Elizabeth Is Missing (8 page)

“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.

I
t’s dark out here, but there’s a glimmer of grey light somewhere low in the sky; it will be day soon and I must finish this. A mist of rain clings to my hair, to my arms and thighs. It makes me shiver but thankfully doesn’t disturb the soil. That stays in its perimeter pile. I have to lean right in to dig now. A long breath, pulled deep into my lungs, leaves me with the raw, wet taste of the bruised earth. My knees shift, nestled in the sodden ground, and the fabric of my trousers slowly draws moisture up my legs. Soil is caked on my hands and driven into my fingernails to the point of pain. Somewhere, somewhere, the other half of the compact hides. In front of me is a hole, a hole that I’ve been digging, in the middle of the green garden carpet. And suddenly I can’t think what I’m doing here, what it is I’m looking for. For a moment I’m too frightened to move, not knowing what I might do next. It could be anything: I might tear the flowers from their beds or chop down the trees, fill my mouth with leaves or bury myself, for Helen to dig up again.

Panic starts to seep from my stomach and my shoulder blades shudder together. The cold has got into my joints and I ache with it. Slowly I brush what dirt I can from my hands and, wiping them on the green carpet—the garden carpet, not moss, the other thing—I push myself steadily upright. And still I have the urge to go on digging, to search for something in the ground. But what can be here in my own garden? Unless it’s something I’ve planted. Have I put something here? And forgotten?

I sway on my feet, the grey, shadowless garden shimmering around me, but then a spark of pale gold drops over the trees in the distance. Dawn plummeting into the day. I press a foot against a mound of soil and work it into the hole, trampling the newly flat earth. It’s dawn and I’m out in the garden. And how lovely, really. How nice. To get some fresh air and watch the sun coming up. I’m shaking still as I walk back to the house, but there’s no need. I just came out to see the dawn and have a bit of air and some exercise. Nothing to worry about. And now I’ll go and do something I haven’t done for ages.

I’ll have a bath.

Inside, I run the taps, adding some sort of gloopy, flowery liquid, something Helen must have bought for me. I peel my trousers from my knees, the skin greyish after its dawn encounter with the wet earth, and take off the silky nightdress I have on top. I never sleep in this; I must have put it on especially. I wish I knew why—such a stupid thing to wear. I squeeze the fabric in my fist, listening to the muffled fizz of bubbles forming in the bath.

No, I think, perhaps it was a treat. A lovely silk nightie for a lovely golden morning. And why not? I drop it on to the floor and clamber carefully into the bath. I like being in the water. Old people aren’t supposed to have baths, we’re meant to shower while sitting on a little stool. But you can’t think when you’re having to balance on a bit of plastic with water gushing over your head. And I need to think.

My hands tremble as I reach for the cake, the slippery washing cake, but really I don’t know why, I’m having a lovely time, and anyway, I won’t mind so much once this dirt has come away. My mouth has that stale, grimy taste that makes me think of the time I spent ill in bed as a child, and I rub the edge of the washing cake against my lips. It’s wonderful getting clean again after you’ve been working hard. I wish I could remember what I was supposed to have been working hard at.

When I’m clean and dry I rummage in the wardrobe for one of Patrick’s old shirts. Helen wanted to take them all to wear when she’s gardening, but I kept a few. Some of them are very good, he had them specially made for him while he was working in Kuwait, and the material is soft and thick. It’s nice to be able to put one on, a reminder, a comfort. I can almost convince myself they still smell of him, though of course they’ve been washed many times between his death and now. This shirt is white with dove-grey stripes, the cotton cold at first. Too big for me, but that’s what’s nice. I tuck it into my trousers and button my cardigan over it before going downstairs. Carla has arrived and is making a pot of tea.