Forward Slash. Mark Edwards

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       1

       Amy

       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 СКАЧАТЬ