Forward Slash

by Louise Voss

  Though how could she when all she could think about was finding Becky? How could she do anything? A mammoth To Do list began to populate itself inside her head and before she knew it she was out of the bath, wrapped in a towel, sitting at the kitchen table with her notepad and computer.

  She spent almost an hour checking her site stats and making a list of things she needed to do urgently, and another list of things that could wait. The site seemed to be ticking along without her. There were no crises to deal with. The customer-service company she’d employed was answering emails, the community members were chatting among themselves, orders were coming in and being automatically forwarded to the vendors, traffic and registrations were steady. She felt relieved.

  Next, she turned her attention back to Becky. So much had happened in the last few days. She felt the need to write another list, to break down what she knew so she could work out what to do next.

  She had started by contacting the men from CupidsWeb. She had met Ross, the owner of Wiggins the spaniel, and decided he had nothing to do with it, and had ruled out Shaun because he had been in Canada. There was the third man, though, Daniel, the one who appeared to have no visible presence online. He hadn’t replied to her message. She quickly logged in to CupidsWeb and checked. Still no message. Interesting that all his profile photos were set to ‘private’, she noted. Did that mean that he had something to hide? She typed out another message, asking him to get in touch, and pressed Send. She made a note to follow it up if he still didn’t reply.

  Then there was everything with poor Katherine. Amy could hardly believe that she was dead, and of a drugs overdose. It wasn’t the kind of thing that happened to schoolteachers. The police had told her that Kath had died from an overdose of cocaine mixed with something called china white, a synthetic form of heroin that was far stronger than heroin itself.

  ‘If she had no tolerance to it, and took a large hit, her system wouldn’t have been able to handle it,’ DC Amristy had told Amy on the phone. She also told Amy that they had indeed arrested Fraser on suspicion of supplying the drug. ‘We found a text on Miss Devine’s phone that she had sent to Mr Fraser Elliot thanking him for a gift which we assume to be the bag of narcotics.’

  ‘I need you to ask Fraser what he knows about my sister,’ Amy said. ‘Anything that will help me find her.’

  ‘Do you think he was supplying your sister with drugs too?’ Amristy had asked.

  ‘No. But I know he slept with her …’

  DC Amristy had seemed confused. ‘I don’t understand what this has to do with Katherine Devine.’

  Exasperated, Amy had explained the whole story once more, and Amristy had taken it down, promising to pass the information to the missing-person’s coordinator. Again, Amy had almost said.

  I’m on my own, she thought.

  The question was, did Becky’s disappearance have anything to do with Katherine? All she knew for certain was that they had both been using CupidsWeb, had both slept with Fraser and now, she knew, they had both been using this awful Casexual site. But while Katherine had been found dead in her flat, Becky was missing. No one had sent an email from Kath saying she was going away. The circumstances were entirely different. But then again, it seemed too coincidental that something awful could happen to both of them within a week of each other. While she didn’t believe Fraser had done anything to Becky, there had to be some connection.

  She patted Boris’s bony head. Could Becky have been into drugs too? Had she got involved with drug dealers? Did Fraser know anything about that? Maybe she should talk to the police again about Fraser, see if they would let her talk to him.

  She had insisted to everyone that Becky was not into drugs, but she had never thought that her sister would use casual hook-up sites either.

  ‘I sound like a real puritanical prude, don’t I, Boris?’ she said to the dog.

  She tried to gather her thoughts, stop them from wheeling around the inside of her skull. The only thing Amy could do was stick to the few facts she had, and her suspicion that one of the men Becky had met online must know something that could help her find her sister. And Fraser, she was sure, was a dead end. Yes, he had slept with Becky, and through him she had found out about the hook-up sites. But Fraser giving lethal drugs to Katherine didn’t mean he had anything to do with Becky’s disappearance.

  She picked up the sheaf of printouts from Casexual.com, and picked out the one that had disturbed her most: the message from the guy who called himself TooledUp.

  She stared at the photo he had provided with the email, which she had also printed out, in colour. He scared her. Perhaps her view of psychopaths was stereotypical, but that’s what he looked like. She couldn’t understand how Becky could ever be attracted to someone like him. But maybe she was lying to herself: most women had at some point felt the lure of dangerous men, bad boys who just wanted to fuck you and didn’t want to talk about their emotions afterwards. She smiled to herself, thinking about Gary. Then her frown slipped as she examined TooledUp’s picture.

  She had been thinking that, even though she was afraid, she was going to have to contact him through Casexual. But, looking closely at the photo, she thought there might be another way, though it was a long shot.

  He was looking into a mirror, and in the reflection she could see, behind him, a window with no curtains or nets, and a view out onto the street. On the other side of the street she could make out a shop of some kind. But she couldn’t quite make out its name.

  She logged back into Katherine’s Casexual account and found the original message and the photo. She opened the photo file and blew it up to full size on her screen, zooming in on the shop. It was blurry, but luckily the file was large, so she didn’t lose too much definition. Squinting, she could make out the name of the establishment: JEANS LAUNDRETTE.

  Noting the misspelling of ‘launderette’, she Googled it, but nothing came up. It wasn’t the kind of place that would advertise itself online. But if she could find it, she would be able to find out where TooledUp lived, and she had an idea.

  29

  Him

  I parked opposite Amy’s flat and waited. I was in the black Focus, the cheap car I use when I want to be inconspicuous.

  I could see her moving about inside the flat, could detect steam on the window of the bathroom. I licked my lips, thinking about going in. I drowned a girl in a bath once, simply held her under the water until she stopped thrashing, one hand on her throat, holding her under, the other hand between her legs, a finger inside her. I could have done the same to Amy – if I didn’t have plans for her.

  The dog was a problem. Greyhounds are, according to Wikipedia and the numerous doggy forums I checked out, gentle and docile – unless you’re a small fluffy creature. But it was risky, and I don’t take chances. Especially now, when I’m so close to getting what I’ve always dreamed of. The last thing I want is a dog bite making me sore on my special day.

  So I waited, and watched.

  Amy was frustratingly careful with her privacy settings online. Her Facebook page was locked down unless you were her friend, and she barely tweeted. She hadn’t been on Twitter since putting out the appeal about Becky. Her website, Upcycle.com, was remarkably impersonal – she barely even got a mention on the About Us page.

  She only had one public Facebook status: an appeal about Becky, the same as she’d put on Twitter. But she had a public Pinterest account, though she had only pinned numerous dull pictures of cushion covers and crocheted dishcloths on there.

  I thought it would be fun to create a Pinterest board with all the items I’d like to use to torture her: knitting needles, pins and scissors, pliers and mount cutters. I could sew up her mouth, replace her eyes with buttons, shave her head and replace it with wool. Break her spine and turn her into a living replica of the rag dolls she liked so much. Have the dog stuffed and displayed beside her.

  That would be fun. If she turned out not to be The One after all.

  Sit
ting in the car, thinking about dolls and pain, made me think about my mum. Denise. She was beautiful, so beautiful. She looked like a doll – like a Barbie, with long blonde hair, a narrow waist, perky tits and big blue eyes. No, I didn’t have a dad. Of course, genetically, I did. Someone donated his sperm to help make me, but that was where his contribution to fatherhood ended. Mum never talked about him, not ever. There were no photos of him on the wall between the paintings of the clown and the crying boy. And I liked that. I was the only man in her life.

  When I was growing up, she called me her ‘little man’. Then, when I hit puberty when I was thirteen and shot up, suddenly I was taller than her and she dropped the ‘little’. She would lie in bed beside me on cold nights – our flat was always freezing in winter – and we would spoon. I loved the warmth of her breasts against my shoulder blades, her breath on the back of my neck. She would be wearing her white corset and sometimes, when the room was quiet and the night was still, she would reach over and take my erection in her hand and just hold it. I would wriggle and squirm all night, my heart hammering in my chest, my penis aching. Eventually, I would fall asleep and when I woke up she would be gone. Usually, I would find her in the kitchen, one of her Duran Duran CDs playing, and she would make me scrambled eggs and kiss me on the cheek before settling down in front of the TV with a packet of cigarettes, rewatching one of her videos: The Breakfast Club or Dirty Dancing.

  She used to talk about girls all the time. ‘One day, you’ll meet a girl and leave me. What is it they say? A son is a son until he takes a wife.’

  She would look up at me with tears in her eyes and I would promise her, ‘Mum, I’ll never leave you. I swear.’

  But then she would brighten and say, ‘You’re a good boy. A good man.’

  Within the walls of that flat, we had our own kingdom. Our world. I would go to school every day, filled with loathing for the other kids with their ugly mothers, desperate to get home to Denise. By the time I was fourteen, that’s what she made me call her. She wouldn’t let me call her Mum any more, except in public. The only lesson I was interested in was computer science, and Denise bought me a PC from her catalogue, paying it off week by week with the money from her cleaning job.

  Sometimes she would lock herself in her bedroom for days, the door locked, refusing to come out. I could hear her crying inside, occasionally throwing stuff around the room. She had an old ceramic pot in the room, which she would piss in, and the room always smelled terrible when she eventually reappeared, her hair standing on end, eyes bloodshot, skin translucent with grief. I don’t really mean her smell was terrible, because it was her – her sweat, her piss, her tears … It was perfume to me.

  After one of these episodes, she would come into my bed and she would make me strip so she could examine me, exclaiming over my blossoming body, the hairs that sprouted on my chest and groin, my growing muscles, which she loved to squeeze. She taught me how to masturbate and would clap with delight as I came, sending semen shooting across the bed in a glistening arc.

  Friday nights were my favourite. That was date night. I would get home from school and watch some TV before going to my room to get changed. Denise had bought me a suit from Oxfam, which had a faint smell of mothballs and had shiny patches on the knees, but which fitted me perfectly. I would put on the aftershave she’d given me and would sit on my bed, shaking with anticipation, waiting for her to call me.

  She had the dinner table laid out with a red-and-white-check cloth, a candle burning, two wineglasses gleaming in the candlelight. Denise would be wearing her black velvet dress with her hair pinned back, fully made up, and she always cooked our favourites: prawn cocktail for starters, shepherd’s pie for our main and Angel Delight for pudding. Butterscotch flavour. She put her Sad Café album on, followed by Sade or Dire Straits. We didn’t talk very much. Mostly, she would tell me how much she loved me, how I was the only man who had never let her down, how she was so happy that she was the woman in my life.

  She told me that we would die together, because that is what true lovers do.

  ‘When you’re old enough,’ she said. ‘And before the world tries to take you away from me.’

  Then, after dessert and while I smoked a cigarette, she would disappear into her bedroom and come back out wearing her white corset with white knickers, suspenders and stockings. We slow-danced for a while before she led me by the hand into her bedroom, where she would undress me while whispering that we were going to be together for ever …

  Except we weren’t.

  She lied to me.

  Mid-afternoon, Amy came out of her flat. She had the dog with her, which looked even bigger in real life. They walked off down the road. I waited till she’d vanished from sight then got out of the car and strolled over to her flat. I wasn’t planning to do anything. I just wanted to take a closer look at the place. I peered through the window. All very neat and clean inside. Her perfect, ordered life.

  I was going to enjoy getting to know her intimately. Finding out exactly what made her tick.

  I got back into my car and thought about my options. I decided to take a drive to my childhood home, on the other side of London, thinking that the mnemonic power of the place might help me think. I was amazed by how tiny it was, a box inside another box. I parked outside and watched some kids playing football in the courtyard out front.

  I took out my phone and looked at Amy’s photo again. I was sick of waiting. Tired of following her around.

  Tomorrow, I decided, will be the big day. And it was obvious how I should do it.

  At last. After all the false starts, the dashed hopes and broken promises, I will finally get what I deserve.

  And so will Amy.

  30

  Amy

  Thursday, 25 July

  The café was at the end of the street, a cheerful, independent place that gave free coffee refills and where dogs were welcomed. Amy slid on to a floral padded bench at a window table and opened her laptop, as Boris took a long drink from the bowl of water that Cliff the proprietor had immediately plonked on the floor under his nose.

  ‘Afternoon, Amy. How’s things?’ he asked, as he patted Boris. ‘Haven’t seen you two for a while.’

  Cliff was a short kindly man in his late forties, swamped in his tightly tied apron, under which he wore a uniform of brogues and bright red cords, the latter matching his cheeks. Amy always thought he should be organizing Hunt Balls or selling antiques rather than running a small tea shop in southeast London.

  Amy made a face. ‘Boris and I were going a bit stir-crazy at home – needed a change of scenery. Things aren’t good, actually. My sister’s gone missing and the police aren’t taking it seriously.’

  She had taken a decision some time earlier that day that she was going to tell whoever would listen, whenever she could. Surely, the wider out in the world the message went, the better chance there was that someone would know something.

  Cliff’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline and settled back down again into an expression of sympathy and slight panic. ‘Good heavens, that’s absolutely appalling! When did you last see her?’

  Amy swallowed. Perhaps coming out hadn’t been such a good idea, although it was true that she hadn’t wanted to be in the flat. It had felt as though the walls were pressing in on her, the air fraught with her own recycled anxiety. ‘I haven’t seen her for weeks, but she went missing a week ago.’

  Cliff patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, then wiped his hand on his apron as though Amy’s shoulder had been sticky. ‘I’m so sorry to hear it. What a terrible worry for you – and for your poor parents. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.’

  ‘Thanks, Cliff. Could I just have a latte, please? And, you still have Wi-Fi here, don’t you?’

  ‘We certainly do. Coffee’s on the house, my dear,’ Cliff said.

  Amy smiled at him, and Boris settled down at her feet. She logged herself into the Admin page of Upcycle.com and went straight to ‘Cre
ate a new post’, although not without noticing that since her last visit, forty-three comments had been added to recent articles (an article on growing tomatoes upside-down in planters recycled from laundry bags proving surprisingly chat-worthy).

  Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a few moments as she tried to think how best to word what she wanted to say, typing and deleting the first sentence several times before settling on:

  Dear Upcyclers, this is Amy Coltman. Upcycle.com is my brainchild and my baby, and I am the author of many of the articles on here, although I don’t usually put my name to them. Please forgive the unrelated content, because this post is something personal to me, and of extreme importance. I really need your help.

  My 29-year-old sister Becky has gone missing. Nobody’s heard from her for over a week [she decided not to mention the tweet and the Facebook photos] and it is very out of character. I am by now certain that she has come to some harm. You will probably hear about her in the national press before too long, unless she miraculously turns up – but in the meantime, there is one tiny lead I’m [she deleted ‘I’m’; no point in letting people know that the police weren’t taking it seriously] we’re following. Please look closely at the attached photos. The first is of Becky – obviously, if anyone recognizes her, or has seen her recently, PLEASE let me know, or tell the police. (I tweeted and Facebooked this on Monday – thanks to all of you who have already shared it.) The second photo is of a launderette called JEANS LAUNDRETTE (sic). I have no idea where it is other than that it’s probably in London. Does anybody recognize it? Please, folks, spread the word. Share this appeal on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus – whatever your choice of social networking site. Email it to all your friends and beg them to pass it on to everyone they know. I really need your help.

  Thank you,

  Amy x

  Amy read through it several times, noting that she had repeated ‘I really need your help’, but deciding to leave the second one in for emphasis. Would it lose her some of her subscribers, who might only be interested in how to decoupage an old lampshade, and not give a stuff about Becky, or would the human-interest angle pique their interest? It could go either way, she supposed – but she didn’t care if she lost subscribers. She was fortunate enough to have a built-in audience of over fifty thousand members, most of them UK-based, and she’d be mad not to use them.