Free Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey

woman looked over my shoulder at him. “Few weeks ago? Not sure. Seen him carrying a case since. Thought I saw her, too, but like I say, can’t be sure. And before you ask, no I don’t know where they were going.”
    Dad was quiet for a bit after the door had closed, and then he turned to me. “Right,” he said. “You can do the talking from now on, seeing as how you got that woman to tell you something.”
    He pushed me forwards to the house at the corner.
    “Yes?” A man opened the door and stood with his shirt open. Its creases were sharp and it gave off the warm smell of freshly ironed cotton.
    “I’m looking for my sister,” I said. “She lives at that house.” I pointed a finger, my arm shaking. “But she’s not there now. I thought she might have left a . . . forwarding address, or something?”
    The man stepped over the threshold and leant over to look at Frank and Sukey’s front door, as if he needed reminding that there was a house there at all.
    “Sister? Oh. Dark hair? No, no, I can’t say that I know where she’s gone. Had a bit of a row, though, I think. I remember something of the kind, anyway. Missing her, are you? I’m sure she’ll be back. Though now I think about it, it’s been weeks since I saw Frank.”
    “You know Frank?”
    “We’ve had a bit of a drink of an evening. Done me a couple of good turns has Frank.”
    That made two people Frank had helped. I tried the house opposite Sukey’s next. The front door had frosted glass with a net curtain behind it. A woman in a very stiff-looking housecoat came to the door. I asked her if she’d seen Sukey.
    “Can’t say I remember,” she said, fiddling with the lace collar under her chin. Her voice was rich and had a dry rasp to it which caught at my nerves. “I’m not one of these busybodies who watches everyone.”
    “But someone told me she’d run into the street, screaming,” I said.
    “Did they? Did they, really?” the woman looked accusingly at every house along the road, as if she was trying to find out who had given the game away. Then she shook her head very firmly. “I never heard anything. Not a hint. People don’t go about screaming in this street.”
    “That’s funny. You see, we’ve had . . . accounts that she came out . . .” I looked into the woman’s face, the implacable lines of it, and sighed.
    “Accounts, eh? I’m sure. And I bet they don’t know the half of it, either. Like I say, I never heard anything, but I know your sister was up to something. I know it. Sorry if it pains you. She had men round.”
    “Men?”
    “Yes. One at least. Young one. Here all the time, he was. Told me some nonsense about him being her parents’ lodger, but I knew . . .”
    “Douglas, you mean?”
    “A name like that, yes.”
    “Oh, but that’s true. He is our lodger.”
    “Is he now? Is he? Well, that’s as may be.” I thought she was going to say more, but she just nodded at me until I stepped down on to the pavement.
    I moved on one; the next door was answered by a couple. They knew Sukey a bit. Had invited her and Frank in a few times, but never had an invitation back. They didn’t seem to mind, though.
    “Frank gave my Don a bit of work when he came out of the army,” the wife said. “So kind of him, really kept us going, that did.”
    “Someone else said they’d seen Frank leaving with a suitcase,” I said.
    “Yes, well, since Don got a job at Muckley’s we don’t have very much to do with them, as I said. Not that we aren’t grateful for the work he did put Don’s way.”
    I thanked them and started to walk back towards Dad. Thinking that made three favours.
    “Hey, love?” A young woman came out of the stiff-house-coated lady’s door, wrapping a long mackintosh around her thin frame. I stopped and waited for her.
    “I heard the screaming,” the woman said. “Sorry about my aunt, she’s got a dread of the unrespectable. But, look, it’s not what you think. It can’t have