The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Plot Summary

Introduction

# The Summer We Lost God: Sheep, Goats, and Hidden Sins The summer of 1976 scorched England with biblical fury, but on The Avenue, something far more sinister than heat was brewing. When Margaret Creasy vanished without trace from her neat suburban home, she left behind more than worried neighbors and wilting gardens. She left behind secrets that had festered in the shadows for nine years, secrets about a fire, a missing baby, and a man the whole street had branded a monster. Ten-year-old Grace Bennett and her fragile friend Tilly had spent that blazing summer searching for God, convinced that finding Him would keep their world safe. Instead, they stumbled into a labyrinth of adult guilt and buried shame. What they discovered wasn't divine intervention, but something far more disturbing: how ordinary people could become complicit in cruelty when fear poisoned their hearts, and how a community could sacrifice one man's humanity to preserve their own sense of righteousness.

Chapter 1: The Vanishing Woman: When Secrets Begin to Surface

John Creasy woke to empty sheets and the suffocating silence of a house abandoned. His wife Margaret had vanished in the night, leaving behind only questions and the lingering scent of unfinished breakfast. He wandered the pavement in his shirtsleeves, peering around his Hillman Hunter as if she might materialize from the shimmering heat haze. Detective Inspector Hislop arrived with his notebook and measured suspicions. The neighbors gathered like vultures in the blazing sun, each offering fragments of concern wrapped in barely concealed anxiety. Sheila Dakin, bronzed and sharp-tongued from her deckchair kingdom, mentioned how Margaret had been asking questions lately. Lots of questions. About things that happened years before. Dorothy Forbes twisted her tea towels into knots as she spoke to the police, her nervous energy betraying deeper fears. Harold Forbes blustered about patriotism and proper behavior, but his eyes darted constantly toward number eleven, where Walter Bishop lived like a ghost behind overgrown cedar trees. The man everyone whispered about. The man children were warned to avoid. The avenue held its breath as the investigation began. Each resident retreated behind their curtains, but the secrets they thought they'd buried were beginning to stir, disturbed by Margaret's disappearance like sediment kicked up from the bottom of a poisoned well.

Chapter 2: Seeking the Divine: Two Children's Quest Through Hidden Lives

Grace Bennett pressed her face against the kitchen window, watching the drama unfold with the sharp eyes of a born detective. When pale, fragile Tilly Albert appeared at the garden wall, Grace announced with characteristic authority that Mrs. Creasy had been murdered. The two girls, armed with Sunday school lessons about shepherds and flocks, decided only divine intervention could solve the mystery. Their search for God took them from house to house, two small figures in the blazing heat asking uncomfortable questions with innocent directness. At Eric Lamb's garden, they found a quiet widower tending vegetables with the dedication of a man who understood loss. His wife had died years before, and his garden had become his cathedral. The Forbes household gleamed with obsessive cleanliness, every surface polished to perfection. Dorothy moved through her pink-themed living room like a ghost, following lists that dictated even the most basic activities. When Grace spotted a photograph showing Mrs. Forbes at a picnic with several neighbors, including the missing Margaret, the first crack appeared in the carefully constructed facade of ignorance. At Sheila Dakin's house, they encountered cigarettes and suntan oil, a kitchen chaos of magazines and empty bottles. Sheila spoke in fragments about Margaret, about how some people knew too much for their own good, about how the past had a way of catching up when you least expected it. Her words carried the weight of old guilt and newer fears.

Chapter 3: The Pariah at Number Eleven: Walter Bishop's True Story

Walter Bishop lived like a condemned man at number eleven, his house set back behind overgrown trees that seemed to whisper accusations. The other residents spoke of him in hushed tones, their voices carrying the weight of old suspicions and newer fears. He was the neighborhood pariah, the man who'd been suspected of taking baby Grace Bennett nine years earlier, though nothing was ever proven. When Grace and Tilly finally worked up courage to visit him directly, they discovered a gentle, thoughtful man who bore little resemblance to the monster of community imagination. He welcomed them into his garden, offering lemonade and philosophical discussions about belief and belonging. His house contained a brass crucifix, the very symbol they'd been seeking in their divine quest. Walter spoke to them about making independent judgments, about not following the crowd's opinion. He'd learned to live with loneliness because sometimes being different meant being alone. The girls found him kind and wise, nothing like the dangerous figure their neighbors described. His only crime seemed to be his inability to fit The Avenue's narrow definitions of normalcy. Their visit was cut short when Sheila Dakin arrived in fury, her pink slippers sending gravel flying as she marched up the drive. She dragged the girls away as if rescuing them from mortal danger, her panic barely concealed beneath maternal concern. The entire avenue mobilized at news of the children's transgression, as if their brief contact with the outcast might contaminate the whole community.

Chapter 4: Fire and Judgment: The Night a Community Became Complicit

The truth began emerging through fragments and whispers, like archaeological evidence of a buried crime. Nine years earlier, in bitter December 1967, The Avenue had been consumed by fear and suspicion. Baby Grace Bennett had vanished from her pushchair, and Walter Bishop became the perfect target for their terror. The residents gathered at the British Legion that fateful night, their faces illuminated by amber pint glasses and cigarette smoke. Harold Forbes, Eric Lamb, Sheila Dakin, and others formed a circle of judgment, voices rising with each round of drinks. They spoke of children's safety, of taking action when authorities failed them. Walter Bishop was a threat that needed eliminating. The conversation turned from complaints to conspiracy as Harold suggested that sometimes fate needed assistance. An electrical fault, a spark from a fire, accidents happened all the time. The group's moral boundaries dissolved in collective anger and alcohol-fueled righteousness. They convinced themselves they were protecting their community, that desperate times called for desperate measures. When Walter's house erupted in flames three days before Christmas, the avenue filled with sirens and chaos. His elderly mother perished in the blaze while Walter was at the phone box, trying to call a doctor for her illness. The official investigation concluded accident, but The Avenue's residents knew better. They had blood on their hands, and that knowledge had been crushing them ever since.

Chapter 5: The Weight of Knowledge: Margaret's Burden of Truth

Margaret Creasy had pieced together the real story during months of gentle questioning. She'd collected fragments from various residents, assembling a complete picture of their collective crime. Dorothy Forbes, her mind failing under guilt's weight, had let slip crucial details during card games. Brian Roper's observations from that December night. Eric Lamb's confessions about mercy and suffering. Each resident had contributed pieces to the puzzle, never realizing Margaret was building a complete picture of their conspiracy. When she finally understood what really happened, she faced an impossible choice. Expose the truth and destroy lives of people she'd grown to care about, or remain silent and become complicit in their cover-up. The community's paranoia reached fever pitch as they realized Margaret's disappearance might not be voluntary. If she'd confronted someone with her knowledge, threatened to contact police, then her vanishing took on sinister meaning. The residents found themselves trapped in mutual suspicion, each wondering if a neighbor had silenced Margaret permanently. Walter Bishop revealed to Grace that Margaret had been a regular visitor, one of few people willing to treat him as human rather than pariah. She'd listened to his side of the story, learned about loneliness and persecution he'd endured, understood the true cost of the community's vigilante justice. Her disappearance wasn't from fear or coercion, but from moral exhaustion and the crushing weight of carrying everyone's secrets.

Chapter 6: Divine Dissolution: When Miracles Fade and Reality Intrudes

The discovery of Jesus in a creosote stain on Eric Lamb's garage drainpipe should have been wonder, but became something else entirely. Tilly found Him first, and soon the entire avenue gathered around the apparition, setting up deckchairs and playing cards, creating a makeshift shrine in the summer heat. For a brief, shining moment, the community found something to believe in together. Eric brought tomatoes from his garden, even the perpetually feuding Dorothy Forbes and May Roper found common ground in devotion. The drainpipe Jesus became a focal point for hope, a sign that divine intervention might solve their problems. But harmony was fragile. When Walter Bishop appeared, wanting to see the miracle himself, the community's true nature revealed itself. Harold Forbes blocked his path, May Roper spread her arms protectively over the drainpipe. The message was clear: this Jesus wasn't for everyone. Some people didn't deserve salvation. The drainpipe Jesus began to fade as summer wore on, His features blurring in relentless heat, as if even He couldn't bear to watch what was unfolding. The brief unity dissolved like the creosote stain itself, leaving behind only the bitter taste of hypocrisy and the growing certainty that their reckoning was approaching.

Chapter 7: The Reckoning: Confronting Nine Years of Collective Guilt

As summer reached its brutal peak, Tilly Albert collapsed. Heat and stress triggered a relapse of her leukemia, and she was rushed to hospital, leaving Grace alone with fears and adults with their guilt. The community started fracturing. Sheila Dakin retreated to her pantry and bottles, Dorothy Forbes had a nervous breakdown over tea towels. Grace visited Tilly in the sterile hospital room, seeing her friend pale and diminished. The sight shattered something inside her, the last of her childhood certainty that good things happened to good people. She began understanding that some disappearances were permanent, that some prayers went unanswered. The avenue waited in oppressive heat, each resident locked in private hell of memory and regret. The past was closing in, and Margaret Creasy's return seemed both inevitable and terrifying. They all knew she would come back with questions they couldn't answer and truths they couldn't bear to face. Detective Inspector Hislop's investigation intensified as he connected dots between Margaret's visits to various residents and her sudden disappearance. The carefully constructed alibis began crumbling under scrutiny, and the community that had once united in hatred now found itself fragmenting under suspicion and guilt.

Chapter 8: Redemption in the Rain: Finding Grace After the Fall

Margaret Creasy returned on the day the weather finally broke. She didn't come home directly; instead, she went to the police station first, armed with months of investigation and a message for her neighbors. Detective Inspector Hislop delivered her note to the gathered residents: a simple Bible verse, Matthew 7:1-3, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." The message was clear. Margaret knew everything: about the missing baby, about the fire, about the years of silence that followed. But she also understood something deeper about human nature, about how fear could turn ordinary people monstrous, and how guilt could poison a community for years. As first drops of rain began falling, washing away heat and dust and the fading image of Jesus on the drainpipe, the avenue finally faced its reckoning. Walter Bishop stood among them with his umbrella, no longer the pariah but simply another neighbor caught in the storm. The rain came harder, soaking through clothes and into skin. Dorothy Forbes clutched her cat Whiskey, who had returned after nine years of hiding, and admitted what everyone suspected but never dared say. The fire had been hers, born of panic and misguided protection. The community that had spent years judging Walter Bishop finally had to confront their own capacity for destruction.

Summary

The summer of 1976 ended not with resolution but with recognition. Margaret Creasy's return forced The Avenue to confront the uncomfortable truth that there were no clear villains in their story, only frightened people who had made terrible choices in moments of crisis. The real tragedy wasn't Walter Bishop's exile or even the fire that drove him away, but the years of silence that followed, the way guilt had festered and poisoned their community like a cancer eating away at their souls. Grace Bennett learned that childhood ends not with single revelation but with gradual understanding that adults are as lost and frightened as children, that shepherds are often as vulnerable as the sheep they're meant to protect. Her search for God had led her not to divine answers but to human complexity, to the recognition that good and evil rarely come in pure forms but are mixed together like rain and sunshine in a summer storm. The drainpipe Jesus had faded away, but the questions He'd raised about judgment and forgiveness would linger long after the last drops of summer rain had fallen, leaving behind the possibility that redemption might grow from the ruins of their shame.

About Author

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Joanna Cannon

Cannon delves into the intricate lives of ordinary individuals by crafting narratives that illuminate those often overlooked by society. Her books explore the intersection of memory, friendship, and identity, drawing on her extensive experience in psychiatry to create psychologically rich characters. This background allows her to weave stories that are both relatable and thought-provoking, offering readers insight into the complexities of human nature.\n\nThrough her works such as "The Trouble with Goats and Sheep" and "Three Things About Elsie," Cannon captivates audiences with tales that are both engrossing and introspective. Her writing is informed by her journey from a hospital doctor to a full-time author, where she found solace and inspiration in storytelling. Her blog, initially a therapeutic outlet, became a foundation for her successful literary career, culminating in her debut novel, which became a Sunday Times bestseller.\n\nReaders benefit from Cannon's ability to bring to life the nuanced realities of everyday existence, making her books resonate deeply with those who appreciate character-driven narratives. Her bio reveals a journey marked by resilience and adaptability, underscoring her commitment to highlighting the voices of those on the margins. For anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the human condition, Cannon's work offers both reflection and revelation, solidifying her reputation as an impactful voice in contemporary literature.

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