There was a lot of not eating and not drinking in the weeks after Sukey disappeared. And a lot of not talking, too. Ma and Dad barely spoke in front of me, but I overheard bits of their conversation when they thought I was out of earshot. The word “police” came up a lot.

One Sunday we were sitting at the kitchen table, not eating lunch and not looking at each other, the light beginning to dim outside, when Dad got up.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ll go and ask the neighbours.”

He swung his jacket on to his back and held the kitchen door open for me. I remember looking at Ma still sitting at the table; she didn’t turn to watch us go. She had already spoken to Sukey’s next-door neighbour, a woman who used the same greengrocer as us, but all she’d had to say was that there were some funny types around nowadays.

“You never know, someone might know something,” Dad said as we jogged along towards Sukey’s road.

The laundry had its doors open and there was something almost heady and luxurious about the scent of the soap. But it was a false smell, and somehow it made Sukey seem further away. We began at the house next to Frank’s yard. Dad knocked on the door, and it opened quickly, as if the man had been standing behind it. A head poked out: “Yer?”

The head was shaggy and a bad smell came from the dark corridor, souring the scent of the laundry.

Dad cleared his throat. “I was hoping you might . . . I wanted to ask . . .” He paused, took a breath. Moss was growing along the brick by the door frame and I curled my fingernails into its soft dampness.

“I’m looking for Susan Palmer. I mean”—Dad shook his head—“Susan Gerrard. She lives at number twenty-three. Have you seen her?”

“Never seen her.” The head shook its unwashed hair. “What—gone missing, has she?”

Dad nodded.

“What’s it to you?”

“She’s my daughter,” Dad said.

“Oh, right. Well, Frank’s at twenty-three, and she’s all right if she’s with him, I should think.”

“He’s not there, either.”

“There you are then. Taken her off somewhere.” A smile appeared under the hair; there were gaps in the teeth and a tongue was rubbed into each space.

Dad cleared his throat again. “She would have told us. I mean, they’re married,” he said. “She would have said if she were going off with him.”

“Oh, they’re married?” He sounded disappointed. “Then I couldn’t speculate, I’m afraid.”

We tried the next house along. While Dad knocked, I leant over the string that had replaced the railings and looked at the rubbish that had collected below street level. The old man at that address hadn’t seen Sukey, either, but he knew Frank.

“Lots of women going off now,” he said. “Seen it in the papers. Don’t seem to like it when their husbands come home, and so they’re off to London or some other ungodly place. Frank’s a good’un, she should be happy with him. He moved my sister down from Coventry, didn’t ask a penny. Said he had another job and could put her things in with it. My sister wouldn’t have been one to leave her husband, if she’d ever had one, that much I can tell you.”

Dad carried on down the street. I stood and watched him make his way to the end of the road. The sky was grey and the red of the bricks dulled, but it wasn’t cold.

“No one’s seen anything,” Dad said, coming back to me. “Or they’re not saying if they have. ‘Careless talk’ and all that. You’d think the war was still on. Shall we go home?”

I thought about the dress pattern that Sukey had started for me. I could picture it spread out on my bedroom floor. I couldn’t help thinking that she would walk in any minute and pick up the scissors. I hadn’t touched it since she’d cut out the sleeves, and I couldn’t bear the idea of going back to look at it.

“Let me knock at one,” I said and stepped up to a thickly painted door. The blue paint had run and then set in drips as if it were rain, and I traced the bumps as I waited for an answer. “I’m looking for my sister, Sukey,” I blurted out when the door opened. “She lived just down there. I don’t know what’s happened to her. She didn’t say she was moving away, and I can’t find her now. There’s no one at her house. Have you seen her? She’s got a comb like this.”

I was close to crying, felt embarrassed and childish, and wished I hadn’t knocked on the door at all. The woman, wearing a hairnet and standing just inside the door frame, looked quickly along the street.

“How many doors’ve you knocked on then?” she asked.

“I don’t know, maybe ten. No one’s seen her.” I breathed against the tears.

The woman shot another look towards Sukey’s house. “What number was your sister at?”

“Twenty-three.”

She nodded. “No, they wouldn’t have said, prob’ly. Look, I don’t know where they went—I wasn’t sure they’d gone, to be honest—but they had some trouble, I know that much. All sorts in and out of that house. And one night she runs out screaming.” She paused to let me gasp. “But it was quiet the next day and I sees her in the street, right as rain. So . . .”

“When was that?” Dad said, coming to stand behind me.

The woman looked over my shoulder at him. “Few weeks ago? Not sure. Seen him carrying a case since. Thought I saw her, too, but like I say, can’t be sure. And before you ask, no I don’t know where they were going.”

Dad was quiet for a bit after the door had closed, and then he turned to me. “Right,” he said. “You can do the talking from now on, seeing as how you got that woman to tell you something.”

He pushed me forwards to the house at the corner.

“Yes?” A man opened the door and stood with his shirt open. Its creases were sharp and it gave off the warm smell of freshly ironed cotton.

“I’m looking for my sister,” I said. “She lives at that house.” I pointed a finger, my arm shaking. “But she’s not there now. I thought she might have left a . . . forwarding address, or something?”

The man stepped over the threshold and leant over to look at Frank and Sukey’s front door, as if he needed reminding that there was a house there at all.

“Sister? Oh. Dark hair? No, no, I can’t say that I know where she’s gone. Had a bit of a row, though, I think. I remember something of the kind, anyway. Missing her, are you? I’m sure she’ll be back. Though now I think about it, it’s been weeks since I saw Frank.”

“You know Frank?”

“We’ve had a bit of a drink of an evening. Done me a couple of good turns has Frank.”

That made two people Frank had helped. I tried the house opposite Sukey’s next. The front door had frosted glass with a net curtain behind it. A woman in a very stiff-looking housecoat came to the door. I asked her if she’d seen Sukey.

“Can’t say I remember,” she said, fiddling with the lace collar under her chin. Her voice was rich and had a dry rasp to it which caught at my nerves. “I’m not one of these busybodies who watches everyone.”

“But someone told me she’d run into the street, screaming,” I said.

“Did they? Did they, really?” the woman looked accusingly at every house along the road, as if she was trying to find out who had given the game away. Then she shook her head very firmly. “I never heard anything. Not a hint. People don’t go about screaming in this street.”

“That’s funny. You see, we’ve had . . . accounts that she came out . . .” I looked into the woman’s face, the implacable lines of it, and sighed.

“Accounts, eh? I’m sure. And I bet they don’t know the half of it, either. Like I say, I never heard anything, but I know your sister was up to something. I know it. Sorry if it pains you. She had men round.”

“Men?”

“Yes. One at least. Young one. Here all the time, he was. Told me some nonsense about him being her parents’ lodger, but I knew . . .”

“Douglas, you mean?”

“A name like that, yes.”

“Oh, but that’s true. He is our lodger.”

“Is he now? Is he? Well, that’s as may be.” I thought she was going to say more, but she just nodded at me until I stepped down on to the pavement.

I moved on one; the next door was answered by a couple. They knew Sukey a bit. Had invited her and Frank in a few times, but never had an invitation back. They didn’t seem to mind, though.

“Frank gave my Don a bit of work when he came out of the army,” the wife said. “So kind of him, really kept us going, that did.”

“Someone else said they’d seen Frank leaving with a suitcase,” I said.

“Yes, well, since Don got a job at Muckley’s we don’t have very much to do with them, as I said. Not that we aren’t grateful for the work he did put Don’s way.”

I thanked them and started to walk back towards Dad. Thinking that made three favours.

“Hey, love?” A young woman came out of the stiff-house-coated lady’s door, wrapping a long mackintosh around her thin frame. I stopped and waited for her.

“I heard the screaming,” the woman said. “Sorry about my aunt, she’s got a dread of the unrespectable. But, look, it’s not what you think. It can’t have been Frank that your sister was afraid of.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know, but I saw Frank come home after that, so you see, it couldn’t have been him.”

I looked up at her and shivered. Had someone else been in the house that night?

“I saw them with suitcases, too.”

“Both of them?”

“Well, Frank anyway. A few weeks ago that was. I know Sukey didn’t like what was going on and—”

“How d’you mean?” I asked.

“Child, your family’s obviously the law-abiding sort.” She looked over at Dad as she said this. He had picked up someone’s lost glove and was arranging it over a railing at the end of the road. “But Frank . . . he isn’t. Sukey didn’t like his ‘business dealings.’” She emphasized the words with a raise of her eyebrows. “You never know. Perhaps they’ve gone away to make a fresh start.”

“But she hasn’t contacted us for weeks. She wouldn’t do that, she’d tell us where she was if she could. My dad thinks she’s been kidnapped or killed or something. He won’t say it, but that’s what he thinks.”

“It is odd. She’s a real family girl, isn’t she? Talks about you a lot anyway.” She smiled sadly at me. “Don’t know what else to say. Have you checked the hospitals?”

“When you heard her screaming, was that the same night they left?”

The woman frowned and twisted the material of her mackintosh in her hands. “Don’t think so. Can’t be certain. Time gets a bit mixed up sometimes, doesn’t it? I mean, the way I remember it, Frank went off with a case and came back the same night. But that doesn’t seem to fit, does it?”

“And you’re sure you haven’t seen them since?”

“Definite. There were a couple of men hanging around outside last week, but neither one was Frank. Probably police, knowing him.”

I nodded, looking over at the house. I felt something should be making sense by now. The woman squeezed my shoulder and slipped away, and I stood wondering when Sukey had spoken to her about me.

“Well?” Dad said when I got near him.

I shrugged. “She did come out screaming. That woman said to check the hospitals.”

He nodded, though I knew he’d done that already, and we started walking.

“You think she’s been kidnapped or something, don’t you?”

“It’s the ‘or something’ I’m worried about, poppet. She should never have married that man. I knew he was the wrong sort.”

I didn’t know what to say, so we walked in silence for a few minutes. I tried to remember anything else that might be helpful. “That woman I spoke to last said Frank had ‘business dealings.’” I tried to replicate the emphasis the woman had given the words, and Dad’s face creased. I thought he was going to cry and was amazed at the power of the words, but as we got to the end of the street I saw he was laughing.

“Oh, Maud, what’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows in the way I had.

“I don’t know,” I answered, allowing myself to smile. “I thought you would know.”

“You said something about Elizabeth’s son,” Helen says. We are in her dining room, and she is crouching down, getting out place mats for the table. There are people coming for lunch, but I can’t remember who or why. Katy rests against the door post, a silly smile on her face. She taps at one of these tiny phones.

“Did I?”

“Yes. Peter’s his name.” Helen’s voice is muffled by the cupboard she has her head in.

“I think I spoke to him,” I say, searching through my notes.

“Yes. I did, too, and it turns out Elizabeth’s not missing, is she?”

I flick through the paper.

“That’s what you said, Mum.” Helen pulls her head out of the cupboard to look at me.

“I said he said she was all right.”

“That’s good news then, isn’t it?” She gets up and puts a pile of mats on the table.

I’m still frowning over my writing. “I don’t know,” I say. “He swore at me.”

Helen bangs the cupboard door shut and the plates on the dresser rattle. The noise makes me swell with irritation for a moment. She puts a hand on a plate to silence it and then turns to lay the tablecloth out. She’s a bit haphazard about it and can’t seem to get it even. “You could help, you know,” she says to Katy.

My granddaughter nods and shifts a foot from the door, but she doesn’t make it any further and she doesn’t take her eyes from the phone.

“He was quite angry,” I say. “Helen, if a friend of mine called you and said they were worried about me, what would you say?”

“I’d say, ‘You should be worried because she’s quite dotty.’”

“Helen.”

“Okay, okay.” She drops the edge of the tablecloth. “I’d say, ‘Thank you for your concern, but there’s nothing to worry about. The men in white coats are coming for her soon.’”

I sigh.

“Fine. I wouldn’t say the last bit.” She picks up the tablecloth again. Pulls it towards her.

“But you wouldn’t get angry.”

“No.” She walks round to pull the other side, sighing in Katy’s direction.

“You see, Helen? I don’t trust him.”

“Oh, Mum.”

“Surely only someone with a guilty conscience—”

“You called him in the middle of the night. He was bad-tempered, and no wonder. That doesn’t mean he lied or that he’s done his mother in.”

“I know. But I think he’s hiding something.”

“Right, Katy, go and hang about somewhere else.” She opens a drawer and rakes though it. “Mum, put these out, would you?”

She hands me a bundle of knives and forks. I put them down in the centre of the table and follow her to the kitchen. There’s a smell of rosemary and mint and I hope we’re having lamb, but knowing my daughter, it’s as likely to be some sort of tafoo or torfo business.

“Mum!” she says, turning round and bumping into me. “Stay in there and set the table, will you?”

“Sorry.” I go back to the dining room and stand still for a minute. I can’t think what I’m supposed to be doing, but I can hear someone in another room.

“Katy, I’ve told her a hundred times,” a voice says. “And I can’t take her there. Peter was adamant. I just wish she’d forget about it.”

There’s a murmuring answer and then: “Oh, very bloody funny.”

I follow the noise. Helen is in the kitchen.

“Back again?” she says. “I asked you to help me. Have you got a bit of paper?”

She puts out a hand and I give her a blue square. She fishes in a drawer for a pen, writes “Set the table,” and hands the square back to me.

“Give me the rest of the notes,” she says. “I’ll put them somewhere safe.”

Back in the dining room, I begin to arrange things on the table, mats spaced evenly, spoons above. I pick up a knife and fork and stand thinking for a minute. I can’t remember which side they go. Fork right? Or fork left? I lay them down where I think they should be, but for the next place along I change my mind. I take another knife and fork. Looking at my hands, I try mimicking the action of cutting up food. Do they look right where they are, or should I swap them over? I try swapping. They look the same.

When Helen comes in I am still examining my hands, looking at the wrinkles on the knuckles, the papery skin, the brown spots.

“Have you finished, Mum?” Helen asks. “What are you doing?”

I don’t look up. It’s such a little thing—knowing where to put cutlery—but I feel like I’ve failed an important test. A little piece of me is gone.

“It looks very nice,” she says, her voice too bright. She walks round the table and I watch her out of the corner of my eye. I see her look at me. I see her hesitate and then quickly swap the knife and fork. She says nothing. Doesn’t point out my mistake.

“I don’t want to set the table again,” I say.