Something’s happened. I have to get up, get out, get to Sukey. I pull on a man’s striped shirt and worn, unfamiliar trousers and push things into the pockets: tissues, a roll of Polo mints, a plastic pearl necklace. I wonder if this is a dream. I don’t think it is. My bedclothes are all of a tangle, but I can’t waste time straightening them, and I start to write a note, but I can’t think what to say. The stairs creak as I creep down and the front-door latch clanks noisily in my hand. I pause on the threshold, the muscles of my face taut, but everything is quiet as I set off towards Frank’s house.
The air outside is cold and fresh and almost sweet; I’m enjoying the feel of it on my tongue, and several minutes of walking go by before I realize I’ve lost my way, that this is not the road I thought. The next street is just as strange, and my heart gives a thud in my chest. I’m running out of time. I’ve got to get somewhere, or to someone. It’s urgent. My footsteps echo slightly in the dark and a fox runs out in front of me. He stops and looks at something on the other side of the road. I stop, too.
“Hello, fox,” I say, but he carries on staring at the opposite pavement. “Fox?” I say again, and wave my arms. For a moment it seems really important to get his attention, to have my presence acknowledged. I rummage in my pocket, working a mint out of its packet, and throw it on to the middle of the tarmac. It lands with a ticking bounce at the fox’s feet, and he turns, a point of light gleaming from each of his eyes. “Hello, fox.”
He runs off, and I walk on. It’s these acres of new houses that have me confused, I see now, though how I got here I don’t know. I’ll never find my way with the roads in a jumble like this. And I’m exhausted. I can’t have walked very far, but my legs are heavy and my back’s sore. I feel like an old woman. I work another Polo from its wrapper and throw this one on to the pavement behind me. It shines white, bright on the dark stones. At least I’ll know if I’m going round in circles. A car stops at the end of the road and a man gets out. He wanders towards me, his hands hooked in his belt, his shadow reaching out from the car lights. I begin to back away.
“Where are you going, love?” he says. He’s looking right at me. I can tell even though his face is just a silhouette.
“Home,” I call as I turn away, trying to force my legs to go faster. “My mother’s waiting up.”
The man makes a noise, a sort of snort. “Is she?” he says. “And where’s home?”
I don’t know. For a second I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, I say to myself, I wouldn’t tell him anyway. I wouldn’t tell him anyway and I’ll remember in a minute. When I get on the right path, I’ll remember. Soon the man is a good way behind me, still standing by his car. I turn down a street, then another, walking without seeing. On a pavement I find a Polo mint, white and shining in the night. I bend to pick it up and see a big turreted house in the distance. Perhaps I’ll recognize something when I reach it. I look into the front garden as I get near, but it’s just a dark space.
“Thought home was the other way?”
A man leans against a car. The lights glint off his fair hair, and that makes me think of Frank. He’s waiting for me. But he should be waiting for Sukey. “What are you doing here?” I say.
“Taking you to the station. Car’s waiting.”
“Station?” I ask as I get in. There’s a mint in my hand and I pop it into my mouth. “Are we getting a train?”
The man doesn’t answer me but asks if I want the window up or down.
“Down,” I say, putting my hand on the inside of the door. I want to leave something behind me, something to tell people I was here. The mint slides against my tongue and I spit it out as far as I can into the night. The man laughs and I laugh with him. “Frank,” I say. “Frank.”
I walked right into him one day after school. He was standing by Mrs. Winners’s hedge, looking towards our house, and he turned round as we collided, putting out his hands.
“Maud,” he said. “I was just thinking about paying you lot a visit.” There was a deep dent in the hedge where he had been leaning into it and I thought he must have been waiting there for a long time.
“How are your parents?” he asked, and I opened my mouth but found I was unable to make any sort of expression, and I wondered if I was imagining him.
“They haven’t heard from Sukey, then?”
I shook my head and studied his face. I suppose I wanted to see if he looked guilty. But he only looked shabby. There was stubble on his chin and his hair was a bit longer, his clothes were crumpled and grubby. I was shocked at the change. Where were the perfect creases down the front of his trousers, the starched collars, the shined shoes?
“Can’t understand it,” he said, leaning over me, his hands on my shoulders. “I mean, if she was going off somewhere you’d think she’d tell her husband, wouldn’t you?”
The words gave me a little flutter of hope. I thought of Sukey hiding from Frank. Hiding away somewhere safe. Of course she wouldn’t contact anyone if she was hiding.
“But I s’pose she might tell her sister, mightn’t she?” Frank looked down at me with his usual smile, eyebrows raised, a kind of forced gleam in his eye. It looked wrong on this new, scruffy face. His hands pressed down heavily on my shoulders and I realized he was studying me, too. “Did she tell you things, Maudie? Things about going away? About me? About anyone else?”
“Nothing, Frank,” I said. He dropped his hands, and my spine lengthened, my bones rose up. I felt light, too light, as if I might float into the sky and disappear. I wished he’d weigh me down again, but I couldn’t think how to ask.
“I miss her,” he said. “Miss having her about the place, her bits of things. I don’t know what they are. Hair things and bits of material. Bottles of scent.”
“Evening in Paris.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” He stared down at me. “You remember better than me. Come and have a drink.”
I didn’t say no, but I must have looked doubtful.
“Oh, come on, Maud,” he said. “I thought you weren’t a kid any more. Come and have a drink. Does me good to talk about her, you know?”
I knew. Ma and Dad hardly ever talked about her and I felt as if saying her name at home was forbidden. And here was someone who wanted to remember her properly, with words. I let him lead me to the end of the street and down the hill.
“What else does she have, Maud? What else? You remember.”
“A blue suit?” I began. “And lipstick. Victory Red. And an old compact that matches her perfume. Silver and navy blue stripe.”
“Yeah, that’s right. What else?”
“Shoes with buckles down the front, a green, scalloped tea dress, those earrings that look like sweets . . .” Thinking about what Sukey wore made me look down at myself. At my brown T-bar shoes and open-knit socks. I didn’t notice Frank stopping, and so I walked into him for the second time.
“Hide your school tie, for God’s sake. We’re here,” he said, and went in.
It was a pub. The Fiveways. It had what Dad called “a reputation” and I felt a shiver of apprehension. I’d never been in a pub before and I thought perhaps I shouldn’t go in then, and so I dithered, playing with a button that had come off my cardigan. I didn’t want to leave the familiarity of the pavement, but I desperately wanted to talk about Sukey, and so I dropped the button against the hinge of the cellar door. Somehow the idea of it waiting out here, for me to come back, made me feel better and I pushed the slim half-door open and went in after Frank.
It was smoky inside and the air was hot, and I couldn’t see Frank at first. I wandered in the direction of the bar and felt a hand on my back. “Go and sit over there before the landlady sees you,” he said, pushing me towards a table by the door. “I’ll get you a drink.”
I felt a stab of nervousness at that, but I went and sat down on a wooden stool. The bar was a few feet away, with dark-clad men’s backs lined up in front of it so I could hardly see the woman serving.
“Back so soon, Frank?” I heard her say. “Must’ve only been gone a couple of hours.”
I leant an elbow on the table. It was slick with spilt beer, and wetness seeped through my cardigan. I was taking it off when the door opened and a thin, sweating man walked in.
“Hello, girlie,” he said, hanging over the table.
A drop of his sweat hit my chest, bleeding into my school shirt, and I thought of Ma’s tears on the silk of Sukey’s nightdress. I watched the circle of moisture spread flatly, turning the fabric transparent and tried not to breathe so that it wouldn’t stick to the skin underneath. The man said something but I couldn’t take it in, only aware of his breath against the top of my head. I was starting to sweat myself, with fear, and I couldn’t bear the idea of mine mingling with this man’s.
“Is that a yes, then?” he said, and I turned my face away.
Frank had started to come towards me, and he winked as he walked. I felt odd, as if I had somehow taken Sukey’s place. Here I was in a pub with her husband, being bought a drink. And where was she? Had we switched places? Was Sukey at home with my parents, playing Patience and listening to the wireless?
Frank put the drinks down on the table. He looked at the sweating man, moving very slowly. “Can I do anything for yer?” he asked.
The man raised two moist palms as he backed away and I gratefully picked up the nearest glass. I could see Frank was having beer and I hoped he hadn’t bought the same for me.
“Ginger ale,” he said. “That all right?”
I nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. The noise in the pub grew as more people piled through the door.
“ ’Ello, Frank,” someone said as he brushed past. “You both back down south again?”
“That’s right,” Frank said, keeping his eyes on me.
I stared down at my bare knees, rubbing my nails over the reddish patches.
“You look just like her, you know?” Frank said, putting a hand to my chin.
I smiled. I wasn’t convinced, but I smiled all the same and Frank leant towards me for a moment, closing his eyes at me like a cat.
“How are things at your place, then? Just the same, are they?”
He rested a hand round his glass and a bead of moisture dripped slowly on to his thumbnail. It seemed to linger a moment on the cuticle before dropping like a tear, and I was distracted as I answered. “Not really. Ma and Dad are very worried—”
“Wotcha, Frank?” a fast-looking woman shouted across the pub. “When you going to give me them nylons you promised me?”
Frank turned slightly to nod at her before letting his eyes drift back to me. “And Douglas?” he asked. “He still there, is he?”
“Where else would he be?”