Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey Page A

stripes, the cotton cold at first. Too big for me, but that’s what’s nice. I tuck it into my trousers and button my cardigan over it before going downstairs. Carla has arrived and is making a pot of tea.
    “Thank you, Polly,” I say, but she doesn’t seem to hear.
    “The bath is filthy,” she says as I come into the kitchen. “And there’s a big lot of dirt on the lawn. What have you been doing?”
    I wince at the question. Why is it I can remember the garden and the soil and the dew, but none of the reasons for being there? I work the sleeve of my cardigan down over my fingers, picturing the pale-gold sky, the sparkling grey of the leaves, colourless until the light hit them. I can see it all perfectly, I just can’t think when it was. One of those nights spent waiting for Sukey to come home? Some point in the past, anyway. I never wake up in time for the dawn now.
    “Although it’s just as likely to be a son,” Carla says.
    I’ve missed some earlier part of her speech, and I don’t know what she’s talking about.
    “You’re lucky you have a daughter. They say sons steal from their old mothers. It was in a report I saw on the news.”
    “But I do have a son,” I say.
    “Millions of pounds, stolen every year.”
    “I don’t have millions of pounds,” I say.
    “And all kinds of antiques. Georgian, Victorian.”
    “I don’t have any antiques, either.” Oh, this is no good. What sort of a conversation consists of people saying whether they have something or not? I stop listening, stop answering, but an image shimmers in the air, of bookcases and lamps and empty plant pots piled up at a window. Of deep-grained, solid furniture and dainty silver ornaments, of dark-glazed vases and plates made to look as if worms were wriggling across them. The sort of things Elizabeth is always looking for. They didn’t used to be so sought after, not when I was a girl and people sold them off for next to nothing. There were none of these dim, expensive shops or excitable TV programmes. The only place I ever saw real antiques was at Frank’s.
    He had hundreds jumbled into his house, and they were always being moved so that just as you got used to swerving to avoid a chest of drawers it would disappear, to be replaced by a set of nesting tables put down exactly where you were likely to trip over them. Altogether, the house felt like some sort of nasty trick. A trap. Sukey didn’t like it either, and some of the things made her afraid, though she only admitted to that once.
    I’d tripped over a revolving bookcase and bashed my knee on a grumpy-looking grandfather clock on my way to the sitting room. Sukey was curled up on a high-backed sofa, drawing a needle slowly through some delicate blueish material, strands of her hair catching on the sofa back, looking like creepers growing up a wall. Ma had sent me round with rags and darning wool, convinced that my sister wouldn’t be coping with all the housework, but Sukey never seemed to need much help, so I sat down by the fire and warmed one side of my face until it was burning hot.
    Frank’s removal men were unloading a van in the yard, and they came through the sitting room on their way to the cellar, carrying boxes, spindly little tables, and heavy dining chairs. Sukey nodded at them as they emerged empty-handed, trying to rid their lungs of the dank cellar air.
    “Old woman from the Avenue’s died,” she said. “So Frank’s bought more junk, much good it’ll do us. Though it might come in handy for firewood, I s’pose.”
    She said the last bit loudly, and a soft-faced, sweating removal man stopped on his way to the cellar with one of the sharp-legged tables. “If that’s what you’re going to use it for, I’ll break it up now, save me a trip to yonder hell pit,” he said, putting the table down and leaning on it. Sukey smiled at her sewing, lifting one shoulder very carefully so as not to disturb the perfect line of stitches, and the man picked his