**Where Have You Gone**
At first, it was gloves. Then a keychain. After that, an old handkerchief. One might blame age, forgetfulness, exhaustion. But when the fifth thing vanished—a sewing box that had always sat on the parlour shelf—Eleanor Whitaker couldn’t take it any longer. She slumped into her chair, her pulse quickening not from fear, but from something simmering beneath, a slow-burning anger. Her small, orderly world had begun unravelling, stitch by stitch, as if an unseen hand was tugging at the threads with terrible precision.
“Alright, you want to play?” she said to the empty room, her voice trembling not with frailty but with defiance, sharp as the winter draft seeping through the window.
The flat held its silence. Only the old pendulum clock in the next room marked time with its merciless tick. Eleanor had lived alone for eight years. Her husband had left quietly, in his sleep, right on the sofa, a half-read newspaper spread across his lap. After he was gone, she hadn’t changed a thing—the same worn table, the same curtains, even his chipped mug still sat on the shelf, its faded inscription reading *”World’s Best Dad.”*
Her son visited rarely, every few months at most. He brought groceries, medicine, grumbled when she didn’t answer the phone, then rushed off—his words clipped, torn from the thick of work and family obligations. She never minded. She understood: he had his own life now, children, bills. It made sense. She accepted his gifts, nodded, smiled, saw him to the door, then lingered in the dim hallway, staring at the peeling paint until the quiet grew heavy.
But a month ago, something shifted. Not suddenly, not dramatically—just a slow reworking of her world, like a tailor trimming the edges of a seam. First came the smell—faint, like dry leaves smouldering in some forgotten corner, the way her grandfather’s old house had smelled on the edge of the village. Then draughts. The curtains shivered when all the windows were shut. And shadows—slipping along the walls, out of step with the light, as if someone was pacing the room without touching the floor. The house breathed out of time, out of rhythm with her.
Eleanor said nothing. She just sat more often by the window, legs tucked under her, cradling a cold cup of tea, watching the snow swirl over the rooftops of their quiet Yorkshire town. She remembered her father teaching her to weave baskets, adjusting her fingers when she tangled the reeds. The winters in the ’90s, huddled with her husband by the fireplace, laughing as they struggled to light damp logs. The first time they’d seen a mobile phone, arguing half the night about how it worked before falling asleep curled together.
And then things began disappearing. Trinkets at first—a button, a brooch, a hairpin. Then more—her favourite scarf, her reading glasses, the photo album. Each vanished cleanly, without explanation, as if someone was carefully snipping pieces of her life away.
“Where have you gone?” she asked the empty room one evening, her voice echoing oddly, as if the walls recoiled. She froze.
From the bedroom came a whisper: *”Here.”*
The voice was soft, almost childlike—not menacing, not frightening. Just unfamiliar. And that made it real.
She didn’t go in straight away. She made tea, sat, waited. Watched the steam curl up from the mug as if the answer might be written there. Then she rose, straightened her shoulders, and stepped inside. The door creaked, hesitating with her. The room was unchanged—the bed neatly made, curtains half-drawn, her son’s faded school photo on the nightstand. But the air was different. The silence hummed like the pause before a breath. A presence, faint but warm, like the brush of fingertips.
“Who are you?” she asked calmly, not afraid, as if she already knew no harm would come.
No answer. Only the faint groan of floorboards, like a step taken and held.
The next day, her old journal vanished—the one where she’d scribbled poems and addresses of friends long gone. That evening, as she returned from the kitchen, she found an open card on the table. No stamp, no name. Just two words in shaky script: *”I’m here.”*
From then on, they lived together. The other—in the corners, the shadows, the tremble of the curtains. Eleanor—in the daylight, the whistle of the kettle, the chime of cutlery. They never spoke. But one day, opening the cupboard under the stairs, she found every missing thing—neatly stacked, clean, as if carefully kept.
And then it struck her: it wasn’t a stranger. It was *her*. The one she’d forgotten, the one she’d buried—when her husband died, when her son left, when the days blurred into grey. The one who’d once sung by bonfires, danced to crackly mixtapes, written letters she never sent. The one who’d slipped away with every *”not now,”* every *”later.”*
Eleanor took the scarf from the cupboard—still smelling faintly of lavender—and draped it over her shoulders. She stepped onto the balcony. Lit a cigarette—first in nine years. The smoke curled into the sky, lifting with it the weight, the loneliness, the borrowed restraint.
Snow drifted down below, soft and weightless. In its glow, the town’s lights flickered like whispers on the wind: *”I waited for you.”*
*Where have you gone?* she thought. *Ah. There you are. Found.*
