Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey

one hand in the air—“have orgies.”
    I look at my notes. “But the house was very tidy,” I say.
    Carla puts down the folder. “Well, there was an old woman who was bound in a basement, and the robbers took everything and then tortured her and locked her in, and nobody knew she was there. For days and days.”
    I watch Carla’s face as she talks. Her eyebrows move up and down and the end of her nose turns pink. I wonder why she is so preoccupied with old people being locked in rooms. Neither of these scenarios seems very likely, but I write them down anyway.
    “Perhaps I should go back to the house?” I say.
    “No,” she says, her tone changing. “You mustn’t go out. Write that down.”
    I sit for a while after Carla’s gone, staring into space, and then shuffle through my notes, making changes, putting Katy’s name above the list of subjects she’s studying at school. There’s a letter from my son, and a photo of him with his wife and children. The photo is neatly labelled on the back: “Tom, Britta, Anna, and Fred in the Mecklenburg Lake District.” It’s not Tom’s writing. Anna and Frederick look just like their mother: evenly tanned skin, treacle-dark hair. Their smiles take up all their faces. Tom looks messy and blotchy in comparison, his smile cheekier, more knowing. The place looks very pretty, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever see it for myself. Tom stopped asking me to go and stay with them in Berlin years ago. The letter says that Anna has started at the gymnasium. “Secondary school” is in brackets next to this word, and I write it down on the paper with Katy’s school subjects, reading it back to myself before finding another note: Elizabeth locked in room—crack addicts in house. Bound and tortured in basement . I frown at my own writing. I must be going barmy. Crack addicts? The police would have been called. But, I think, why not go to the house anyway, check on Elizabeth?
    I wrap up warm, walk past the acacia tree, and knock at Elizabeth’s door, just in case. When there’s no answer I get out my pen: Still no Elizabeth at house . I step back, and my head seems to empty itself, my stomach sinks, the muscles in my neck seize up. I can’t think what I’m doing here and I scrunch the bits of paper in my hand. Several fall to the floor: Crack addict , I read. Crack addict. Elizabeth locked in her room. Bound in basement . Could I really have written that? It seems ridiculous. Elizabeth doesn’t even have a basement. I peer through the letterbox, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m not entirely sure what crack is; how would I know if I saw it? The smell of cooking drifts into the air around me. A salty, meaty smell like frying bacon. It seems for a moment to be coming from inside the house, and I wonder if someone could be in there, cooking.
    “What are you up to?” A woman, in one of those shiny coats you wear for rain, comes out of the house next door. She puts a hand on the fence between us, her coat whispering loudly like an unruly child. Her other hand holds the lead of a bouncing dog. He claws at the wood of the fence and sniffs. It must be the bacon smell that’s got him excited.
    “I’m looking for Elizabeth,” I say.
    “Yes, you’re a friend of hers, aren’t you? Don’t worry, you never remember me.” She chuckles to herself and I feel my face go hot with embarrassment. “Visiting, are you? Think you’ll get a surprise.”
    “Why? What’s happened? Is Elizabeth all right?”
    “I haven’t seen her, to be honest with you, but she’s been having a clear-out, by the looks of things. Her son’s taken masses of boxes of stuff to his car.” She pulls the dog back from the fence and grins.
    I stare at her. “Peter’s been removing things?”
    “And about time, don’t you think? The state of that place. Full of rubbish.” She waves a hand and then runs it through her short blond hair; her coat whispers something but I can’t catch the words.