Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey Read Free Book Online Page A

just a bit old-fashioned. Why not have this one instead?”
    I want to ask Katy’s opinion, but I can’t see her. Or Helen. I walk past the other shining counters. No sign of them. The light drops as I move into another department, full of glistening leather bags and cheap jewellery. The racks are over twice my height and crowded with goods which reflect the spot lighting into my eyes. Music is blaring out, the words seem to tumble from the singer’s mouth chaotically, and I feel as if my balance is going.
    Somehow, I get tangled with a display of long bead necklaces. One strand round my coat button, another attached to my glasses’ chain. My hands aren’t steady enough to undo the clasps, and the more I pull the worse it gets. I start to think I’ll be trapped here for ever. Sweat collects along my spine. A girl comes towards me, not Katy, and a sudden sense of panic makes me rip the button from my coat. I leave my glasses, still attached to the beads, dangling sadly against the rack, and I back away on to the escalator, teetering at the edge of a step and gripping the handrail for support. There’s a stripe of lipstick on my hand, suffocating my skin, and I rub my other hand over it, suppressing the ghost of a shudder. I’ve always hated how the stuff smudges.
    The department I arrive in is cookware and glass. The music, bouncing off the hard surfaces, is so loud I can hardly think. My specs are gone and I search in my bag for the pale silk case. These second-best glasses feel funny on my face, and I have to keep adjusting them as I wander amongst the shelves of crockery. I can’t think what I’m here for, and no inspiration comes. The cut-glass vases and stoneware lasagne dishes give me no clues. I stand and read out the cleaning instructions on a metal wok: “Remove stubborn residues with a sponge scourer or nylon cleaning pad only. Do not use metal scourers or any abrasive cleaners.”
    A woman with orange fluffed-up hair gives me an odd look as she walks past. How long have I been here? I can’t see the time. I might have been standing next to this shelf for hours. If I could just find a member of staff . . . I hear a shop assistant ask someone if they need help, but I can’t see over the stands and I can’t tell which side the voice is coming from.
    “That is the last one, but my manager might give you a discount, as it was on display.”
    I rush one way, but there is no one there, so I hurry in the opposite direction. As I turn a corner, my bag catches something on the edge of a shelf. There is a smash. I freeze. “Waterford Crystal,” I read from the display. There’s a couple of seconds’ silence. No one comes. I start to move away.
    “Oh!” A woman in the dark-blue shop uniform hurries to my side. “You’ve broken this vase. Look, it’s smashed to bits. You might have to pay for that,” she says. “It’s a hundred and twenty pounds.”
    I begin to shake. A hundred and twenty pounds. That’s a fortune. I feel tears come into my eyes.
    “I’ll have to find my manager. Will you wait here?”
    I nod and take out my purse. I have two five-pound notes and one twenty, as well as a bit of change. I can’t work out what it all comes to, but I can see that it’s not nearly enough.
    “What should I do? Take her address?” the woman says, coming back. She looks over the shelves at someone I can’t see and then asks for my address.
    I can’t remember it. She thinks I’m lying, but I’m not lying. I can’t remember my address. I can’t remember my address. “It’s something Street,” I say. “Or something Road.”
    The woman looks at me with disbelief. “Did you come here with someone?” she asks. “Who was it? We can page them.”
    I open my mouth, but I can’t remember that, either.
    “Okay. Come with me,” she says.
    She puts her hand on the back of my arm and guides me across the shop. I can’t think where we’re going. We walk through a department full of those beds for