“Were we?” I say, snatching at the paper. “I think I’ll hang on to it for a bit, anyway.”

Helen tries to tug the list from my grasp, but I won’t let go and she soon gives up. “Well, that was a waste of time,” she says. “I’ll finish getting the tea.”

“And a little bit of toast?”

Toast was practically all Ma would allow me to eat that summer I was ill. Thin soup with dry toast; creamed rice for a treat. I knew I was nearly better the evening she brought me a little mutton chop.

“Though I don’t know how you deserve this,” she said, resting the tray on my lap. “What with all the bread and jam you had at breakfast.”

“I had porridge for breakfast, didn’t I?” I said, hardly paying attention, my mouth watering at the smell of the meat. “You gave it to me.”

“Yes, and then soon as I was out to the grocer’s you sneaked down for bread and jam. Half the loaf’s missing.”

“Ma, I didn’t—”

“Maud, love. You can have whatever you want, I’m glad you have an appetite again, but I have to plan what I’m going to do with our rations and—”

“Ma, really,” I said, chewing my first mouthful quickly and swallowing so I could defend myself properly. “I didn’t have the bread. It wasn’t me.”

“That’s funny. Can’t have been your father.” She moved my glass of milk a fraction and unfolded a tea towel for me to use as a napkin. “D’you think Douglas would take food? Doesn’t seem like him.”

It really didn’t seem like him, but there wasn’t another explanation. “I suppose he could have come back and made a sandwich to take on his late-morning rounds,” I said.

“I gave him a good breakfast, though,” Ma said, looking offended. “I never send him or your father off without that.”

I wiped my mouth and shrugged. “Perhaps he took it for someone else.”

“What, you mean he’s feeding someone? If he is, I’ll be wanting their coupons.”

“There was someone in the house,” I say, hanging on to the banisters. Why won’t anyone believe me?

“I do believe you, Mum,” Helen says. “But it was just a carer. A new carer, that’s all. She wasn’t a burglar. There was no need to call the police. Mind out the way, will you?”

She pushes by, and I watch her running a cloth along the skirting board. She leans and swishes her hands along, like some sort of athletics. Like those exercises we were supposed to do when we were young. Bending from the waist to keep trim. They always showed fields full of women doing them at the same time. Smiling. It never made me smile to do them.

Helen follows the skirting into the sitting room, and I follow her. “One two three four, one two three four. Keep smiling, girls.”

“What are you on about? God, it was embarrassing. Heaven knows what she thought. You accusing her like that. Telling everyone you were being robbed. By the carer,” she adds, when I look at her blankly.

“What would you do if you came down to breakfast and found a stranger in your kitchen?”

“Not a stranger, a carer.”

“Yes, yes, so she says. But how do I know she’s telling the truth? She could be anyone.”

Helen lets her hands drop to her sides and leaves the room. This is supposed to mean something. I push my toes into the carpet as I go after her, careful not to slip, careful. “I’m not safe in my own bed,” I say, though I’m losing track of what it is I’m in danger of. Surely it wouldn’t be possible to slip over when I’m in bed. “Helen, where exactly is it best to grow summer squash?” She doesn’t answer, and when I get to the hall it’s empty. “Oh, where have you gone?” I say. “Why d’you keep hiding?”

“I’m not hiding,” Helen says, coming out of the dining room. “I’m trying to get the soil off the walls. You’ve scuffed it over everything. Again. I don’t know how you manage it.”

She scrubs at a low bit of wall, moving up the stairs. I watch her heels on the steps, bouncing, and follow slowly, trying to place my feet in exactly the same position, trying for the same bounce. It’s better walking after another person. You can see how the steps work, and you can trust where they are when someone else has tested them first. I watch closely, but I don’t notice when she stops, and my shoulder bumps her on the hip.

“Oh, Mum, will you stop following me?” she says. “Stay in the kitchen, I’ll be back in a minute.”

I tramp back down and look out of the window. There’s a cat on the lawn and I try to open the kitchen door, but there’s something wrong with the handle. “You’ve left me open to attack here,” I say to Helen when she reappears. “With these flimsy locks. And this door is made of Bakelite or something, what’s the use of that?”

“The wooden one was rotted through. What was the use of that?”

“And I want that thing removed from outside the door. It spits the key out to anyone.”

“Not unless you have the code.”

“Well, someone’s been writing it down. Leaving it for burglars. I’ve got one of the notes here, look.” I find my bag and unzip the pockets; it’s awkward because my left hand’s bundled up in a sort of mitten, but soon I can push my right-hand fingers into the creases of fabric. Each one seems to be full of tissues, twisted like the limbs of trees and fraying into dust at the edges.

“How are the carers supposed to get in if we take the key safe away? And that’s your old bag, Mum. What are you looking for? There won’t be anything in there.”

She’s right: the only bit of paper in here is an envelope. Addressed to Elizabeth. Did I say I would post it to her? I must have forgotten. I hope it wasn’t anything important. I turn it over, trying to remember. There is a note taped to it: From Elizabeth’s house. And underneath: Where is Elizabeth?

Where is Elizabeth? I look at the envelope sadly. I suppose I should send it on. But where to?

I’m craving apples as I push my finger into the corner of the envelope. The crisp paper tears at the crease, and soon it is past repair so I may as well open the letter properly. I rip the envelope flap into scruffy shapes. There’s just a slip inside, from the library. An overdue notice for a book. The library van has tried to collect it for the past few weeks. It is overdue by months and the fine is more than ten pounds. I feel funny about having opened it now. Post is property, and opening it is like breaking and entering. My postman father was always very definite about that, and he’d be furious if he could see me now. He nearly caught me opening a letter of Douglas’s once.

The address on that envelope, to “Mr. D. Weston,” was in Sukey’s handwriting. That’s what made me snatch it up from the kitchen table. Ma always left our post in a heap there; Douglas’s along with ours. I never got anything, except occasionally a postcard from Uncle Trevor or a note from Audrey, but I liked to look through the pile anyway, trying to work out who the letters were from. Ma’s sister, Rose, had pretty but messy handwriting, and Uncle Trevor’s was very black, with deep marks in the paper. Audrey always left blotches between her words, and I could picture the sides of her hands stained with ink. I knew Sukey’s writing of course, though she didn’t send us letters. It would have been a bit funny, seeing as she was only about ten streets away. I think we got one when she was on her honeymoon, but that was the only time.

The letter to Douglas came about a week after we’d last seen Sukey, about a week before my parents started to worry. I was surprised no one had noticed the writing, and when Douglas didn’t pick it up on his way out to the pictures, a terrible curiosity overcame me.

I was stewing apples for the morning and I had to lay down the spoon to feel the envelope. It was just paper inside, folded once, I thought; perhaps twice. I held it to the light with one hand, stirring the apples with the other, but I couldn’t see anything; the paper of the envelope was too patched with labels over labels, to make it last longer. “Paper is a Weapon of War—save every scrap.” It was difficult to forget the warning, though there was no war any more to need weapons for. I’d meant to drop it back on the table, but for some reason I turned to the pan and, without really deciding to, angled the letter into a wave of steam. The apples simmered away, giving out their fruity, spicy smell, and I kept still, watching the paper buckle slightly with the moisture. My face was damp from standing over the saucepan, and soon the hand holding the letter was, too. The edge of the envelope flap started to come loose and I helped it along with my little finger, and in a few minutes it was halfway undone. That was when Dad walked in.

I hadn’t heard his footsteps on the stairs and in a panic I dropped the envelope into the saucepan and stirred. He opened the kitchen door to put something in the outside bin, and the cold air found my damp skin, making me shiver. Dad took Ma’s shawl from a chair on his way back in and put it round my shoulders.

“Must be nearly done now,” he said, tapping the handle of the pan.

I nodded stiffly, praying he wouldn’t look in it. When he walked back up to the sitting room I sagged against the stove in relief and then lifted the letter out with a spoon. It was a soggy mess, and there was no way I’d be able to draw it apart without tearing the paper. I pressed it between two sheets of newspaper and laid it on a shelf in one of the top warming ovens to dry, hoping that the ink hadn’t blurred too much, hoping no one would notice the faint blue tinge to the stewed apples when we had them at breakfast the next day.

Douglas got home as I was washing up the pan. Ma had come down to the kitchen to say good night and she asked him how his evening had been. He was as vague as ever about the film he’d seen.

“Er, it was one where . . . it was one of those ones with fancy costumes. It wasn’t very good.”

“The Wicked Lady, was it?” I said, turning with soapy hands to watch his face.

“Yes, that was it.”

“That’s not showing any more.”

He swung stiffly towards me, but his eyes didn’t lift from his shoes. “That can’t have been it then. I must have got it wrong.”

The hurt in his pose reminded me so much of the first time I’d met him, the blushing and embarrassment at his being caught out with the nicknames, that I felt a flood of guilt. Water dripped from my hands on to my slippers. Why was I always so cruel to him? I didn’t think I meant to be. I almost told him about the letter then, but thought that admitting I’d been trying to read his post might not make him feel any better.