Forward Slash

On her way out of Katherine’s, Amy had noticed a framed photograph of Katherine and her ex, Clive, hanging on the wall in the hallway. The glass had been smashed, a jagged pattern of cracks spreading out from a centre point directly above Clive’s mouth. How strange that Katherine would leave a broken frame on the wall – but then, the girl was strange, full stop, and it had pissed her off how Katherine had seemed to find the whole thing so amusing. She made a mental note not to push for that article on jewellery-making any more. Dealing with unpleasant people, whether in her business or personal life, was something she had vowed to avoid at all costs.

‘So this is what I know so far,’ she said, flicking the kettle on as Boris scoffed his lunch. ‘Wednesday, Becky went to work as normal and went out that evening with a bunch of teachers. Katherine says they left early but that was the last time anyone saw her. Thursday, she had her hot date, apparently, and Saturday night, she sent me the email.

‘No sign of her passport at the flat – but it could be somewhere I didn’t look. Ditto her suitcase, though I can’t think where it could be hidden. The fridge was empty. All signs that she’s done what she said in the email and gone away.’

She took an individual coffee filter out of the box and ripped open its plastic packet. Her eyes felt scratchy and her body yearned for caffeine as she plonked the filter into the top of her mug and poured boiling water in, inhaling its delicious scent.

‘But the boiler was on and the front door wasn’t double-locked. She hadn’t said anything to her neighbour about going away, either. And then there was the thing about Cambodia in the email. She’s definitely been there before, so why say that she’s always wanted to go there?’

She went out into the sunny garden and sat down, sipping the steaming coffee. Boris stayed in the kitchen, unhurriedly eating his food.

Contradictory evidence. Her mind leapt from fact to fact and inserted a big fat but between each one. The door was unlocked but I can’t find her passport but the fridge was empty but …

The biggest but of all was the feeling in her gut: that cold, sick feeling that had been there since she’d read the email. That instinct, along with her knowledge of her sister – because this really was so unlike Becky – convinced her that something was very wrong. And she knew that sick feeling wouldn’t go away until she spoke to her sister and found out exactly what was going on.

Boris trotted into the garden, nails clicking against the paving, and sat at her feet. She stroked his smooth head.

‘I need to make a new To Do list,’ she said.

She opened the Notes app on her phone and thought for a moment. What did she need to do?

Call airports,she tapped on the tiny keyboard.

Call mum and dad. She knew she ought to do that now, but she was reluctant. The worst thing she could imagine – no, not the worst thing by far, but something annoying and upsetting – would be her mum coming over and getting involved. Her parents caused enough problems from Spain as it was.

Find the hot date.

That had to be the most important item on the list. She chewed the inside of her cheek, worriedly. Why hadn’t she brought the laptop home with her last time? She was going to have to go back to Becky’s flat to get it.

She tackled Item One first, starting with Heathrow, but they told her she would need to speak to the individual airlines, so she looked up which ones flew to Vietnam and Cambodia. She called Emirates, then Malaysia Airlines and Cathay Pacific. They all told her the same thing: nothing.

‘Our passenger lists are completely confidential,’ a bored-sounding Australian woman said. ‘We’d only be able to give that kind of information to the police.’

Amy thought about calling the police again. But her instinct was that she would need more information to go back to them with before they would take her seriously.

She pulled up outside Becky’s flat and went inside, carrying her crash helmet. She had been riding now for four years. The leather felt like a protective shell, the wheels made her swift and hard to catch. Half-cheetah half-tortoise, she thought, and suppressed a smile.

As she passed Gary’s door, he came out. ‘I heard your bike,’ he said. ‘Any news? I only got back about an hour ago – pub lunch with the footie lads.’

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Maybe she’s back home now. Shall we go and have a look?’

The flat was still empty.

Amy checked her watch. It was 6 p.m. ‘Nice day?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, not bad. To be honest, I lost us the match because I was worried about Becky. Kept looking at my phone to see if I’d had a missed call from you.’

Amy scrutinized him. ‘That’s sweet of you.’

He smiled his lopsided smile and ran a hand through his thick hair. His shirt, she noticed, was slightly too small for him and rose up to expose an inch of belly. She remembered his body from earlier. He had that thing going on – what was it called? A V cut. Those lines of muscle that ran in two diagonals from his abs down towards his groin.

She told Gary about her visit to Katherine and the hot date. ‘I came back here so I could take another look at Becky’s—’

‘Computer,’ he finished.

She was grateful to him for reminding her of his annoying habit and taking her mind off his abs.

‘Do you want a coffee?’ he asked. ‘I’ll make one in my flat and bring it through.’ He slunk off and she sat down with Becky’s laptop, pressing a button on the keyboard to bring it back to life.

She went straight to the ‘Old Emails Back-Up’ folder and scrolled through it, looking for interesting messages – particularly, anything connected to Internet dating.

It was an unknown world to Amy, something she had never tried, although she had been tempted a few times on cold nights in her flat when it was dark outside and the thought of having someone to watch TV with, to share her bed with other than Boris, filled her with yearning. But she was happy with her dog, for now, and too busy with her fast-growing business. That’s what she told herself.

‘You need to move on,’ she heard Becky say. ‘There are good men out there, Amy.’

It had been four years since ‘that thing’, as she called it in her head, on the very rare occasions it pushed its way into her conscious mind, and she knew in her stronger moments that Becky was right. For a while, she would start idly thinking about how she was going to find one of these good men. Since she had left her office job to work for herself from her kitchen table, working in a world peopled almost exclusively by women, there was little opportunity to meet any men, good, bad or ugly.

Then an advert for a dating site would come on TV and she’d think, ‘Should I?’

But she had heard so many horror stories about Internet dates. All her friends who had tried dating sites came back with funny or depressing stories about lack of chemistry, dull conversations and people who were almost always balder, fatter or shorter than their profile pictures suggested. Or worse, creepier. Her friend, Sally, the graphic designer who helped her with her site, had recounted how she had once pulled out a couple of hairs and left them on the carpet of a date’s flat while he was in the loo, just in case he murdered her and the police needed evidence she’d been there.

Someone had told her that 30 per cent of relationships start online these days, but she didn’t know any couples that had met through a dating site, let alone Facebook or Twitter. Nearly everyone she knew had met at work, or through a mutual friend.

There were numerous identical emails in Becky’s folder from CupidsWeb, with the subject line: ‘You have a new message!’

She clicked on a link in one of these emails and was taken to the Login page of the dating site. She didn’t know Becky’s password but, as she had access to her email, getting in was easy. She clicked on ‘Forgot Password?’, entered Becky’s email address and was sent an email with instructions on how to generate a new one. Seconds later, she was in, with full access to her sister’s sent and received CupidsWeb messages.

She soon became absorbed by the long list on the screen, dating back to May that year. She created a new Word document and copied and pasted any interesting messages into it, her pulse quickening as she concentrated on the task. Gary came back into the room and put the coffee down in front of her, a splash spilling over the lip of the mug, then stood behind her shoulder and watched. She could see his reflection in the screen but tried to ignore it. She didn’t like having a man standing behind her, watching what she was doing, but right now, she found Gary’s company more comforting than disturbing.

After ten minutes of copying and pasting, she sat back.

There were messages from fifteen men. She started to read through them, making sure that Gary wasn’t able to see. It was Becky’s private correspondence, after all, and she felt uncomfortable enough about reading it, without the added betrayal of Gary being privy to it too.

‘You look gorgeous in your profile pic. Is that really you, LOL?’

‘You’re a teacher! I used to fancy the pants off one of mine. I’ve had a thing about teachers ever since.’

Amy shook her head. She could collect together some of these emails and compile them into a guide: ‘How to Blow Your Chances of a Date.’ Rule 1: Use LOL, ROFL and LMAO at all opportunities. Rule 2: Be as creepy as fuck.

If she saw that the exchange of messages had not resulted in a date – usually when Becky had sent them a message at the end of the flirtation to say she was too busy to meet up with them, sorry – Amy cut and pasted these into another document. These made up the majority, but there were a few exchanges that ended with the promise of a meeting. Amy wrote down their user names, real names (if indeed they were) and the dates of the correspondence.

‘I’d very much like to meet up. Where’s good for you? I work in Soho so we’d be spoilt for choice but there’s a very nice wine bar on Dean Street. How does that sound?’

All of the men with whom Becky had arranged a date appeared sane and, well, normal. But Amy knew from bitter experience that men who appeared pleasant and ordinary at first could be anything but.

She turned to Gary, who was checking his watch. ‘Take a look.’