The woman held the ticket toward the window, where the last of the daylight made the writing legible. “Platform Nine,” she read, “Lost Property.” There was no town or station name beneath it, only a date that my grandmother recognized before the rest of us could make it out. She touched the figures with one finger and said it was the day after she had shut the door. “I went to the station that morning,” she said, “to see whether you had really gone.” The woman looked at her, and my grandmother folded the photograph carefully in half. “I saw your train leave,” she added, “but I never saw you get on.”

My father returned with the lamp and a small brass label cupped in his palm, its loop still threaded through a broken piece of key. He had found it lodged in the front-door lock, where it must have fallen when my mother turned the key upstairs. The label bore the number nine, and on its reverse was a shallow dent shaped like a thumbprint, filled with blue. Daniel took it from him and held it beside the ticket; the ink in the dent stirred, drawing itself into a narrow line that pointed toward the stairs. Below us, the conductor called again, more urgently this time, and a whistle sounded from somewhere beneath the house. The child in the bed put both feet on the floor, though my mother kept a hand on her shoulder.

We went down together, my father leading with the lamp and the little girl holding my mother’s hand so tightly that their knuckles showed white. At the foot of the stairs, the hall had lengthened beyond the front door, its familiar wallpaper giving way to glazed green tiles, and a bench stood where the umbrella stand had been. The conductor waited beside it with his watch open, while beyond him a train breathed steam through the darkness. The woman gathered her children close, but Nell lingered at the foot of the stairs, looking back at the little girl. “You can have the bag,” she said, and held it out; the child took it, then opened the flap and removed the blue cardigan. She handed the bag back to Nell with the apple still inside, and my mother helped her pull the cardigan over her damp nightdress.

The conductor lifted his watch to his ear and frowned, as if listening for a sound too faint for us to hear. “There’s one item left to collect,” he said, taking the brass label from Daniel, “but I can’t tell whose it is.” My grandmother unfolded the photograph, and we crowded around the lamp to look: the woman and her children stood at the gate, just as before, but behind them the upstairs window of the narrow house had become clear. Someone was standing there with a hand against the glass, too small and blurred to recognize. My grandmother turned toward the front door, and the little girl beside my mother whispered, “That’s where I put her.”

My mother read the words twice, then laid the torn ticket on the cover between herself and the child. “I remember packing a bag,” she said, and the little girl nodded without looking at her. “There was an apple in it, and my blue cardigan, and I waited on the stairs until the rain stopped.” My grandmother had come up behind us so quietly that I only knew she was there when the floorboard gave a soft click beneath her shoe. She stood in the doorway with the photograph pressed flat against her apron, watching my mother take the child’s ink-stained hand. “You told me they had gone without you,” she said. My mother shook her head, and the child drew her knees up beneath the cover.

From downstairs came the sound of the front door opening and a murmur of voices in the hall. The woman entered the room with Thomas, Alice and Nell close behind her, their coats leaving small pools on the boards, and she stopped when she saw the child in the bed. “You knocked again,” my mother said to her, as though the memory had only just come within reach. “After everyone was asleep.” The woman put her hand on Nell’s shoulder. “You came down with your bag, but the door was locked, and you couldn’t find the key.” My grandmother turned the photograph over and over in her hands. “I heard you on the stairs,” she said to my mother. “I thought if I stayed where I was, you would go back to bed.”

The child slipped her hand from my mother’s and reached toward the woman, but as she moved, the bed gave a long creak and blue water welled through the seams of the mattress. My father pulled the cover aside, exposing the child’s bare feet and the red thread tied around one ankle. Its other end ran through the boards beneath the bed, where something tugged it gently out of sight. Nell knelt and put her own key beside the thread; the teeth trembled against the floor, then turned toward the narrow crack. Daniel caught the bedstead while my father lifted it, and I pushed the key into the gap, feeling cold water close over my fingers. The thread went slack at once, but a current of air rose from beneath the floor, carrying the smell of wet brick and the distant clatter of a train. The child sat up, clutching the little bag that had appeared beside her on the pillow.

My mother untied the thread from the child’s ankle, leaving a red mark that she rubbed with her thumb. “I can’t go with you now,” she said to the woman, and the child held the bag against her chest for a moment before passing it to Nell. Together they opened it and found the cardigan, folded around an apple that was still firm and cool; Nell took a bite, then offered it back. The woman sat on the edge of the bed while the children shared it, and the blue water slowly withdrew from the cover. Downstairs, the conductor called that he had found something in the lock, and we heard the thin ring of metal against the hall tiles. My father went to look, taking the lamp with him, and the room darkened until the woman lifted the torn ticket from the bed. A third address was appearing beneath the words on its back, written in a hand none of us recognized.

May set her foot on the first stair, but my mother caught her sleeve. The wet prints were already fading at the bottom, though those above still shone in the lamplight, and from somewhere upstairs came the faint creak of a bed. Daniel held his ticket close to the flame; our street name had appeared at last, but beneath the address a second line was showing through the paper. “Spare room,” he read, turning it toward me. My father took the lamp from May and started up, testing the banister with his free hand, while my mother called after him that the spare room had been empty for years. He stopped halfway up and looked back at her. “We made the bed yesterday,” he said, and she put her hand over her mouth.

Across the road, my grandmother was still at the threshold of the narrow house, with the woman and the three children gathered behind her. I called to her about the footprints, and she came as far as the gate, carrying the photograph against her chest. “I heard someone upstairs that day,” she said, raising her voice over the soft hiss of rain. “After I shut the door on them, I went to strip the spare bed, and the blankets were pulled up as if someone had just got in.” The woman came to stand beside her, and for a moment they both looked toward the dark window above us. “I thought I had lost one before I reached you,” she said. Nell pressed against her skirt, but the woman kept her eyes on my grandmother. “I counted them again and again, and there were always three.”

My father reached the landing, and the stair beneath him gave a damp, splintering crack. He caught the rail as the print nearest his shoe filled with blue water, and May ran past him before he could tell her to stop. I followed with Daniel, carrying the lamp between us, and found her at the spare-room door with her ear against the panel. Inside, someone was breathing in short, careful breaths. The handle would not turn, but when I pressed my ticket into the gap beneath the door, a small hand took hold of its edge and pulled. My mother came up behind us, took the key I had left in the front lock, and fitted it into the spare-room door; for an instant the brass burned so hot that she cried out, but she held it until the bolt slid back.

The bed stood against the far wall, its clean cover drawn up to a child’s chin. Blue ink stained the pillow and the child’s hand, which held my ticket so tightly that the paper had torn around the address. My father knelt and asked the child’s name, but the answer was muffled by the cover, and when he gently lowered it we saw that the face was our mother’s as a little girl. She had come to the doorway behind us; now she sat down on the bed, making the springs dip, and brushed the damp fringe from the child’s forehead. The little girl opened her fist and gave her the torn ticket. On the back, in the woman’s writing, were the words: “You promised to come with us.”

The address on Daniel’s ticket was our own. I looked back at the house across the road, where my mother and father stood in the doorway with May between them, the light from the hall falling over their shoulders. On my ticket the same number was forming, though the street name remained a blur of blue. “Why would it send us back?” I asked, and the conductor turned Daniel’s ticket over, as if the answer might have been written on the other side. Daniel took it from him and held it against the photograph. “Because we’re still here,” he said, but the paper had begun to soften in his hand, and he sounded less certain than he had at the table.

Inside the narrow house, Thomas had found a lamp on a little shelf, and its light showed three coats hanging beside the stairs. The smallest was buttoned to the throat, though there was no one wearing it; Nell touched the sleeve, then slipped her hand into its pocket and drew out a key on a length of red thread. She brought it to my grandmother, who was still standing on the threshold with the photograph in her hands. “Mother said you would have the other one,” Nell told her. My grandmother searched her coat, then the pockets of her dress, bringing out a thimble and a folded shopping list before she shook her head. “I gave it back to her,” she said, and Nell closed her fingers over the key so tightly that its teeth showed between them.

The woman appeared at the gate without our seeing her cross the road, her wet skirt brushing the weeds. Alice ran down the path, but stopped a few steps short, and the woman knelt to meet her, gathering all three children against her when Thomas and Nell came after. My grandmother followed them as far as the step. “I remember giving it back,” she said, and the woman looked up at her over Nell’s head. “You gave me the house key,” she answered. “I left the other one in the door.” Across the road, my mother bent to turn the latch, but the door would not move; my father put his shoulder to it, and even through the mist we could hear the wood strain.

Daniel went through the gate before the conductor could catch him, and I followed, my ticket sticking to my palm. At our door my mother made room for us, and together we felt along the frame, beneath the mat and under the brass plate, while May held the lamp low enough to burn her fingers. I found the key in the lock on the outside, where none of us had thought to look, though my father said he had locked the door that morning and put his own key away. When I turned it, the latch lifted easily, but the hall beyond was dark, and the stairs rose on the wrong side. May raised the lamp, and its flame showed a row of wet footprints leading upward, each one marked at the heel with a small blue thumbprint.

The figure in the photograph had one hand caught in the woman’s skirt, and its face appeared last, pale beneath a fringe of dark hair. Thomas took the picture from me and held it under the lamp, rubbing his thumb over the small shoulder until my grandmother asked him to stop. “That’s Nell,” he said, and Alice turned to him with her mouth open. She remembered a bed beside hers, she said, and someone breathing there after the lamp was put out, but she had thought it was Thomas in the next room. Behind the broken pane, the hand withdrew, and the light moved down toward the front door. The latch lifted, though the door remained shut, and a thin blue line appeared along its lower edge.

My grandmother opened the iron gate and stood with one hand on it while the conductor led us up the path. The bricks were slick beneath our shoes, and weeds brushed my ankles, wet enough to leave dark streaks on my stockings. When Thomas tried the door, it came inward a little way and stopped against something soft. He called Nell’s name, and a child answered from the other side, close enough that the word seemed to pass through the wood into his hand. “I couldn’t find you,” she said. Alice knelt at the gap and put her stained fingers through it; after a moment, smaller fingers closed around them, and the door opened another inch.

Daniel took the photograph from Thomas and set it against the wall where Nell could see it through the gap. The blue line beneath the door began to spread, soaking into the bricks, and from inside came the sound of water being poured slowly into a vessel. “The cup,” Thomas said, and I ran back to the gate for it, nearly spilling what remained as I carried it up the path. He tipped the water into the widening crack, and the pouring stopped; the door swung free, showing Nell crouched on the tiles with an empty saucer in her lap. She stood when Alice reached for her, but as the two girls embraced, the photograph slid from the wall and fell face down. The doorway narrowed at once, pressing against Daniel’s shoulder, and he caught the edge of it with both hands.

My grandmother came up the path, leaving the gate to swing shut behind her, and picked the photograph out of the wet. “Your mother brought this to me,” she told Nell, holding the picture where all three children could see it. “I should have let you wait with us.” The door eased away from Daniel, and Thomas drew his sisters inside while my grandmother stayed on the threshold, speaking of the woman’s knock and the spare bed upstairs. Nell listened with one hand in Alice’s, but she kept looking past us toward the gate, where the conductor stood with our two tickets in his hand. In the lamplight, an address was appearing on mine, and as he turned it over, I saw that Daniel’s was already filled. “It isn’t Bell Street,” he said, and held the ticket out to me.