburg Lake District.” It’s not Tom’s writing. Anna and Frederick look just like their mother: evenly tanned skin, treacle-dark hair. Their smiles take up all their faces. Tom looks messy and blotchy in comparison, his smile cheekier, more knowing. The place looks very pretty, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever see it for myself. Tom stopped asking me to go and stay with them in Berlin years ago. The letter says that Anna has started at the gymnasium. “Secondary school” is in brackets next to this word, and I write it down on the paper with Katy’s school subjects, reading it back to myself before finding another note: Elizabeth locked in room—crack addicts in house. Bound and tortured in basement. I frown at my own writing. I must be going barmy. Crack addicts? The police would have been called. But, I think, why not go to the house anyway, check on Elizabeth?
I wrap up warm, walk past the acacia tree, and knock at Elizabeth’s door, just in case. When there’s no answer I get out my pen: Still no Elizabeth at house. I step back, and my head seems to empty itself, my stomach sinks, the muscles in my neck seize up. I can’t think what I’m doing here and I scrunch the bits of paper in my hand. Several fall to the floor: Crack addict, I read. Crack addict. Elizabeth locked in her room. Bound in basement. Could I really have written that? It seems ridiculous. Elizabeth doesn’t even have a basement. I peer through the letterbox, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m not entirely sure what crack is; how would I know if I saw it? The smell of cooking drifts into the air around me. A salty, meaty smell like frying bacon. It seems for a moment to be coming from inside the house, and I wonder if someone could be in there, cooking.
“What are you up to?” A woman, in one of those shiny coats you wear for rain, comes out of the house next door. She puts a hand on the fence between us, her coat whispering loudly like an unruly child. Her other hand holds the lead of a bouncing dog. He claws at the wood of the fence and sniffs. It must be the bacon smell that’s got him excited.
“I’m looking for Elizabeth,” I say.
“Yes, you’re a friend of hers, aren’t you? Don’t worry, you never remember me.” She chuckles to herself and I feel my face go hot with embarrassment. “Visiting, are you? Think you’ll get a surprise.”
“Why? What’s happened? Is Elizabeth all right?”
“I haven’t seen her, to be honest with you, but she’s been having a clear-out, by the looks of things. Her son’s taken masses of boxes of stuff to his car.” She pulls the dog back from the fence and grins.
I stare at her. “Peter’s been removing things?”
“And about time, don’t you think? The state of that place. Full of rubbish.” She waves a hand and then runs it through her short blond hair; her coat whispers something but I can’t catch the words. “I’ve had to tell him about it often enough. Was getting to be a health hazard.”
I stop myself from rolling my eyes. What an exaggeration. Elizabeth’s a bit untidy, that’s all. It’s the collecting, the china, the hoping for a fortune. But tidy people like to tell untidy people off. Peggy at the charity shop is like that, muttering to herself if you leave the price tags in a tangle.
“So he’s finally got round to doing something, and I’m glad. Cleared quite a lot of things out, far as I could tell.”
“What’s he taken?” I say. “Elizabeth needs her things.”
“I can’t know that, really, can I?” She lets the dog lead her towards the road.
I follow on my side of the fence. Elizabeth’s side. “But you didn’t see Elizabeth?” I say, my voice rising. “When Peter was getting rid of things. You didn’t see her?”
The dog strains at the lead and points his nose at the house opposite. I turn, too, and, yes, that’s where the bacon smell is coming from. Not Elizabeth’s.
The woman opens her car door and shoos the dog in. “No. I didn’t see Elizabeth. But then I never do, except when Peter takes her out. I must admit I wasn’t sure about him before, but now he really seems to be looking after her properly. A good boy, isn’t he?”
I look away. I don’t think Peter is good at all. “But she isn’t in and I haven’t heard from her . . .”
“Must be with Peter then.”
I bite my lip. That doesn’t sound right.
“I’ve got his number if you want it,” the woman says, struggling to make the dog sit. “If you’re worried, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you calling him.”
“Please.”
She slams the car door, making the dog whine, and goes back into her house. The dog and I stare at each other through the car window; the shaggy hair above his eyes gives him a puzzled frown, as if he’s thinking: What am I doing in here when you’re out there? I have an urge to let him out and take him home. Could I do it before the woman comes back? No, she’s already returning, with a slip of paper.
“Tell Peter I send my best,” she says as she hands it to me over the fence. “If you remember.”
I feel myself flush again and stand outside the house for a while after she’s driven off, trying to think of something else to look for, something to prove that I’m not a silly old woman. The slip of paper flutters about in my hand. I find I’m missing the dog. If only I could get my hands on a bloodhound. Then we could follow Elizabeth’s scent trail. In the meantime perhaps I should put a note through Elizabeth’s door. Just to say I’ve been. Just to say I was looking for her, in case she comes back. Dad did that for Sukey.
None of us had seen her since the night of the fish and chips, and before a fortnight was up we knew there was something wrong.
Sukey always came to us for at least one meal a week, and sometimes Frank would come, too, bringing extra food, or things he knew Ma would find it hard to get hold of, like soap or matches. He did lots of people favours and seemed to be able to get extra things, including servicemen’s rations—tiny tins of butter, cheese, or jam. Ma would use those things first so that Dad didn’t see the tins. She didn’t want to break the law, but she couldn’t turn down extra food. Not when it was so scarce. “And your dad can keep his conscience,” Ma would say, “because it’s not him has to queue for two hours and then make three meals a day out of a slice of ham and half a tomato.” So I never said anything. And neither did Douglas, though he would narrow his eyes at Ma exclaiming over the things and packing them away.
There was no one in when Dad stopped at Sukey’s house on the way home from work, and no one in the week after. Ma went round a few mornings, too, and looked for Sukey at the shops in town, but she never saw her. It didn’t make any sense to us. One minute everything was fine, and the next she’d vanished. And Frank, too. He was never at the house, either, and Ma said he must have stopped in London. Dad tried the hospitals, thinking perhaps there’d been an accident, but neither Frank nor Sukey had been brought in. I kept looking at the comb I’d bought, thinking of the matching one I’d given Sukey. I felt there must be a way to find her, and the next time Dad went round to her house I asked to go with him.
I was surprised when he said I could—he always did his little jobs alone—and I started to regret my request as we walked the ten streets to Sukey’s in silence. It was a blue-skied, windy day, and the smell of bonfires wafted over us, following the undulating roads. Once, a man appeared at the crest of the hill, chasing his hat down towards us, but when I stopped it for him and handed it over, he looked at me strangely before throwing it up in the air and running after it again. Dad said he must be a bit touched and told me not to stare. It was the only time he spoke.
We passed Douglas’s old house on the way. Half of it had been blown off in an air raid two years before, but the inside wall was almost unscathed, and you could see a first-floor room above the heap of rubble. A clock still sat on the mantelpiece next to a statue of a bronze horse, and, as if to prove this hadn’t been caused by bad luck, the mirror was unbroken. A lot of the wallpaper had come away, but some hung on, and the green-and-white flowers on their pink background seemed unfairly exposed to the daylight and the rain and the passersby. I had been to see the house several times since Douglas moved in with us, and had stared up at it, trying to imagine our lodger living there with his mother.
At Sukey’s we stood on the doorstep and Dad peered in through the windows of the front rooms. But there was no one about, and the sound of a dog, barking madly somewhere in the distance, made the place seem truly deserted. The dining room was as full as ever of other people’s furniture, with bookcases and lamps and empty plant pots piled against the inside of the glass, looking as though they were desperate to escape some terrible fate within. Most of Frank’s house was used for storage. There was money in it, apparently, and his mother had made adjustments to each of the rooms when she’d run the business, moving walls and blocking up doors to create more space for the stuff of other people’s lives. Frank once told me he’d had to sleep on a walled-off part of the landing until his parents’ deaths, as his mother wouldn’t give up the space for him to have a bedroom.
The windows to the cellar had been bricked up, with just grilles in the front for air. I tried to get a look through, but of course it was too dark to make anything out, so I went round to the yard behind, where Frank kept his vans. The dog’s bark was louder here, and the sound moved with the direction of the wind, so it seemed as if the animal was circling the house. Only one van stood on the frost-polished cobbles, and it didn’t look like it had moved for a while. GERRARD’S REMOVALS had become RRARD’S REMO under the dust. I licked my finger and was uncovering the G from its cloak of grime when I heard a noise, a faint squealing somewhere above me, and looked up at the windows of the old stables.
For a moment I thought I saw fingers, the tips pressed against the glass, the skin flattened and white as they squeaked down towards the bottom of the pane. Coming closer, though, I saw the fat peach fringe of a standard lamp, resting flutteringly on the inside window ledge, and, knowing that the stables, too, were full of furniture, I guessed the squeaking had been mice nesting in amongst it. Even so, I started up the outside staircase, determined to get a better look. The door at the top was locked, or had something heavy resting against it, so I peered through its small window, squinting at the dark, dusty interior.
And then I saw it. A face looking back at me from deep in the room. I slapped a hand to the glass, shouting, before I realized what it was. My own reflection in a dressing-table mirror, which had been left on its side against a four-poster bed. Dad had come running at my shout, but drifted away again when he saw I was all right. And I was glad he didn’t come up. Something else I could see, through the grimy glass panes, was a box of rations stamped BRITISH ARMY.
I made my way back down the stairs, and in the quiet following my own voice I listened again to the hoarse bark of the dog and looked over the fences of the nearby gardens to see if I could locate it. Dad had his hands in his pockets and was staring at the ground when I came round the house, and he didn’t bother to comment on the absence of Frank or Sukey. Of course, he had come and knocked before, had stood and waited before, had searched and peered and then come home alone before. After a few moments he got out a pencil and wrote a note on the back of an envelope; he always carried a little bundle in a rubber band. I didn’t read it before he pushed it through the letterbox.
“Hello?” It’s a man’s voice, thick and slurred. I’m on the sofa in my sitting room. The phone’s just stopped ringing and it’s pressed against my ear.
“Hello. Who is it?” I say.
“Peter Markham. Who’s this?” The words are clearer now; there’s a whine to the voice.
Peter Markham: I know that name. “Is that Elizabeth’s son?” I ask.
“My mother’s name is Elizabeth. What do you want?”
“Oh, did I call you?” I say.
“ ’Course you phoned me.” He says something under his breath. “Bloody” something. “What is it you want?”
“Perhaps Elizabeth asked me to call you,” I say.
“Asked you? Why?” he says. “Where are you calling from?”
“I don’t know why,” I say. “It must be important.”
I hold the receiver away from my ear and pause to think, gripping the phone until the plastic creaks. When did I see Elizabeth? And what did she ask me to call about? I can’t remember. I rest the receiver on the arm of my chair and flick through the bits of paper on my lap, shuffling past the number for Peter Markham, a shopping list, and a recipe for gooseberry crumble. The drone of a car somewhere in the distance is like a fly buzzing under glass, like a memory flinging itself at the surface of my brain. I pick up the phone and hold the next note under the lamp: Where is Elizabeth? My stomach drops. “She’s missing,” I say aloud.
There’s a crackling noise as Peter breathes hard into the mouthpiece. “Who is this?” he says, his voice sharp.
“My name’s Maud. I’m a friend . . . of Elizabeth’s,” I say. “I had your number and I was a bit worried about your mother.”
“It’s the middle of the night, for fuck’s sake.”
I look at the clock above the gas fire; it says three o’clock. It’s not daytime. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not so good with time now. Oh, dear, I am sorry. I’ll leave you in peace. As long as Elizabeth is all right.”
The voice begins to sound muffled again, groggy. “I already spoke to your daughter. Yes, Mum’s all right. I’m going to put down the phone now, okay?”
There is a click at the end of the line, and a long beeping noise. He has hung up. I quickly retrieve my pen. Elizabeth all right says son, I write. Said fuck on phone, I add, though I’m not sure why it’s significant.
I replace the receiver carefully and find I’m thinking about Mrs. Winners. I haven’t thought of her for years. She was the first person on our street to get a telephone. It was solid and beautiful, with a polished wooden base. She was very proud of it and always stood by the window when “ ’phoning” so everyone could see, waving as you went by and pointing to the receiver. The shallowest pretext moved her to invite people in to use the phone, and I was amazed at the things she could find out through it. Not only news about her family—there were always stories about her cousin in Torquay and her sister in Doncaster—but things about the town, about the war. It seemed you could find anything out by telephone, and I wondered who it was she spoke to and how she remembered all the information. She rang lots of people for us when Sukey disappeared, always telling my mother to keep her spirits up, and sometimes I’d come home from school to find her in the kitchen with Ma, drinking tea and passing on crumbs of hope, and I would sit and listen, too, refilling the teapot when Ma asked.
I put my notes aside and make a pot of tea now. I don’t do this very often, as tea is quite tricky. But this time I remember to warm the pot and put in just three spoons of tea. As it’s only for me. I carry it through to the sitting room and put it on the coffee table, curving my sleeve-covered hands around it for warmth. Steam rises from the spout and clings to the underside of my chin. The feeling is so particular, so familiar, and yet I can’t think what it signifies. I try not to move, hoping the meaning will curl into my mind, but all I can think of is Dad putting something in the outside bin.
I’ve brought the tea cosy which Elizabeth gave me into the sitting room, but I never usually use it. I’m afraid it’s rather ugly, and bits of wool come off and get into the tea. It begins to feel like drinking a cloth pulp. Elizabeth’s own tea cosy is similar, but she has somehow managed to stop the wool from shedding. “I’ve drunk the excess wool away,” she told me. “It’s probably expanding inside my internal organs.” I make her a pot of tea whenever I’m at her house and she reminds me how to do it if I get lost halfway. She says it’s a luxury for her, as she’s too weak to lift the teapot herself now. Her carers sometimes make a pot, but they never stay long enough for her to drink more than one cup, and she can’t refill it after they’ve gone. And of course Peter never gets her anything. He just comes in, dumps her shopping, and leaves.
Elizabeth tells me he barely says a word to her and spends most of the time in another room. The kitchen or greenhouse. It’s cruel, when she’s stuck in the house all day and what she wants most is company. And then she said something recently. Something about him lying to her. There were things going missing, and then he lied. I wish I could remember the details. I pick up my notes again: Elizabeth all right says son. Somehow I don’t feel reassured. I fetch the tea cosy and put it on, fitting it neatly over the pot, no wrinkles. I don’t care about the shedding. It’s nearly four o’clock in the morning and I’m not drinking the tea anyway.