Joanna Cannon - The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

‘We just can’t understand where she’s gone,’ I said.

Mrs Forbes smoothed down the tassels on one of the cushions. ‘I’m sure she’ll return in good time,’ she said, ‘people usually do.’

‘I hope she does.’ Tilly untied the apron from under her arms. ‘I liked Mrs Creasy. She was nice.’

‘I’m sure she was.’ Mrs Forbes fiddled at the cushion. ‘But I’ve never spent any time in that woman’s company, so I couldn’t really say.’

I moved the garibaldis around on the plate. ‘Perhaps someone else on the avenue might know where she’s gone.’

Mrs Forbes stood up. ‘I very much doubt it,’ she said. ‘The reason Margaret Creasy disappeared is nothing to do with any of us. God works in mysterious ways, Harold was right. Everything happens for a reason.’

I wanted to ask her what the reason was, and why God had to be so mysterious about his work, but Mrs Forbes had taken the list out of her pocket.

‘Harold will be back soon. I’d better get on,’ she said. And she began running her finger down the lines of blue ink.

*

We walked back along the avenue. The weight of the sky pressed down on us as we pulled our legs through the heat. I stared at the hills which overlooked the town, but it was impossible to see where they began and where the sky ended. They were welded together by the summer, and the horizon shimmered and hissed and refused to be found.

Somewhere beyond the gardens, I could hear the sound of a Wimbledon commentary drifting from a window.

Advantage, Borg. And the distant flutter of applause.

The road was deserted. The beat of an afternoon sun had hurried everyone indoors to fan themselves with newspapers and rub Soltan into their forearms. The only person who remained was Sheila Dakin. She sat on a deckchair on the front lawn of number twelve, arms and legs spread wide, her face stretched towards the heat, as though someone had pegged her out as a giant, mahogany sacrifice.

‘Hello, Mrs Dakin,’ I shouted across the tarmac.

Sheila Dakin lifted her head, and I saw a trail of saliva glisten at the edge of her mouth.

She waved. ‘Hello, ladies.’

She always called us ladies , and it turned Tilly’s face red and made us smile.

‘So God is at Mrs Forbes’ house,’ said Tilly, when we had stopped smiling.

‘I believe he is.’ I pulled Tilly’s sou’wester down at the back, to cover her neck. ‘So we can say for definite that Mrs Forbes is safe, although I’m not very sure about her husband.’

‘It’s just a pity she never met Mrs Creasy, she could have given us some clues.’ Tilly kicked at a loose chipping, and it coasted into a hedge.

I stopped walking so suddenly, my sandals skidded dust on the pavement.

Tilly looked back. ‘What’s the matter, Gracie?’

‘The picnic,’ I said.

‘What picnic?’

‘The photograph of the picnic on the mantelpiece.’

Tilly frowned. ‘I don’t understand?’

I stared at the pavement and tried to think backwards. ‘The woman,’ I said, ‘the woman.’

‘What woman?’

‘The woman sitting next to Mrs Forbes at the picnic.’

‘What about her?’ said Tilly.

I looked up and straight into Tilly’s eyes. ‘It was Margaret Creasy.’

Brian sang to the hall mirror as he tried to find the parting in his hair. It was a little tricky, as his mother had insisted on buying a starburst design, and it was more burst than glass, but if he bent his knees slightly and angled his head to the right, he could just about fit his whole face in.

His hair was his best feature, his mother always said. Now girls seemed to like men’s hair a little longer, he wasn’t so sure. His only ever got as far as the bottom of his jaw and then it seemed to lose interest.

‘Brian!’

Perhaps if he tucked it behind his ears.

‘Brian!’

Her shouting tugged on him like a lead. He pushed his head around the sitting-room door.

‘Yes, Mam?’

‘Pass us that box of Milk Tray, would you? My feet are playing me up something chronic.’

His mother lay on a sea of crochet, her legs wedged on to the settee, rubbing at her bunions through a pair of tights. He could hear the static.

‘It’s the bloody heat.’ Her face was pinched into lines, the air in her cheeks filled with concentration.

‘There! There!’ she stopped rubbing and pointed at the footstool, which, in the absence of her feet, had become a home for the TV Times and her slippers, and a spilled bag of Murray Mints. She took the Milk Tray from him and stared into the box, with the same level of concentration as someone who was trying to answer an especially difficult exam question.

She pushed an Orange Creme into her mouth and frowned at his leather jacket. ‘Off out, are you?’

‘I’m going for a pint with the lads, Mam.’

‘The lads?’ She took a Turkish Delight.

‘Yes, Mam.’

‘You’re forty-three, Brian.’

He went to run his fingers through his hair, but remembered the Brylcreem and stopped himself.

‘Do you want me to ask Val to fit you in for a trim next time she comes round?’

‘No thanks, I’m growing it. The girls like it longer.’

‘The girls?’ She laughed and little pieces of Turkish Delight swam around on her teeth. ‘You’re forty-three, Brian.’

He shifted his weight and the leather jacket creaked at his shoulders. He’d bought it from the market. Probably wasn’t even real leather. Probably plastic, pretending to be leather, and the only person who was fooled was the idiot wearing it. He pulled at the collar and it crackled between his fingers.

His mother’s throat rose and fell with Turkish Delight, and he watched her dig her tongue around in her back teeth to make sure she’d definitely got her money’s worth.

‘Empty that ashtray before you go. There’s a good boy.’

He picked up the ashtray and held it at arm’s length, like an uncertain sculpture, a cemetery of cigarettes, each dated with a different colour of lipstick. He watched the ones at the edge tilt and waver as he carried it across the room.

‘Not the fireplace! Take it to the outside bin.’ She sent her instructions through a Lime Barrel. ‘It’ll stink the house out if you leave it in here.’

A curl of smoke twisted from somewhere deep in the mountain of fag ends. He thought he’d imagined it at first, but then the smell brushed at his nostrils.

‘You want to be careful.’ He nodded at the ashtray. ‘This is how fires start.’

She looked over at him and looked back at the box of Milk Tray.

Neither of them spoke.

He nudged around, and found the glow of a tip in the ash. He pinched at it until it flickered and the pleat of smoke stuttered and died. ‘It’s out now,’ he said.

But his mother was lost to the chocolates, gripped by bunions and Orange Cremes and the film now starting on BBC 2 . He knew she would be exactly the same when he returned from the Legion. He knew she would have pulled the blanket over her legs, and the Milk Tray box would be massacred and left to the carpet, and the television would be playing out a conversation with itself in the corner. He knew that she would not have risked moving from the edges of her crocheted existence. A world within a world, a life she had embroidered for herself over the past few years, which seemed to shrink and tighten with each passing month.

The avenue was silent. He pulled the lid from the dustbin and tipped the cigarettes inside, sending a cloud of ash into his face. When he had finished coughing and swiping at the air, and trying to find his next breath, he looked up and saw Sylvia in the garden of number four. Derek wasn’t with her – or Grace. She was alone. He rarely saw her alone, and he dared to watch for a moment. She hadn’t looked up. She was picking at weeds, throwing them into a bucket and brushing the soil from her hands. Every so often, she straightened her back, and gathered her breath and wiped her forehead with the back of a hand. She hadn’t changed. He wanted to tell her, but he knew it would only lead to more trouble.