‘Eggs. Milk – question mark – Chocolate.’ I turn my bit of paper about to catch the light. There’s a cosy cardboardy smell in the shop and it’s like being in the larder at home. ‘Eggs, milk, chocolate. Eggs, milk, chocolate.’ I say the words, but I can’t quite think what the things look like. Could they be in any of the boxes in front of me? I carry on muttering the list under my breath as I shuffle about the shop, but the words begin to lose meaning and are like a chant. I’ve got ‘marrows’ written down here too, but I don’t think they sell them here.

‘Can I help, Mrs Horsham?’

Reg leans over the counter, and his grey cardigan bags out, sweeping across the penny sweets in their plastic tub and leaving bits of fluff on them. He watches me walk round. Nosy beggar. I don’t know what he’s guarding. So I walked out with something once. So what? It was only a bag of soft lettuce. Or was it a jar of raspberry jam? I forget. Anyway, he got it back, didn’t he? Helen took it back, and that was that. And it’s not as if he doesn’t make mistakes – I’ve often been short on change over the years. He’s been running this shop for decades, and it’s time he retired. But his mother didn’t give up working here till she was ninety, so he’ll probably hang on a bit longer. I was glad when the old woman finally gave up. She used to tease me whenever I came in because I’d asked her to receive a letter for me when I was a girl. I’d written to a murderer and I hadn’t wanted the reply to go to my house, and I’d used a film star’s name instead of my own. The reply never arrived, but Reg’s mother thought I’d been waiting for a love letter and used to laugh about it long after I was married.

What was it I came for? The loaded shelves frown down at me as I circle them, and the blue and white linoleum stares up, dirty and cracked. My basket is empty, but I think I’ve been here for a while; Reg is watching me. I reach for something: it’s heavier than I was expecting and my arm is pulled down suddenly with the weight. It’s a tin of peach slices. That’ll do. I put a few more tins in my basket, tucking its handles into the crook of my arm. The thin metal bars grind against my hip on the way to the counter.

‘Are you sure this is what you’re after?’ Reg asks. ‘Only you bought a lot of peach slices when you came in yesterday.’

I look down into the basket. Is that true? Did I really buy the same things yesterday? He coughs and I see a glint of amusement in his eyes.

‘Quite sure, thank you,’ I say, my voice firm. ‘If I want to buy peach slices, I can buy them.’

He raises his eyebrows and begins typing prices into his till. I keep my head high, watching the cans being put into the plastic carrying thing, for carrying, but my cheeks are hot. What was it I came for? I feel in my pocket and find a piece of blue paper with my writing on it: Eggs. Milk? Chocolate. I pick up a bar of Dairy Milk and slip it into the basket, so at least I will have something from the list. But I can’t put the peaches back now, Reg would laugh at me. I pay for my bag of cans and clank back down the road with them. It’s slow going, because the bag is heavy, and my shoulder and the back of my knee are hurting. I remember when the houses used to whiz by as I walked – nearly running – to and from home. Ma would ask me afterwards about what I’d seen, whether certain neighbours were out, what I thought about someone’s new garden wall. I’d never noticed; it had all gone past in a flash. Now I have plenty of time to look at everything and no one to tell what I’ve seen.

Sometimes, when I’m having a sort-through or a clear-out, I find photos from my youth, and it’s a shock to see everything in black and white. I think my granddaughter believes we were actually grey-skinned, with dull hair, always posing in a shadowed landscape. But I remember the town as being almost too bright to look at when I was a girl. I remember the deep blue of the sky and the dark green of the pines cutting through it, the bright red of the local brick houses and the orange carpet of pine needles under our feet. Nowadays – though I’m sure the sky is still occasionally blue and most of the houses are still there, and the trees still drop their needles – nowadays, the colours seem faded, as if I live in an old photograph.

When I get home there’s an alarm clock ringing. I set it sometimes to remind myself of appointments. I drop my bag inside the front door and turn off the alarm. I can’t think what it’s for this time; I can’t see anything to tell me. Perhaps someone is coming.

‘Did the estate agent turn up?’ Helen calls, her voice broken by the scrape of her key in the front door. ‘He was supposed to arrive at twelve. Did he?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘What time is it now?’

She doesn’t answer. I can hear her clomping about in the hall.

‘Mum!’ she says. ‘Where have these cans come from? How many bloody peach slices do you need?’

I tell her I don’t know how many. I tell her Carla must have brought them. I say I’ve been at home the whole day and then I look at the clock, wondering how I’ve managed to get through it all. Helen comes into the sitting room, breathing out sweet, cold air, and I’m a child again, in my warm bed, and my sister’s icy face presses against my cheek for a moment, and her chill breath whispers over me as she tells me about the Pavilion and the dancing and the soldiers. Sukey was always cold coming home from a dance, even in the summer. Helen is often cold too, from so much time spent digging about in other people’s gardens.

She holds up a plastic bag. ‘Why would Carla leave tins of peach slices in the hall?’ She doesn’t lower her voice, even though we’re in the same room, and she holds the bag high off the ground. ‘You have to stop going shopping. I’ve told you I can get anything you need. I come every day.’

I’m sure I don’t see her that often, but I’m not going to argue. Her arm drops and I watch the bag swing to a stop against her leg.

‘So will you promise? Not to shop for food again?’

‘I don’t see why I should. I told you, Carla must have brought them. And, anyway, if I want to buy peach slices, I can buy them.’ The sentence has a familiar ring, but I can’t think why. ‘If I were to grow marrows,’ I say, turning a shopping list to the light, ‘where would I best plant them?’

Helen sighs her way out of the room and I find I’ve got up to follow her. In the hall I stop: there’s a roaring noise coming from somewhere. I can’t think what it is, I can’t work out where it’s coming from. But I can hardly hear it once I’m in the kitchen. Everything is very clean in here: my dishes are on the rack, though I don’t think I put them there, and the knife and fork I like to use have been washed up. As I open a cupboard door two scraps of paper flutter to the ground. One is a recipe for white sauce and the other has Helen’s name on it, a number underneath. I get a roll of sticking ribbon, long glue ribbon, out of a drawer to stick them back up again. Perhaps I will make a white sauce today. After I’ve had a cup of tea.

I switch the kettle on. I know which plug it is, as someone has labelled it KETTLE. I get out cups and milk, and a teabag from a jar marked TEA. There’s a note by the sink: Coffee helps memory. That one’s in my handwriting. I take my cup through to the sitting room, pausing in the doorway. I’ve got this rumbling in my head. Or perhaps it’s coming from upstairs. I start up towards the landing, but I can’t do it without holding on to both banisters so I step back and leave my tea on the shelf in the hall. I’ll only be a minute.

My room is quite sunny, and it’s peaceful here, except for a sort of growl somewhere in the house. I push the door shut and sit at my dressing table by the window. Bits of costume jewellery are strewn across the doilies and china dishes; I don’t wear proper jewellery now, except my wedding ring of course. I’ve never had to have it altered, not in over fifty years. Patrick’s matching one seemed to burrow itself into his flesh so that the knuckle bulged above it; he refused to have it cut off and it wouldn’t budge, however much butter I greased it with. He used to say the ring being bound to him like that was proof of a strong marriage. I used to say it was proof he didn’t take care of himself properly. Patrick told me to be more worried about my own ring, too loose on my slender finger, but really it fitted perfectly and I never lost it.

Helen says I lose my jewellery now, though, and she and Katy have taken most of the good pieces for themselves to ‘keep them safe’. I don’t mind. At least they’re still in the family, and none of it was very valuable. The most expensive thing I had was a bizarre gold pendant in the shape of Queen Nefertiti’s head, which Patrick brought back from Egypt.

I push my hand through a dingy sort of plastic bangle and look in the mirror. My reflection always gives me a shock. I never really believed I would age, and certainly not like this. The skin around my eyes and the bridge of my nose has wrinkled in a very unexpected way. It makes me look quite lizard-like. I can hardly remember my old face, except in flashes. A round-cheeked girl in front of the mirror taking out her curlers for the first time, a pale young woman in the Pleasure Gardens looking down into the green river, a tired mother with untidy hair, half turned from the dark window of a train as she tries to pull apart her fighting children. I’m always frowning in my memory, so no wonder my brow has set that way. My mother had smooth, peaches-and-cream skin right to her death, though she had good reason to be more wrinkled than most. Perhaps it was something to do with not wearing make-up; they say that about nuns, don’t they?

I don’t wear make-up either these days, and I’ve never worn lipstick, never liked it. The girls at the exchange teased me about it, and every now and then when I was young I’d try some out, borrow a friend’s or use one I’d been given for Christmas, but I could never stand to have it on for more than a few minutes. I’ve got a tube in the drawer from Helen or Katy and I take it out now, twisting the base and applying it very carefully, leaning close to the mirror, making sure not to get it on my teeth. You see these old women with flecked dentures and sooty eyelids and rouge smeared over their faces, their eyebrows drawn on too high. I’d rather die than be one of them. I blot my lips together. Nice and bright now, but slightly cracked, and I am quite thirsty. About time I made myself a cup of tea.

I drop the lipstick back in the drawer and slip a long pearl necklace over my head before getting up. Not real pearls of course. When I open my door I can hear a roaring noise. I can’t think what it is. It gets louder the further down the stairs I go. I stop on the bottom step, but I can’t see anything. I look in the sitting room. The roaring is even louder. I wonder if it is in my head, if something is coming loose. The noise swells and vibrates. And then it stops.

‘There. That’s your hoovering done, anyway.’ Helen stands by the dining-room door, winding up the wire on the vacuum cleaner. Her mouth wavers into a smile. ‘Are you going out somewhere?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘What are the pearls for then? You’re all dolled up.’

‘Am I?’ I lay a hand against my collarbone. I’ve got a string of pearls on and a thing on my wrist, and I can taste lipstick. Lipstick, with its foetid waxen smell and its suffocating thickness. I wipe the back of my hand over my mouth, but that only smears it and makes it worse, so I begin to scrub at my face, pulling the sleeve of my cardigan down to act as a flannel, spitting on it and rubbing as if I were both mother and mucky child. It’s some minutes before I feel clean again, and I find Helen has been watching me.

‘Give me your cardigan,’ she says. ‘I’d better put it in the wash.’ She asks if I want something to drink.

‘Oh, yes,’ I say, shrugging the wool from my skin and dropping on to my chair. ‘I’m terribly thirsty.’

‘No wonder,’ Helen says, turning to leave the room. ‘There was a line of cold cups of tea on the shelf in the hall.’

I say I can’t think how they got there, but I don’t think she hears me, because she’s already disappeared into the kitchen and, anyway, my head is lowered as I’m going through my handbag. I had some malted biscuits in here at some point. Was it yesterday? Did I eat them? I take out a comb and my purse and some scrunched-up tissues. I don’t find any biscuits, but there is a note in one of the bag’s pockets: No more peach slices. I don’t tell Helen. Instead I put it under the note with today’s date. My carer leaves me one like it every day. That’s how I know it’s Thursday. I usually visit my friend Elizabeth on a Thursday, but we don’t seem to have made any arrangement this week. She hasn’t called. I’d have written it down if she had. I’d have made a note of what she’d said, or some of it. I’d have written down what time to go and see her. I write everything down.

There are bits of paper all over the house, lying in piles or stuck up on different surfaces. Scribbled shopping lists and recipes, telephone numbers and appointments, notes about things that have already happened. My paper memory. It’s supposed to stop me forgetting things. But my daughter tells me I lose the notes. I have that written down too. Still, if Elizabeth had called, I’d have a note. I can’t have lost every one. I write things down over and over. They can’t all have dropped off the table and the worktop and the mirror. And then I have this piece of paper tucked into my sleeve: No word from Elizabeth. It has an old date on one side. I have a horrible feeling something has happened to her. Anything could have. There was something on the news yesterday, I think. About an old woman. Something unpleasant. And now Elizabeth’s disappeared. What if she’s been mugged and left for dead? Or had a fall and can’t get to a phone? I think of her, lying on the floor of her sitting room, unable to get up, still hoping for some treasure to leap from the carpet.