The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

A Novel

Joanna Cannon

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781501121913
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

"I loved this book. It's one of those books that you just want to give to everybody." —Nancy Pearl on NPR's Morning Edition "An astute, engaging debut" ( Publishers Weekly ), The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is a quirky and utterly charming tale of a community in need of reconciliation and two girls learning what it means to belong. England, 1976. Mrs. Creasy is missing and the Avenue is alive with whispers. The neighbors blame her sudden disappearance on the heat wave, but ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly aren't convinced, and decide to take matters into their own hands. Spunky, spirited Grace and quiet, thoughtful Tilly go door to door in search of clues. The cul-de-sac starts to give up its secrets, and the amateur detectives uncover more than they ever imagined. A complicated history of deception begins to emerge—everyone on the Avenue has something to hide. During that sweltering summer, the lives of all the neighbors begin to unravel. The girls come to realize that the lies told to conceal what happened one fateful day about a decade ago are the same ones Mrs. Creasy was starting to peel back just before she disappeared... "A thoughtful tale of loyalty and friendship, family dynamics and human nature" ( Kirkus Reviews ), this glorious debut is part coming-of-age story, part mystery. The Trouble with Goats and Sheep radiates an unmistakable warmth and intelligence and is "rife with tiny extraordinaries" ( The New York Times Book Review ). "Joanna Cannon is an author to watch" ( Booklist, starred review).

NUMBER TWELVE, THE AVENUE

9 July 1976

Crazy, sang Patsy Cline.

“Crazy,” sang Sheila Dakin, half a second afterwards.

She sang above the Hoover, and the smell of hot summer carpets and a dust bag which begged to be emptied. Patsy knew what it was to suffer. She was a casualty of life, was Patsy. You could hear it in the vibrato. Sheila pushed the vacuum cleaner along the hall, past a chorus line of coats and a pileup of Keithie’s Matchbox cars, and took a sharp right into the living room.

“Give it a rest, Mum.” Lisa lifted her legs onto the settee.

Sheila slid into a key change as she made her entrance.

“Mum! I’m trying to read!”

The vacuum cleaner knocked against the furniture, and its cord snaked around the room, gathering table legs and forgotten shoes, and the edge of an ashtray.

“You’ll miss my singing when I’m not here anymore.” Sheila pulled at the lead. “You’ll ache to hear these notes again.”

Lisa looked up from her magazine. “Why? Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. But when I do, you’ll ache, Lisa Dakin. Mark my words.”

She caught the mirror as she passed, and rubbed at the mascara under her eye, but it only sank further into the creases, and came to rest in the folds of skin which refused to unfold back to where they belonged.

What in the world did I do…

The brush of the guitar always edged her a little further into the misery, and she paused the Hoover to make sure she didn’t miss being edged.

“Why is it always the same bloody song? There must be better songs to sing than that,” Lisa said, turning pages.

“She died in a plane crash, you know.”

“You’ve said.”

“She was only thirty. Her whole life ahead of her.”

“I know. You’ve said.” Lisa looked over the back of the settee. “You’ve also said about Marilyn, and Carole and Jayne.”

“It’s worth remembering, Lisa. There’s always someone worse off than yourself.”

“They’re dead, Mum.”

“Exactly.”

Sheila flicked another switch, and the dust and the heat and the churn of the motor faded out. “That’s me done. I’m going back outside.”

Lisa turned a page. “I really wish you wouldn’t sunbathe on the front. It’s not dignified.”

Her face is changing, thought Sheila. It’s shaping itself, finding her father. With each year, Lisa moved a little further away. It must have happened slowly, meal by meal, conversation by conversation, but Sheila only noticed if there was an argument. Then she would realize there had been another step, and just how far she was being left behind. She could deal with her daughter becoming older. She could deal with the boys and the truanting, and the faint whisper of Marlboro and chewing gum. It was the reflection it made which couldn’t be folded up and put away.

“It’s my front garden,” Sheila said. “I’ll do whatever I want in it.”

“People stare.”

“Let them bloody stare.”

“It’s like going to the corner shop in your slippers, and leaving your curlers in. You just don’t do it.”

“Says who?”

“Everyone.” Lisa turned another page. “And when everyone else says something, it’s probably worth listening.”

“I see.” Sheila wound the flex around the Hoover. “So why aren’t you out there looking for a summer job? Like everyone else?”

There was no reply.

“This time next year you’ll be leaving school. Don’t think you can sit around here all day on your arse doing nothing.”

Keithie appeared and dumped his little body onto one of the chairs. “I can sit around on my arse, though, can’t I?” he said.

Sheila looked at him. “For now,” she said, “for now. And don’t say arse.”

Arse, arse, arse.

Lisa turned another page. “I wish Margaret Creasy would hurry up and come back. You were a different person when she was around.”

“I was? How?”

“Less snapping. Less swearing.” She looked at Sheila over the top of the magazine. “Not so many headaches.”

She was sharp, like her mother. Too sharp.

“She’ll be back,” said Sheila. “It’s the heat. It knocks daft into people.”

“Unless Walter’s had her. He likes making people disappear.”

Sheila looked over at Keithie. He was digging the end of a pen into the arm of the chair, flooded with concentration.

Arse, arse, arse.

“Careful,” she said, “he doesn’t understand.”

Lisa put her magazine down. “He knows the crack, don’t you, Keithie?”

“Strange Walter,” said Keithie. “He’s like a magician. He makes people disappear.”

He laughed. A fizzy, bubbly laugh that only children can find.

“Doesn’t understand, my arse,” said Lisa.

Arse, arse, arse.

“Don’t say arse!” Sheila picked up a cushion and put it back on the settee.

“He should be moved on.” Lisa spoke without taking her eyes from the page. “He stares all the time.”

“Stares?”

“He gives me the creeps.” Denim shifted over denim. “When I’m with my friends, he stands at that front window, watching. Like he’s trying to figure out what to do next.”

Sheila tried to twist the plug around the flex, but she couldn’t manage it without taking her eyes off Lisa. “Has he said anything to you?”

“Mum, that’s the point.” There they were, those extra teenage syllables. “He never speaks. He just stares.”

“You’d tell me—if he did?”

There was a brief nod. Lisa pulled at her hair, taking out the band, and it slipped across her shoulder unsupervised, faultless. “Someone should do something,” she said. “We all think someone should do something.”

Sheila was about to reply when she heard footsteps on the path.

“Doorbell!” said Keithie, and shot out of the room before anyone could stop him.

Arse, arse, arse all the way down the hall.

“God, I hope it’s not that policeman again,” said Lisa. “Right bloody laugh a minute he was.”

“He needn’t bother.” Sheila lifted a cold cup of coffee from the table. It had left rings on the wood where it had waited for her. “We’ve said all there is to say.”

“You know he was at number four yesterday? Spent ages in there. I saw Derek Bennett this morning, and he looked like he’d been shot.”

“You never said.”

“I haven’t seen you.” There was a bite in Lisa’s voice. “You were still in bed when I went out. I got Keith’s breakfast and I dressed him, and I put up with his bloody questions.”

Sheila gripped the cup. It had a skin of milk, yellow and tired, catching at the edges. “I was exhausted,” she said.

“Yeah.” Lisa looked back at her magazine. “I’d be exhausted too.”

“If you’ve got something to say, why don’t you just bloody say it?”

“I haven’t got anything to bloody say.”

There went another step, Sheila thought. Another few inches further away.

* * *

“Is this a bad time?”

Sheila turned to the doorway. Dorothy Forbes dressed in alternating layers of taupe and concern. Bloody typical.

...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Number Four, the Avenue: 21 June 1976
• St. Anthony’s: 27 June 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 27 June 1976
• Number Six, the Avenue: 27 June 1976
• Number Three, Rowan Tree Croft: 28 June 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 29 June 1976
• Number Six, the Avenue: 3 July 1976
• Number Two, the Avenue: 4 July 1976
• The Royal British Legion: 4 July 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 5 July 1976
• Number Eight, the Avenue: 5 July 1976
• Number Two, the Avenue: 5 July 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 5 July 1976
• Number Twelve, the Avenue: 9 July 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 9 July 1976
• Number Ten, the Avenue: 10 July 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 11 July 1976
• Number Three, Rowan Tree Croft: 15 July 1976
• Number Eleven, the Avenue: 15 July 1976
• Number Twelve, the Avenue: 15 July 1976
• Number Eleven, the Avenue: 15 July 1976
• Number Twelve, the Avenue: 15 July 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 18 July 1976
• Number Six, the Avenue: 18 July 1976
• Number Fourteen, the Avenue: 20 July 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 26 July 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 30 July 1976
• The Drainpipe: 30 July 1976
• Number Two, the Avenue: 30 July 1976
• The Drainpipe: 30 July 1976
• Number Eight, the Avenue: 30 July 1976
• The Drainpipe: 31 July 1976
• The Drainpipe: 2 August 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 2 August 1976
• Number Three, Rowan Tree Croft: 3 August 1976
• The Drainpipe: 6 August 1976
• The Avenue: 6 August 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 7 August 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 13 August 1976
• The Drainpipe: 13 August 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 15 August 1976
• The Drainpipe: 15 August 1976
• Number Four, the Avenue: 17 August 1976
• Number Twelve, the Avenue: 17 August 1976
• Number Three, Rowan Tree Croft: 17 August 1976
• The Drainpipe: 21 August 1976
• The Avenue: 21 August 1976
• Acknowledgments
• Reading Group Guide
• ‘A Tidy Ending’ Teaser
• About the Author
• Copyright