Elizabeth Is Missing (6 page)

I can’t remember it. She thinks I’m lying, but I’m not lying. I can’t remember my address. I can’t remember my address. “It’s
something
Street,” I say. “Or
something
Road.”

The woman looks at me with disbelief. “Did you come here with someone?” she asks. “Who was it? We can page them.”

I open my mouth, but I can’t remember that, either.

“Okay. Come with me,” she says.

She puts her hand on the back of my arm and guides me across the shop. I can’t think where we’re going. We walk through a department full of those beds for sitting on, comfy, bouncy sitting beds, and I long to collapse into one. Finally we come to a high desk.

“Can you remember who you came with now?” she shouts, as though I’m deaf.

I tell her I can’t, and my stomach closes in on itself.

“You need to give me a name so I can page someone.”

She is still shouting. I can’t think with her shouting. A man in an overall, wheeling a trolley of strange mutilated-looking dolls, stops. “Bloody hell, Grace,” he says, “what are you doing?”

“We’ve got a vase smashed in Glass, and this lady’s lost and I don’t know who to page to come and get her,” she says, not lowering her voice much.

We’re standing near a bank of TVs. The flickering screens, like a thousand birds flapping their wings, make me feel dizzy. They make me think of Sukey sliding the comb into her hair, and of the hedge next to our house, and of the woman in the foliage turning to run from Douglas’s gaze.

“Just page her name and say she’s here,” the man says. He turns to me. “What’s your name, love?”

For an instant I think I have forgotten that, too. But then it comes to me, and the next moment I hear the woman’s voice pronounce it over the loudspeaker. We wait. I don’t know how long. The woman goes off to talk to someone and I can see those sitting beds in the distance. Surely no one would mind if I went for a rest.

The first one I come to is a “Prima Sudeley Sofa, large, in mushroom chenille.” It’s lovely, and cosy. I sink into it. It’s such a relief to be sitting that I’m in danger of nodding off.

A sudden loud announcement wakes me. Something about discounts on bath mats. I lever myself up from the sofa and stand for a minute.

“Oh, Mum. Where on earth have you been?” Helen says, coming out of a lift. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

She takes my arm and we go back down in the lift; she will hold my arm but won’t catch my eye in any of the mirrored walls. The brown-tinted glass deepens her frown. She is cross with me. I worried her, wandering off like that, she says. Funny how things are reversed. Helen was always running away when she was a child. I’d find her school satchel half packed with spare sweaters, bruised apples, and favourite shells, or, if I missed that sign, I’d be forced to go looking for her across the heath. When Patrick was back from the Middle East I left him to deal with it, not bothering to unpack the bag or chase off after her. She knew it, too, knew I’d ignored her one repeated act of rebellion. And I paid for that when she was a teenager. Strange now to think that she’s the child who stayed here, and my son, Tom, who hated to spend a night away from home, has made his life in another country.

We find Katy when the lift doors open, a security guard watching her paint each of her nails with a different-coloured polish from the set of testers on a counter. He looks at me as I walk past and seems about to speak. I feel a sudden jolt of memory, though I can’t quite place it.

“I think I might have broken something,” I say, as we walk through the doors, into the street.

“No, Mum, your arm’s just bruised, remember?”

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.