Provenance

I photographed the coat where I had found it, then photographed it again on the bed. Front, back, lining, label. Both cuffs. The broken thread where the button should have been.

For seven minutes I did my job.

Then I called Ben.

“You’re sure it’s hers?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Could be one like it.”

“It has the biro mark in the pocket. She lent me a pen at the cinema. It leaked.”

He was quiet. In the background, a reversing alarm sounded three times.

“Mum must have got it back,” he said.

“From whom?”

“I don’t know. A charity shop? Perhaps Evie left things somewhere.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell us?”

“Well, you know what she was like about talking about it.”

That was true. Mother could discuss a subject at great length without permitting it to be talked about.

“I’ll come over this evening,” Ben said. “Don’t upset yourself.”

After we hung up, I put my hand into the other pocket.

Two boiled sweets had melted into their wrappers. A hair tie had perished into a sticky black circle. There was a bus ticket, but not the sort of ticket that proved anything: a single from town to our village, dated three days before she disappeared. It was folded around a small piece of ruled paper.

On the paper, in Evie’s handwriting:

Friday. If he hasn’t told them by then, I will.

No name. No explanation. A line drawn under Friday so hard that the paper had almost torn.

I took another photograph.

My phone rang before I had put the paper down. Tamsin.

“You still alive in there?”

“Apparently.”

“That’s not a proper answer.”

Tamsin ran the other half of our business, the half that involved arranging vans and convincing bereaved people not to throw away the receipts. We had known each other since school. After Evie disappeared, her mother had put an extra place out for me every Sunday for six months. No one had called it anything.

“I’ve found her coat,” I said.

There was a pause, but not the careful pause people use before saying something comforting.

“Where?”

“Mother’s wardrobe.”

“Oh, Anna.”

“The green one.”

“I know which one.”

I looked at the space where Evie’s face should have been above the collar.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Go on.”

“That night. The night before she went missing. Was I at yours?”

“You know you were.”

“I want you to tell me.”

Tamsin exhaled slowly.

“You came about nine. You were upset because you’d had a row with your mum. We watched a stupid film with that man you liked. You slept in my bed and I slept on the floor because you said the air mattress made you feel seasick.”

“What time did I leave?”

“After breakfast on Saturday. Mum drove you. You stayed two nights, remember? You said you weren’t going home until she apologised.”

“Not seven.”

“No.”

I had known this, of course. Memory had not returned to me. It had been sitting in a room I chose not to enter.

“When your mum called you,” Tamsin said, “you went outside to answer. You came back in and said Evie had gone away and nobody was to ask questions.”

“I said that?”

“You sounded like her.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment.

“Did the police ever ask?” I said.

“Not me. Mum asked yours whether we ought to contact them. Your mum said they’d already established where you were. Something about you going out early and coming back.”

I closed my eyes.

“You knew I was lying.”

“Later. When I saw the appeal.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I was seventeen too.” Her voice sharpened. “And whenever I tried to talk to you about Evie, you stopped speaking to me for weeks.”

I remembered that as well.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” she said. “So am I.”

It was the first honest conversation I had had about my sister in eighteen years. Neither of us sounded better at the end of it.

Tamsin told me to leave the coat alone and find the number of the officer who had last contacted us. I said I would. Before hanging up, she asked whether Ben knew I hadn’t seen Evie that morning.

“We all knew.”

“That’s not the same as all knowing the same thing.”

After the call I went downstairs to the kitchen.

Mother had kept the paperwork for every appliance she had ever owned. The instruction manual for a mixer bought in 1987 survived the mixer by two decades. There were guarantees for a freezer, receipts for curtains, a diagram showing which fuse served which part of the house.

At the bottom of the drawer I found an envelope marked Anna — personal.

It was not sealed.

Inside were two photographs, a small key and a note.

Your father made decisions I did not always agree with. I hope, when the time comes, you will remember that there was more than one person to consider.

No greeting. No love. Even dead, Mother was beginning in the middle of an argument.

One photograph showed us on the beach. Evie was fourteen, turning away from the camera to push wet hair out of her eyes. In the other, she was nineteen, at the kitchen table, looking directly at whoever had taken it.

A date was written on the back: 14 November.

The Friday she had disappeared.

According to my statement, I had last seen her at seven fifteen that morning, walking away from the house.

In the photograph, behind her, the kitchen window was black. Beside her plate was that day’s newspaper. The green coat hung on the back of her chair.

I turned the photograph over again.

Below the date, in smaller writing, Mother had added:

After supper. Before your father came home.