The white suits plodded back up the path and shut the door.

Natalie started to go after them in her mind. Into the hall. Turn left. Living room, same as this. Out again. Kitchen. Door to the back. The way Kyra sometimes went in. Used to. She saw the stairs, though she had never been up Ed’s stairs. She wanted to now, wanted to stare and stare around every room, taking it in, peeling away the wallpaper and the curtains and the furniture with her eyes to get at what was beneath, or behind.

Several times a day, Natalie had got out the phone book and looked up the name.

Sleightholme, E.S., 14 Brimpton Lane.

It stood out from all the others on the page. The line wavered. Then it looked bigger, the ink blacker.

Sleightholme, E.S., 14 Brimpton Lane.

Already, it was more than a name, an address, a telephone number. It had a ring round it. It might have been c

Christie, J. R. H., 10 Rillington Place.

West, F., 25 Cromwell Street.

It had that look.

Only they were gone and this was real and she was looking at it, this red-brick house the same as her own red-brick house, a couple of yards away from her house in which she ate and slept and dressed and cooked. In which there was Kyra.

Natalie stubbed out her cigarette.

The house next door was quiet now. No one came or went. The vans were parked. That was all.

She’d been happy to let Kyra go there. More than happy. Ready. Any day. She didn’t know what she felt about that. She didn’t blame herself. How could she have known anything? Kyra had gone on and on, every morning, every night, every Saturday and Sunday. Ed. Ed. Ed. Ed.

Nothing bad could have happened, then, nothing so bad at all, if she had wanted to keep on going, every morning, every night. Could it? How could it? She’d never said anything. She wouldn’t have wanted to go, if c

The police van shone white and square and odd in the sun. Natalie wondered what was in it.

From upstairs, there was no sound. No sound at all.

She lit another cigarette and smoked it to the end before going to talk to Kyra.

You could see Ed’s house from her bedroom. As soon as she had been sent upstairs—which was always happening—Kyra had taken the little stool carefully over to the window, so that standing on it she could watch in case Ed came back. Every day, she hoped Ed would come back. Every day, she knew Ed would come back. She saw people going in and out of Ed’s house and when Ed came back she would tell her about them. Ed might not know. She might not like it. Ed was proud of her house. She’d said so quite often.

“I’m house-proud.” “Take off your shoes, Kyra, I don’t want muddy marks, I’m house-proud.” “Wash your hands after you’ve eaten that, Kyra, I don’t want cake mixture on the furniture, I’m house-proud.”

It was beautiful inside Ed’s house and she wouldn’t want the men messing it up. The floors were always shining and the carpets never had bits on them. Everything had a place, neat and careful, and the furniture smelled of polish. The mats were arranged just so and the cushions lined against the sofa back, just so, and when you put the mugs back on their hooks, you had to get the order right. Kyra did. She’d learned. Ed had taught her.

“If you’re going to be here, you have to learn the rules, Kyra. The blue one, then the white one, then the green, the pink, the yellow and, at the end, the blue again.”

“Why do they go like that?”

“That’s how I like them.”

“Yes, but why?”

“I just do. It’s how I like them.”

“I like them that way as well, Ed.”

“Good,” Ed had said. “Now wash your hands, you’ve been touching the plants.”

She loved the way it was. When she came home, Kyra wanted to arrange everything carefully. She tried to. But it never worked because their house was a tip. “Kyra, stop bloody messing, stop fidgeting, will you?” But in her own room, Kyra could keep things the way she liked them. The way Ed liked them. She lined up things in her drawers—white socks, blue socks, white knicks, pink knicks, and her dolls and animals in a line on the shelf. She had learned.

“Gawd, what’s wrong with you, Kyra, you’re a funny kid, I don’t know where you come from. Look at it, it’s peculiar.”

“It’s how I like it.”

“Yeah, right, well, let’s wait till you’re fourteen, it’ll be a bleedin’ pigsty, teenagers are.”

Kyra knew that it would not but she also knew better than to disagree.

She leaned forward. The back door of Ed’s house had opened and two of the weird men had come out and taken bags to the wheelie bin, but they were not putting rubbish in, they were taking it out, emptying the wheelie bin over into the bags. Why would you do that?

Downstairs the phone rang. Kyra settled herself more comfortably on the window ledge. Her mother would talk for ages.

When she had asked why the men and the vans were at Ed’s house every day, Natalie had screamed at her. She was used to her mother screaming but this had been different, it had made her face twisted and frightening-looking so that Kyra had understood not to ask again.

“You listen to me. Ed’s gone. OK? End. I don’t want to hear about Ed, I don’t want you asking anyone, I don’t. Do you hear me, Kyra?”

Kyra had nodded, afraid to say anything at all, afraid to ask a question. Her head was so full of questions she wondered if it had grown bigger to accommodate them all, if people would notice. Questions buzzed all day, all night, like a hive of bees that were never still and the only way she could let them out of her head was through her mouth, by asking them, and she daren’t do that, so they stayed inside, buzzing her mad.

Her mother had raised her voice now. Kyra turned slightly, to hear.

“What? When? When d’you hear that, Donna? Oh my God. Oh my GOD. It’s a fuckin’ nightmare, I’m living in one. Oh my God. No. Just the same, van and those white-suit people, you know, you see them on murder programmes c it’ll be on the news, then. I gotta keep Kyra out, she’s got ears out here, I don’t want her hearing. I just said she’d gone and she wasn’t coming back. Yeah, too right it’s true c Oh my God.”

Kyra looked back out of the window. The questions were dancing up and down in her head now, making little hard taps every time. Where was Ed? Why had she gone? Why wasn’t she ever coming back? What had she done? Why were the men in her house? What, why, why, when, who, what, why, why c

Kyra wanted Ed. Because no one else would be able to answer the questions properly, everyone else would shut her up, push the buzzing questions back inside her head and slam the door shut. But Ed always answered. Ed answered every question, though sometimes only to say, “I can’t tell you the answer to that one.” But somehow that was enough. That was an answer. Ed never said shut up, don’t ask, stop mithering, it’s none of your business, you’re too young to ask, too young to know. Ed talked to her, and thought and listened. And answered. Ed told her things. Ed knew a lot. Ed. Ed. Ed. Ed.

But suddenly, she tried to see Ed in her mind, and there was nothing. No one. A blank space. She looked at the house from her window, stared and stared at it to try and conjure up the picture of Ed but it wouldn’t come. Nothing came. She did not know what Ed looked like or sounded like. She couldn’t find Ed at all.

She got down and went out of her room, terrified. This was what her mother must mean, that Ed had gone and would never come back. Ed had even gone from her head, her mind, what she looked like, her voice, her smell, her laugh. She started to go down the stairs, afraid as she had never been before of her empty room and being in it alone, needing to hear her mother, see her, even her swearing and her irritation.

Natalie was coming up. Kyra stopped and looked down.

“What you doing?”