Forward Slash

Sunday, 21 July

Amy did not notice her sister’s email straight away. As the Mail program, loaded she was idly listening to the soft drip-drip of coffee through the filter in her mug, and trying to organize her thoughts into a prioritized list for the day ahead. No matter that it was a Sunday – being this busy meant that having the weekend off wasn’t an option.

It was going to be a scorching hot day again. Seven thirty a.m. was the best time to be out in the tiny garden, her laptop resting at an angle on the wobbly, rusting table, dew still clutching the tips of the grass stalks and a blessed silence from houses of the neighbours, sleeping off their Saturday night excesses. The new intake of email scrolled up in bold in the mailbox, one by one, four screens’ worth.

Amy scanned a couple of the subject headings:

Wool Enquiry – Pattern doesn’t state Gauge!

Painless Quilting; Idea for Article

She was going to have to employ someone soon. Upcycle.com – her baby, her passion – had boomed in popularity over recent months and the orders and enquiries kept her busy from dawn till midnight, seven days a week. As someone she had once worked with would have said, it was a quality problem. The site had expanded from a few magazine-type articles about crafts and hobbies to a full-blown ‘vertical portal’, or ‘vortal’, with everything from video clips on different knitting stitches or how to mosaic a garden table, to guest blogs from craft experts, an online shop and a lively forum to which women from around the world contributed.

Then she saw Becky’s email address on the list in her Inbox. There was no subject heading. Her stomach gave a small flip. Becky had not spoken to her in weeks, after the blazing argument they’d had about their parents – whose turn it was to visit them in Spain, why Amy always had to have them staying at her place when they came over, why Becky never paid back any of the loans she got from them when Amy had to … She’d spent years trying to ignore all the little slights but on this occasion had failed, and out they had all come. She and Becky were usually so close. They had always bickered, ever since they were small girls – not uncommon with such a small age gap, not quite two years – but the trouble was, this one had been a full-blown row, so bad that Amy had wondered if her little sister would ever speak to her again. She opened the email, feeling a rush of relief that Becky had contacted her.

Dear Amy

I’m going away, and I’m not coming back. Don’t try to find me. I’m going to Asia, probably. I’ve always wanted to visit Vietnam and Cambodia. Sorry about our row. It’s not your fault. Tell Mum and Dad not to worry. Look after yourself.

Love

B

Amy’s relief immediately turned to puzzlement as she tried to make sense of it. Going away to Asia? Becky had always been more prone to tantrums. She remembered her shouting, ‘I’m running away!’ at their parents, stuffing her make-up and a four-pack of Mars bars into a bag and storming off, but she never made it much further than the end of the village.

She read the email again. Don’t try to find me. That was the line that sent a little shiver up Amy’s spine. And there was something else about the email too, a little niggle that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

The time on the email was 11.27 p.m. the previous night, a Saturday. So it had probably been written and sent while drunk. She pictured Becky lying on her sofa with an almost-empty bottle of Merlot on the floor, tapping away at her phone, the TV chattering unwatched in the background. Well, she thought, hangover or not, you can’t expect to send an email like that and not get an early morning call from your sister.

Amy rang Becky’s mobile, which went straight to voicemail, then her landline, which rang out, then her mobile again, this time leaving a message:

‘Rebecca Ann Coltman, you are a pain in the arse. What the fuck is all this about going to Vietnam, eh? Call me as soon as you get this.’ She paused. Don’t try to find me. ‘I love you, though. And I’m sorry about the row too. Call me, OK?’

She put the phone on the table and returned to her emails.

An hour later, Becky hadn’t rung or texted back, and Amy couldn’t concentrate on her work at all. She made herself another cup of coffee and, while she waited, checked Becky’s Facebook page on her phone. It hadn’t been updated for a few days. She checked Twitter too. Ditto. No tweets since Wednesday. ‘End of term. Whoo-hoo! Seven weeks of freedom. #schoolsoutforsummer’

She tried to call both of Becky’s numbers again. Still no reply. She was 90 per cent sure that her sister was enjoying lie-ins for the first week of the school summer holidays, as most childless teachers in the country were probably also doing. But there was still that 10 per cent niggle …

Sod it, she was going to have to go round there. Just to set her mind at rest.

Becky’s flat was in a small boxy fifties block built in the space left by a German bomb, incongruous in a road of Edwardian semis in Denmark Hill, a stone’s throw from Ruskin Park. It took Amy seven minutes to get there on her Triumph when the traffic lights weren’t against her. This morning they were all green, and Amy arrived with the taste of coffee still in her mouth, and the day’s ‘To Do’ list scrolling through her head. This was To Do number one: get her sister out of bed, find out why she’d sent such a crazy email, smooth things over between them.

She parked the bike, dragged off her helmet and buzzed Flat Nine. No answer. After a moment’s hesitation, she tried Flat Eight instead. While she waited she ruffled her hair wildly to make the curls spring back into place – helmet hair was the bane of her life. It was such an automatic reaction now that she wasn’t even aware of doing it. Thirty seconds later, a sleepy male voice came over the intercom: ‘Yerrghello?’

‘Hi, Gary, it’s Amy, Becky’s sister. Sorry it’s early. Can you buzz me in, please?’

The door clicked open in response, and Amy heard another door opening upstairs, the sound bouncing down the concrete stairwell. She strode up to the second floor, taking the stairs two at a time. Gary stood waiting for her, bare-chested in stripy cotton pyjama pants. He wasn’t bad looking, Amy thought. He and Becky were good friends, although Amy suspected this was mostly because Gary was nifty with a screwdriver and willing to unblock Becky’s U-bend at any hour of the day or night. She remembered Becky confessing this to her in a mock-suggestive comedy accent, and grinned. For the first time she felt a real pang of worry about where Becky was.

‘Sorry,’ she repeated, taking in his bed-head hair and sleepy eyes. He smelled of morning breath and slight BO.

‘S’OK,’ he replied, scratching his chest. ‘Becky all right?’

‘Probably. Just had a weird email from her last night, and now she’s not answering her—’

‘Phone,’ interrupted Gary, and Amy instantly remembered the most annoying thing about him was his habit of trying to finish people’s sentences. She wondered if he was aware he was doing it.

‘Her mobile or her landline,’ she corrected. ‘Yeah. Anyway. Do you have a key? Just want to check she hasn’t had an accident.’

‘Accident,’ he agreed, ushering her into his living room and rooting around in a drawer under a black-ash coffee table. ‘I think I’ve still got her keys, they should be in here somewhere.’

While Gary went into his bedroom to fetch a T-shirt, Amy put down her helmet and bike keys on the smoked-glass dining table. Gary was in his bedroom for a good minute, and Amy tapped her foot impatiently. When he came back he didn’t say anything apart from, ‘OK, let’s go.’

They walked from Gary’s flat to Becky’s. He put the Yale key in the top lock and the door swung open.

Amy stared at it, then at Gary. ‘It wasn’t double-locked. She always double-locks the door, even if she’s just going to bloody Sainsbury’s.’

Amy realized she was holding her breath as they stepped inside. The flat was dark and silent, blinds drawn.

‘It looks tidy,’ she said. ‘Well – as tidy as Becky’s flat ever is. Becky?’ she called out, feeling foolish and strangely light-headed. She went straight to her sister’s bedroom, dreading the sight of her spread-eagled face down on the bed. But all was in order. The bed had been made, in a perfunctory sort of way, with a few items – a bra, a T-shirt – hanging from the bedpost. She opened the wardrobe. Clothes were crammed inside, so tightly that Amy wondered how Becky ever found anything to wear. There was no sign that she had packed a suitcase, although it was difficult to tell. Amy kept her own suitcases under her bed, but Becky’s bed was too low to the ground to fit much underneath it.

In the kitchen, a mug stood in the sink, rinsed but unwashed, with no other washing-up in sight. Amy opened the fridge. It was empty apart from a jar of pickles that looked as if they would survive a nuclear holocaust. The freezer was empty too and appeared to have been recently defrosted. Both signs that she had planned to go away. But the boiler, attached to the wall beside the sink, had been left on.

Gary stood in the doorway of the kitchen, watching her and scratching his belly.

‘When did you last see her?’ Amy asked.

He pondered a moment. ‘Haven’t seen her for a while. She came over to ask me if I could help her set up her new computer, but that was a couple of weeks ago. What’s going on? What was this weird email all about?’

Amy walked into the living room, Gary following. Everything appeared to be in place in here. The TV wasn’t on standby but a copy of Heat was open on the armchair. ‘She told me she was going away, to Vietnam and Cambodia, and said she might not come back.’

Gary frowned. ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t have gone without telling me.’

Amy picked up a framed photo from the bookcase, her face creasing with nostalgia at the sight of it. The photo was of her and Becky at Becky’s graduation, ten years ago. Their faces were close to the camera, smiling into the sun, so fresh-faced. They looked so alike in that photo that they could easily have passed for identical twins.

‘She’ll probably walk in the door at any moment and ask what the hell we’re doing—’

‘Here.’

Amy felt cold inside. If Becky really had gone away without discussing it with her beforehand, that would hurt. And what was wrong in Becky’s life that made her feel the need to do such a thing?

‘When did you last talk to her?’ Gary asked.

‘I haven’t seen her for about a month. We had a fight.’

Gary was clearly too English to ask what the fight had been about.

‘I’m really worried,’ she said, pulling out her phone and checking both her texts and emails, just in case something had come in from Becky. But there was nothing – just a load more emails from customers.