but Mrs Morton had been there on holiday, and she liked to keep in touch.
Mrs Morton was sitting with me.
Will you just sit with Grace while I have a little lie-down, my mother would say, although Mrs Morton didn’t sit very much at all, she dusted and baked and looked through windows instead. My mother spent most of 1974 having a little lie-down, and so I sat with Mrs Morton quite a lot.
I stared at the white van. ‘Who’s that then?’ I said, through a mouthful of scone.
Mrs Morton pressed on the lace curtain, which hung halfway down the window on a piece of wire. It dipped in the middle, exhausted from all the pressing. ‘That’ll be the new lot,’ she said.
‘Who are the new lot?’
‘I don’t know.’ She dipped the lace down a little further. ‘But I don’t see a man, do you?’
I peered over the lace. There were two men, but they wore overalls and were busy. The girl who had appeared from the back of the van continued to stand on the pavement. She was small and round and very pale, like a giant white pebble, and was buttoned into a raincoat right up to her neck, even though we hadn’t had rain for three weeks. She pulled a face, as though she were about to cry, and then leant forwards and was sick all over her shoes.
‘Disgusting,’ I said, and took another scone.
*
By four o’clock, she was next to me at the kitchen table.
I had fetched her over because she had sat on the wall outside her house, looking as though she’d been misplaced. Mrs Morton got the Dandelion and Burdock out, and a new packet of Penguins. I didn’t know then that Tilly didn’t like eating in front of people, and she held on to the bar of chocolate until it leaked between her fingers.
Mrs Morton spat on a tissue and wiped Tilly’s hands, even though there was a tap three feet away. Tilly bit her lip and looked out of the window.
‘Who are you looking for?’ I said.
‘My mother.’ Tilly turned back and stared at Mrs Morton, who was spitting again. ‘I just wanted to check she’s not watching.’
‘You’re not looking for your father?’ said Mrs Morton, who was nothing if not an opportunist.
‘I wouldn’t know where to look.’ Tilly wiped her hands very discreetly on her skirt. ‘I think he lives in Bristol.’
‘Bristol?’ Mrs Morton put the tissue back into her cardigan sleeve. ‘I have a cousin who lives in Bristol.’
‘Actually, I think it might be Bournemouth,’ said Tilly.
‘Oh,’ Mrs Morton frowned, ‘I don’t know anyone who lives there.’
‘No,’ Tilly said, ‘neither do I.’
*
We spent our summer holiday at Mrs Morton’s kitchen table. After a while, Tilly became comfortable enough to eat with us. She would spoon mashed potato into her mouth very slowly, and steal peas as we squeezed them from their shells, sitting over sheets of newspaper on the front-room carpet.
‘Don’t you want a Penguin or a Club?’ Mrs Morton was always trying to force chocolate on to us. She had a tin-full in the pantry and no children of her own. The pantry was cavernous and heaved with custard creams and fingers of fudge, and I often had wild fantasies in which I would find myself trapped in there overnight and be forced to gorge myself to death on Angel Delight.
‘No, thank you,’ Tilly said through a very small mouth, as if she were afraid that Mrs Morton might sneak something in there when no one was looking. ‘My mother said I shouldn’t eat chocolate.’
‘She must eat something,’ Mrs Morton said later, as we watched Tilly disappear behind her front door, ‘she’s like a little barrel.’
*
Mrs Creasy was still missing on Tuesday, and she was even more missing on Wednesday, when she’d arranged to sell raffle tickets for the British Legion. By Thursday, her name was being passed over garden fences and threaded along the queue at shop counters.
What about Margaret Creasy, then? someone would say. And it was like firing a starting pistol.
My father spent his time stored away in an office on the other side of the town, and always had to have the day explained to him when he got home. Yet each evening, my mother still asked my father if he had heard any news about Mrs Creasy, and each evening he would sigh from the bottom of his lungs, shake his head, and go and sit with a bottle of pale ale and Kenneth Kendall.
*
On Saturday morning, Tilly and I sat on the wall outside my house and swung our legs like pendulums against the bricks. We stared over at the Creasys’ house. The front door was ajar, and all the windows were open, as if to make it easier for Mrs Creasy to find her way back inside. Mr Creasy was in his garage, pulling boxes from towers of cardboard, and examining their contents one by one.
‘Do you think he murdered her?’ said Tilly.
‘I expect so,’ I said.
I paused for a moment, before I allowed the latest bulletin to be released. ‘She disappeared without taking any shoes.’
Tilly’s eyes bulged like a haddock. ‘How do you know that?’
‘The woman in the Post Office told my mother.’
‘Your mother doesn’t like the woman in the Post Office.’
‘She does now,’ I said.
Mr Creasy began on another box. With each one, he was becoming more chaotic, scattering the contents at his feet and whispering an uncertain dialogue to himself.
‘He doesn’t look like a murderer,’ said Tilly.
‘What does a murderer look like?’
‘They usually have moustaches,’ she said, ‘and are much fatter.’
The smell of hot tarmac pinched at my nose and I shifted my legs against the warmth of the bricks. There was nowhere to escape the heat. It was there every day when we awoke, persistent and unbroken, and hanging in the air like an unfinished argument. It leaked people’s days on to pavements and patios and, no longer able to contain ourselves within brick and cement, we melted into the outside, bringing our lives along with us. Meals, conversations, discussions were all woken and untethered and allowed outdoors. Even the avenue had changed. Giant fissures opened on yellowed lawns and paths felt soft and unsteady. Things which had been solid and reliable were now pliant and uncertain. Nothing felt sure any more. The bonds which held things together were destroyed by the temperature – this is what my father said – but it felt more sinister than that. It felt as though the whole avenue was shifting and stretching, and trying to escape itself.
A fat housefly danced a figure of eight around Tilly’s face. ‘My mum says Mrs Creasy disappeared because of the heat.’ She brushed the fly away with the back of her hand. ‘My mum says the heat makes people do strange things.’
I
