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. What was he doing? 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 Chubb key in the bottom lock, then paused. 'It's not locked.'
Amy stared at it, then at Gary. 'She always double-locks the door, even if she's just going to bloody Sainsbury's.'
He unlocked the Yale lock and the door swung open. Amy realized she was holding her breath as they stepped inside. The flat was dark and silent, blinds drawn.
'It looks tidy,' she said. '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 was made neatly, with a few items a bra, a T-shirt hanging from the bedpost at the foot of the bed. 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, and guessing that Becky would do the same as that was what their mum had done she stooped and peered under the bed. No suitcase, just a lot of dust balls and a couple of shoe boxes.
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 like 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.
Gary pondered. 'Haven't seen her for a while. She came over to ask me if I could fix her Wi-Fi, but that was ages ago. Maybe two or three weeks? 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 had gone away, to Thailand, and said she might not come back.'
Gary looked hurt. 'She wouldn't have gone without telling me.'
Amy picked up a framed photo from the bookcase, noting that most of the books behind it were popular erotica. 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, Amy having just finished her own first year, Becky planning to do her Teacher Training PGCE the next year.
'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 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.
With all the contradictory signs in the flat, Amy didn't know what to think. But it was the email from Becky that jarred the most. Something about it was off, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Not the meaning of the message itself, but the way it was written. Despite the recent row, she and Becky were close. They emailed and texted each other all the time, and left comments on each other's Facebook updates, so she was used to seeing her sister's words on a screen.
She hurried across to the desk where Becky's computer sat: a brand new iMac. Looked like Becky had been splashing the cash. She switched it on and waited for it to boot up. Despite Amy's urgings, Becky had never password-protected any of her computers, so Amy was able to go straight into her sister's Mail program where she checked the sent items. Because of the way the iMac synced with Becky's phone, emails sent from either would show in the sent items of both.
There was the email. She read it again. Don't try to find me. It was the last email Becky had sent, unless she (or someone else? a voice in her head whispered) had deleted them. She scanned the list of emails sent over previous days. There were hardly any, but she was going to need some time to sit and go through them.
One email caught her eye. It was addressed to [email protected]. The subject line was Account Cancellation.
Cupid's Web was an internet dating site.
'I didn't know Becky was into internet dating,' Amy said, surprised.
Gary, who had been peering over her shoulder, said, 'Didn't you? Well, everyone does internet dating these days, don't they? Every unattached person, anyway.' He snorted. 'Quite a lot of married ones too.'
'I don't.'
'Yeah, well, maybe you don't need to.' He looked her up and down and she resisted telling him that her own love life was so non-existent that she doubted even internet dating could help her.
She turned back to the screen. 'Internet dating. I wonder how long she's been doing it?'
About the Author.
Mark Edwards and Louise Voss became writing partners after Louise saw Mark on a TV documentary about aspiring writers. They wrote their first thriller, Killing Cupid, while living 6000 miles apart, which helped prevent arguments.
Catch Your Death followed, the first novel to feature virologist Kate Maddox, reaching No.1 on the ebook bestseller list. Louise and Mark pride themselves on writing lightning-fast page-turners and have their motto, 'All Thriller, No Filler', pinned above their desks.
Mark lives in Wolverhampton with his young family and works as a freelance copywriter, while Louise lives in Surrey, where she works as a concert administrator, with her daughter and a flatulent cat.
Mark and Louise are keen to chat to readers and can be found on Facebook (facebook.com/vossandedwards) and Twitter: @mredwards and @Louisevoss1.
Visit their website to download a free collection of stories and find out more about the crime-writing duo: www.vossandedwards.com.
Also by Louise Voss and Mark Edwards:.
Killing Cupid.
Catch Your Death.
end.