Part 8 of 17 · 2 minWhat Went Missing

Things began to move around the house.

The TV remote turned up in the fridge, in the egg tray, standing on its end. Nanna's spectacles were in the rice tin, buried, and were found by Amma with a scoop, and were perfectly clean. Chinnu's geometry box spent two days inside a pillow cover.

For a while this was the funniest thing that had ever happened. Bujji started a list on the back of a notebook. *REMOTE — FRIDGE. GLASSES — RICE. SCISSORS — GOD ROOM (in front of god).*

Then the money went missing.

Two thousand rupees from the steel bureau, in an envelope, kept for the milk and the paper and the girl who came to sweep.

And Ammamma said, out loud, at four in the afternoon, with the sweeper girl standing right there in the hall with her broom, "She has taken it."

Nobody moved.

"I saw her," said Ammamma, with total conviction, because she did see her — she saw her every single day, that was the whole trouble, and something had to have taken the money, and here was a person who came into the house.

The girl's name was Swapna and she was nineteen and her face went the colour of paper.

Amma got to her first. She said, "Swapna, no. No. Ammamma is not well. You know this. Please."

Swapna said it was all right in a voice that made it clear it was not, and went home early, and did not come the next day, and Amma had to go to her house in the evening and sit on the floor with her mother and drink coffee and apologise for a long time before she came back.

The money was in a book. Under the almirah. *Chandamama*, 1994.

Amma found it four days later.

She did not tell Ammamma. There was no point — Ammamma had forgotten the accusation within an hour of making it, and had spent those four days being perfectly sweet to everybody, including, when she came back, Swapna.

Nanna said, that night, "This is going to happen again."

"Yes," said Amma.

"And one day it will be someone who does not know her."

"Yes," said Amma.