The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

‘And the downstairs?’ she says.

‘That’s the strangest thing.’ He takes the top off a bourbon and makes a start on the buttercream. ‘The lounge and the hallway are a mess. Completely gone. But the kitchen is almost untouched. Just a few smoke marks on the walls.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Not a thing,’ he says. ‘Clock ticking away, tea towel folded on the draining board. Ruddy miracle.’

‘Not a miracle for his mother, God rest her soul.’ Dorothy reaches for the tissue in her sleeve, then thinks better of it. ‘Not a miracle they came back early.’

‘No.’ Harold looks at the next biscuit, but puts it back in the packet. ‘Although she wouldn’t have known a thing. The flu had made her delirious, apparently. Couldn’t even get out of bed. That’s why he’d gone to ring for the doctor.’

‘I don’t understand why he didn’t take her back to the nursing home.’

‘What? In the middle of the night?’

‘It might have saved her life.’

Dorothy looks past Harold and the curtains, and out on to the avenue. Since the fire, it had slipped into a quiet, battleship grey. Even leftover Christmas decorations couldn’t lift it. They seemed dishonest, somehow. As though they were trying too hard to jolly everyone along, to pull their eyes from the charred shell of number eleven.

‘Stop over-analysing things. You know too much thinking makes you confused,’ Harold says, watching her. ‘It was a discarded cigarette, or a spark from the fire. That’s what they’ve settled on.’

‘But after what was said? After what we all decided?’

‘A discarded cigarette.’ He took the biscuit and broke it in half. ‘A spark from the fire.’

‘Do you really believe that?’

‘Loose lips sink ships.’

‘For goodness sake, we’re not fighting a war, Harold.’

He turns and looks through the window. ‘Aren’t we?’ he says.

Number Three, Rowan Tree Croft

28 June 1976

‘Do you not think people might be a tad suspicious, two little girls knocking on their door and asking if God is at home?’ Mrs Morton put a bowl of Angel Delight on the table.

‘We’re going undercover.’ I carved my name in it with the edge of a spoon.

‘Are we?’ said Tilly. ‘How exciting.’

‘And how do you propose to do that?’ Mrs Morton leaned over and pushed the bowl a little nearer to Tilly.

‘We’ll be doing our Brownie badges,’ I said.

Tilly looked up and frowned. ‘We’re not in the Brownies, Gracie. You said it wasn’t our cup of tea.’

‘We’re going to be temporary Brownies,’ I said. ‘Ones who are more casual.’

She smiled and wrote ‘Tilly’ in very small letters at the edge of the bowl.

‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear any of that.’ Mrs Morton wiped her hands on her apron. ‘And why this sudden fascination with God?’

‘We are all sheep,’ I said. ‘And sheep need a shepherd to keep them safe. The vicar said so.’

‘Did he?’ Mrs Morton folded her arms.

‘So I want to make sure we’ve got one.’

‘I see.’ She leaned back against the draining board. ‘You do know that this is just the vicar’s opinion. Some people are able to manage quite successfully without a shepherd.’

‘But it’s important to listen to God.’ I sank my spoon into the bowl. ‘If you don’t take any notice of Him, He runs after you.’

‘With knives,’ said Tilly.

Mrs Morton frowned all the way up her forehead. ‘I expect the vicar told you that as well.’

‘He did,’ I said.

The clock on the wall ticked away the silence, and I watched Mrs Morton’s mouth trying to choose words.

‘I just don’t want you to be disappointed,’ she said eventually. ‘God isn’t always easy to spot.’

‘We’ll find Him, and when we do, everyone will be safe and Mrs Creasy will come home.’ I slid a spoonful of Angel Delight into my mouth.

‘We’ll be local heroes,’ said Tilly, and she smiled and licked the tip of her spoon.

‘I think it might take a little more than God to bring Mrs Creasy back.’ Mrs Morton leaned over and opened another window. I could hear an ice-cream van drift through the estate, drawing children from their gardens like a conjuror.

‘We’ve decided she probably isn’t dead after all,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s something.’

‘And now we need God to find her. You have to remember that God is everywhere, Mrs Morton.’ I waved my arms about. ‘So He can quite easily find people, and bring them back from captivity.’

‘Who said that?’ Mrs Morton took off her glasses and pinched at the marks they had left.

‘God,’ I replied, in a very shocked voice, and I made my eyes as wide as I could.

Mrs Morton started to speak, but then she sighed and shook her head, and decided to deal with the drying up instead.

‘Just don’t raise your hopes,’ she said.

‘It’s nearly Blue Peter.’ Tilly slid from her chair. ‘I’ll put the television on to warm up.’

She disappeared into the front room, and I unpeeled my legs from the seat and took my bowl to the sink.

‘Where are you going to begin?’ said Mrs Morton.

‘We’ll just work our way round until He pops up.’ I handed her the bowl.

‘I see.’

I had got as far as the hall when she called me back.

‘Grace.’

I stood in the doorway. The ice-cream van had travelled further away, and broken notes edged into the room.

‘When you go around the avenue,’ she said, ‘you’ll make sure that you miss out number eleven.’

I frowned. ‘Will I?’

‘You will,’ she said.

I started to speak, but her face didn’t suggest that it wanted to have a conversation.

‘Okay,’ I said.

There was a beat before my answer. But I don’t think Mrs Morton heard it.

Number Four, The Avenue

29 June 1976

The policeman was very tall, even after he took his hat off.

I had never seen a policeman close up before. He wore a thick uniform, which made him smell of material, and his buttons were so shiny I could see our whole kitchen reflected back at me as he spoke.

Routine inquiries, he said.

I thought I would like a job where inquiring about everyone else’s private business was considered perfectly routine.

I watched the cooker dance around on his chest.

There had been a knock on the door in the middle of Crossroads. My mother was all for ignoring it, until my father looked out of the window and saw a police car parked on the other side of our wall. He said Shit, and I laughed into a cushion and my mother told my father off, and my father nearly fell over Remington on his way into the hall.

Now the policeman stood in the middle of our kitchen, and we stood around the edges, watching him. He reminded me a bit of the vicar. They both seemed to be able to make people look small and guilty.

‘Well now, let me see, well,’ my father said. He wiped the sweat from his top lip with a tea towel and looked at my mother. ‘Can you remember when we last saw her, Sylve?’

My mother gathered the place mats up from the kitchen table. ‘I can’t say as I do,’ she said, and put them all back again.

‘It could have been Thursday,’ my father said.

‘Or Friday,’ my mother said.

My father cornered a glance at my mother. ‘Or Friday,’ he said into his tea towel.

If I had been the shiny policeman, I would have taken one look at their behaviour and arrested them on the spot for being master criminals.

‘Actually, it was Saturday morning.’

Three pairs of eyes and a tea towel turned towards me.

‘Was it now?’ The policeman crouched down and I heard the material creak around his knees.

It made him smaller than me, and I didn’t want him to feel awkward, so I sat down.

‘It was,’ I said.

His eyes were as dark as his uniform. I stared into them for a very long time, but he didn’t appear to blink.

‘And how do you know that?’ he said.

‘Because Tiswas was on.’

‘My kids love Tiswas.’

‘I hate it,’ I said.

My father coughed.

‘So what did she say when you saw her, Grace?’ the policeman creaked again and shifted his weight.

‘She knocked on the door because she wanted to borrow the telephone.’

‘They don’t have one,’ said my mother, in the kind of voice people use when they have something that someone else doesn’t.

‘And why did she want to do that?’

‘She said she wanted to ring for a taxi, but I didn’t let her in because my mother was having a lie-down.’

We all turned to my mother, who turned to her place mats.

‘I’ve been told to never let strangers into the house,’ I said.

‘But Mrs Creasy wasn’t a stranger, was she?’ The policeman finally blinked.

‘She wasn’t a stranger, but she looked strange.’

‘In what way?’

I leaned back in the chair and thought about it. ‘You know how people look when they have really bad toothache?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, a bit worse than that.’

The policeman stood up and put his hat back on. He filled the whole room.

‘Will you find her?’ I said.

The policeman didn’t answer. Instead, he went into the hall with my father and they spoke so quietly I couldn’t hear a word they said. Even when I held my breath and leaned all the way across the kitchen table.

‘I don’t think they will,’ I said.

My mother emptied the teapot. ‘No,’ she said, ‘neither do I.’

Then she filled the kettle very violently, because I don’t think she meant the words to come out.

*

I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter how many times people asked me.

Even when Mr Creasy burst into our sitting room and stood between my mother and Hilda Ogden, I still didn’t know. His face was so close to mine, I could taste his breath.

‘She didn’t tell me where she wanted to go, she only asked if she could borrow the telephone,’ I said.

‘She must have told you something?’ Mr Creasy’s words crawled across my skin and crept inside my nostrils.

‘She didn’t. She just wanted to ring for a taxi.’

His collar was frayed at the edges, and there was a stain on the front of his shirt. It looked like egg.

‘Grace, think. Please think,’ he said. He put his face even closer to mine, waiting to snatch the words as soon as they appeared.

‘Come on, old man.’ My father tried to edge between us. ‘She’s told you everything she knows.’

‘I just want her home, Derek. You should understand that, surely?’

I saw my mother start to get up, and then hold the arms of the chair to keep herself still.

‘Perhaps she was thinking of going back to where she used to live.’ My father put a hand on Mr Creasy’s shoulder. ‘Walsall, was it? Or Sutton Coldfield?’

‘Tamworth,’ said Mr Creasy. ‘She hasn’t been back for six years. Not since we got married. She doesn’t know anyone there now.’

His breath still fell into my face. It tasted uneasy.

*

‘Where’s Tamworth?’ Tilly dragged her school bag along the pavement.

It was the last day of term.

‘Miles away. In Scotland,’ I said.

‘I can’t believe you were interviewed by a real policeman and I wasn’t in on it. Was it like The Sweeney?’

Tilly’s mother had recently given in to a television set.

I thought about the smell of material, and how my words were recorded in a small, black notebook by the shiny policeman, who made notes very slowly with a pencil, and licked his lips as he wrote.

‘It was exactly like The Sweeney,’ I said.

We threaded through the estate. Around us, the temperature loosened and stirred. Milk was rushed from doorsteps, car doors were pulled wide, and people hurried dogs along pavements before the day was stolen away by the heat.

‘Is the policeman going to look for her?’ Tilly’s bag scraped the concrete and clouds of white dust held the air. ‘What did he say?’

‘He said that Mrs Creasy is officially a Missing Person.’

‘Missing from what?’

Thinking made my feet slower. ‘Her life, I suppose.’

‘How can you be missing from your own life?’

I slowed a little more. ‘Missing from the life you belong in.’

Tilly stopped to pull up her socks. ‘I wonder how you know which one that is.’ She spoke with an upside-down head.

I realized I had stopped moving, and I turned away from Tilly so I could frown.

‘You’ll understand when you get older,’ I said.

Tilly looked up from her socks. ‘Your birthday’s only a month before mine.’

‘Anyway, God knows exactly where you belong.’ I marched away from the questions. ‘So it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks.’

‘Where do we start looking for Him?’ Tilly still pulled at her socks, trying to make them the same height.

‘Mr and Mrs Forbes.’ My hand followed the hedge as I walked. ‘When we’re singing hymns, they never have to look at the words.’

‘But we won’t find Mrs Creasy if she’s gone to Tamworth, even with God,’ Tilly shouted.

A cat began following us. It padded along the top of a fence, marking its journey with careful paws. I watched it stretch to the next wooden post and, for a moment, we had matching eyes. Then it jumped to the pavement, folded itself into the hedge and disappeared.

‘Was that next-door’s cat?’

But Tilly was too far away. I turned back and waited for her to catch up.

‘She hasn’t gone to Tamworth,’ I said. ‘She’s still here.’

Number Six, The Avenue

3 July 1976

‘Go on then.’ Tilly elbowed me with the edge of her jumper.

I stared at the doorbell. ‘I’m working up to it,’ I said.

Mr and Mrs Forbes’ house was the kind of house which looked as though no one was ever at home. All the other houses on the avenue seemed bewildered by the heat. Fingers of weeds crept along garden paths, windows were dimmed by a film of dust, and long evenings lay abandoned on lawns, as if everything had forgotten what it was supposed to be doing. The Forbeses’ house, however, remained smug and determined, as though it was setting an example to all the other, more slovenly, houses.

‘Perhaps no one is in,’ I said, ‘perhaps we should try tomorrow.’

I slid the toe of my sandal along the edge of the doorstep. It was brushed smooth.

‘They’re definitely at home.’ Tilly pressed her face against a slice of stained glass in the door. ‘I can hear a television.’

I put my face next to hers. ‘Perhaps they’re watching a film,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we should come back later.’

‘Do you not think we owe it to Mrs Creasy to ring the bell as soon as possible?’ Tilly turned to me and adopted her most serious face. ‘And to God?’

Sunlight reflected from the brilliant white of Mrs Forbes’ Cotswold chippings, and I creased my eyes against the glare.

‘As a Sixer, Tilly, I have decided to assign ringing the doorbell to you, while I prepare my speech.’

She looked up at me from under her sou’wester. ‘But we’re not actually in the Brownies, Gracie.’

I gave a small sigh. ‘It’s important to get into character,’ I said.

Tilly frowned and stared at the front door. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps no one is at home.’

‘Someone is very much at home.’

Mrs Forbes appeared on the path which ran down the side of house. She wore the kind of clothes my mother saved for doctor’s appointments, and under her arm was a large roll of dustbin bags. She snapped one free, and a small group of pigeons tumbled from the roof in shock.

She asked us what we wanted. Tilly stared into the chippings and I folded my arms and stood on one leg, and tried to take up a very small amount of room on the doorstep.

‘We’re Brownies,’ I said, as soon as I remembered.

‘We’re Brownie Guides. We’re here to lend a hand,’ said Tilly, although she managed to stop herself from singing.

‘You don’t look like Brownies.’ Mrs Forbes narrowed her eyes.

‘We’re being casual.’ I narrowed my eyes back.

I said that we needed help from our neighbourhood, and Mrs Forbes agreed that she was, indeed, our neighbourhood, and suggested we might like to come inside, out of the heat. Behind Mrs Forbes’ cardigan, Tilly waved her arms around in excitement, and I waved my arms around back again to try and calm her down.

We followed Mrs Forbes’ heels down the side of the house, as they clicked a neat path on the concrete, and our sandals smacked and squabbled behind her in a tangle of keeping up. After a moment, she turned, and as Tilly and I were both still waving our arms around, we almost fell into her.

‘Does your mother know you’re here, Grace?’ she said. She held her hands up, as though she were directing traffic.

‘We told her, Mrs Forbes,’ I said.

Her hands dropped back, and the tap of her heels began again.

I wondered if Mrs Forbes realized that telling my mother something and my mother knowing about it were usually two very different things, that my mother’s fingers would often fly to her throat and she would strongly deny ever being told anything of the sort – even when my father presented her with witnesses (me) and a word-by-word account of the entire conversation.

‘She never asked about my mum,’ Tilly whispered.

Tilly’s mother was usually considered too unpredictable to ask after.

I straightened the back of her jumper. ‘It’s all right. Asking about my mum will cover both of us. You are always welcome to borrow her.’

Tilly smiled and linked her arm through mine.

I sometimes wondered if there was ever a time when she wasn’t there.

*

Mrs Forbes’ carpet was the colour of cough syrup. It ran along the hall and into the sitting room, and when I looked back, I saw it climb all the way up the stairs. There were still lines where the vacuum cleaner had sailed across, and as we walked into the sitting room, there was an extra square of syrup, just in case you were to discover that a whole houseful wasn’t quite enough.

Mrs Forbes asked if we’d like some cordial, and I said yes, and I wouldn’t say no to a custard cream, and she’d made an oh shape with her mouth, and left us to sit on a dark pink sofa, which had twisty arms and its own set of dimples. I decided to balance on the edge. Tilly had sat down first. The seats were so deep, her legs didn’t reach the floor, and they stretched out in front of her, like a doll.

She rolled across and peered into the gap between the sofa and the wall.

‘Can you see Him yet?’ she said, from near the carpet.

‘Who?’

She rolled back, her face crimson with effort. ‘God,’ she said.

‘I don’t think He’s simply going to pop out of the sideboard, Tilly.’

We both looked at the sideboard, just in case.

‘But shouldn’t we make a start?’ she said. ‘Mrs Creasy might be in peril.’

I stared at the room. It looked as though someone might have served it into the house with an ice-cream scoop. Even the things that weren’t pink had a mention of it, as if they hadn’t been allowed through the door without making a firm commitment. There were twists of salmon rope holding back the curtains, fuchsia tassels on each of the cushions, and the pot dogs guarding the mantelpiece had garlands of rosebuds around their necks. Between the pot dogs was a line of photographs: Mr and Mrs Forbes sitting on deckchairs at a beach, and Mr Forbes standing next to a motor car, and Mrs and Mrs Forbes with a group of people, having a picnic. Right in the centre was a girl with her hair pinned into waves. All the people in the other photographs looked away from the lens with serious eyes, but the girl stared straight into the camera and smiled, and it was so honest and so unprotected, it made me want to smile straight back.

‘I wonder who she is,’ I said.

But Tilly was examining the space behind the settee. ‘Do you think He’s down here somewhere?’ She lifted a cushion and peered at the back of it.

I looked up at the champagne teardrops which spilled from the light fitting. ‘I think it might be a bit too pink, even for Jesus,’ I said.

*

Mrs Forbes returned with a tray and a selection of biscuits.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have any custard creams,’ she said.

I took three fig rolls and a garibaldi. ‘That’s all right, Mrs Forbes. I’ll just have to manage.’

I could hear the noise of a television in the room next door, and Mr Forbes’ voice shouting instructions at it. It sounded like a football match. Even though the sounds were just the other side of the wall, they seemed very far away, and the rest of the world played itself out beyond the pink insulation, leaving us wrapped in Dralon and cushions, protected by china dogs and cellophaned in an ice-cream silence.

‘You have a very nice house, Mrs Forbes,’ said Tilly.

‘Thank you, dear.’

I bit into my garibaldi and she rushed a paper doily on to my knee.

‘The key to a tidy house is anticipation. And lists. Lots of lists.’

‘Lists?’ I said.

‘Oh yes, lists. That way, nothing ever gets forgotten.’

She pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of her cardigan.

‘This is today’s list,’ she said. ‘I’m up to the dustbins.’

It was a long list. It crossed over two pages in loops of blue ink, which thickened and smudged where the pen had stopped to think. As well as vacuuming the hall and putting out the dustbins, it had entries like clean teeth and eat breakfast.

‘Do you put everything on your list, Mrs Forbes?’ I started on my first fig roll.

‘Oh yes, best not to leave anything to chance. It was Harold’s idea. He says it stops me being slapdash.’

‘Could you not remember things without writing them down?’ said Tilly.

‘Heavens, no.’ Mrs Forbes shrank back in her chair, and she faded into a pink landscape. ‘That wouldn’t do at all. Harold says I’d get in a terrible mess.’

She folded the piece of paper exactly in half, and returned it to her pocket.

‘So how long have you two been in the Brownies?’

‘Ages,’ I said. ‘Who’s the girl in the photograph?’

She frowned at me and then looked over at the fireplace and frowned again. ‘Oh, that’s me,’ she said, in a surprised voice, as though she had temporarily forgotten all about herself.

I studied Mrs Forbes and the girl in the photograph, and tried to find something that matched. There was nothing.

‘Don’t look so shocked,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t born old, you know.’

My mother used this saying quite frequently. I had learned from experience not to say one word in reply, and I sipped my cordial to avoid having to make a comment.

She walked over to the mantelpiece. I always thought of Mrs Forbes as being solid and blustery, but close up she became diluted. Her posture was a slight apology, the folds of her clothes measuring out the end of a story. Even her hands looked small, trapped by arthritis and livered with time.

She ran her finger around the frame of the picture. ‘It was just before I met Harold,’ she said.

‘You look very happy.’ I took another fig roll. ‘I wonder what you were thinking about.’

‘I do, don’t I?’ Mrs Forbes took a cloth from her waistband and began dusting herself. ‘I only wish I could remember.’

On the other side of the wall, the football match ended rather abruptly. There was creaking and grumbling, and the click of a door, and then the sound of footsteps across the syrupy carpet. When I turned around, Mr Forbes was standing in the doorway, watching us. He wore a pair of shorts. His legs were pale and hairless, and they looked as though he could easily have borrowed them from someone else.

‘What’s going on here, then?’ he said.