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.
