Joanna Cannon - The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

‘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.’

‘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.’