Joanna Cannon - The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

‘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.

‘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.

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.