The Long Prospect by Elizabeth Harrower

memory pricked Emily till she was crouching persecutedly over her plate, wincing as if at a nagging tooth. Remember what you did! the voices sang in her ear. Remember!
    She dragged herself away. She would listen to Mr Rosen. It must be that Mrs Rosen, that little woman with the grey hair, wanted him to go home instead of staying here with Lilian. She considered the idea without feeling or opinion. Had George been with his mother when she waited at the gates? George was twelve and had red hair. He was Mr Rosen’s only son. In the days when the whole family used to visit Lilian, Emily and George had gone to the pictures while the grown-ups had parties. On the way home they ate hamburgers and talked about outer space, and wondered whether there were people on Mars. She liked George.
    Reaction wrapped her in a cocoon of weariness and she went to bed with a willingness that might have made even Lilian suspicious, but Gladys and Billie came early, bringing their newest friends, and another party was on the way.
    Very shortly, shrieks of laughter preceded the arrival of more guests. The customary noises of community singing, solos, square-dances, and the clinking of bottles and glasses lulled Emily to sleep.
    A flashing figure in a straight dress of thick navy satin, Lilian commanded her willing guests to silence and applause, kept them noisy, kept them moving. The crowd around her in the composite was a restless, harmless amoral creature with winy breath and slippery eyes, an over-mobile mouth, and hair that dipped to a forehead which, as the night went on, grew shiny and flushed.
    When Billie had for the third time done her celebrated imitation of bagpipes, guitar, and violin, they left the house and drove in a string of cars to the chromium-plated Ballowra Bowery, overlooking the sea. In a private room they mixed drinks, ate oysters and quarrelled, changed partners and returned from an absence on the beach, the women to smear soft lipstick on mouths suddenly pale, the men to blow noses on fishy handkerchiefs, have another drink, and pat their friends on the back with the generosity of self-congratulation.
    Quite suddenly Emily was wakened by the weight of silence in the house. Incredulous, she listened, going cold with premonitory awareness of her solitude.
    Oh, it had happened again! The house was in darkness and empty of all life but hers. The mechanical ticking of the clock on the table, simulating life, made her bound from the bed and hurl herself across the room to where she knew the light-switch must be. She knocked herself without feeling against the sharp corner of the dressing-table.
    Now the room was an island of light. Outside the night was spectacular with the stars of the south, but moonless; here the rest of the house had yet to be stormed and illuminated. A ferocious expression her only defence against intruders, Emily flew from switch to switch through the house, a streak of red and white pyjamas.
    She knew what had happened. They had gone somewhere else to finish the party. And here she was, alone in this brightly-lit oasis with windows through which she could be seen, and seen to be alone. She stood, curled fingers touching her lips, tears held cold in her eyes.
    Lilian’s insatiable interest in real-life murder stories had done its work on Emily. She had for years been treated to a reading of all the more unpleasant crimes from the Sunday papers, and, when they failed, to reminiscences of the famous crimes of Lilian’s youth.
    Old men with beards pursued small girls through blackberry bushes, strangled them, and remained at large. Small girls were put in bags and drowned. There was apparently no limit to the number of atrocities to which they might not fall victim. Even the avoidance of the most likely situations for murder left them very exposed indeed in a world that seemed bent on the destruction of their species.
    Lilian had come to take for granted the frequent nightmares from which the child