Chapter 29

chapter twenty-nine

Now

‘Did you ever meet the mother?’ Liz Barrington asked her younger brother as he sat at her kitchen table doing her tax return for her.

Simon didn’t look up from the pile of receipts.

‘The missing mother,’ clarified Liz.

He frowned at a faded receipt. ‘I can’t read this.’

‘Your flatmate’s missing mother,’ said Liz. ‘Amy’s missing mother.’

It was all thanks to Liz that Amy had moved into Simon’s share house in the first place. Liz had been Amy’s Uber driver. (Now she had given up Uber driving because she had her own, much more fulfilling mobile spray-tan business: Tan-at-Home-with-Liz.)

The night Liz picked up Amy, they got chatting and Amy convinced her to park the car and join her for a drink with her friends, which had been okay, but Amy’s friends were so random. One of them was, like, sixty years old, literally sixty years old, and if Liz wanted to talk with sixty-year-olds she’d go visit her mother, thanks very much.

That night Amy mentioned that she needed somewhere new to live and Liz told her that her brother’s flatmate had just moved out. So that was how her brother and her Uber passenger ended up living together.

‘Her name is Joy. I have met her,’ said Simon. ‘I met the father too.’

Liz was thrilled. ‘So what do you think? Do you think he’s guilty? Everyone seems to think the father did it.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Simon.

‘Have you got to know Amy very well?’ asked Liz. ‘She must be upset. Imagine if our mother went missing and everyone was accusing Dad. I mean, I can’t even imagine it.’ She reflected on this for a moment. ‘I could totally imagine the reverse. Mum would do a really good job cleaning up the evidence, wouldn’t she? She’s always deleting her search history, which is actually quite suspicious.’

Simon said nothing.

‘How well do you know her? Amy?’

‘I know her pretty well,’ said Simon. He squinted at the next receipt. ‘Did you really think eyelash extensions were tax deductible?’

Liz shrugged. ‘I need eyelashes for my work.’

‘No you don’t.’

‘Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that.’

He picked up the next receipt.

‘So you’ve, like, hung out with her?’ asked Liz.

He bent his head to her receipts again.

‘Oh my God, Simon,’ she said. She felt a rush of love for her clueless little brother. First his cow of a fiancée breaks his heart, then his weird older flatmate gets her claws into him. You had to watch those cougar types who dressed like twenty-somethings. Boys couldn’t see the Botox. Although Liz was pretty sure Amy wouldn’t have had Botox, she was too hippie and new-age, but she definitely dressed and acted younger than her wrinkles.

‘Amy must be, what? Fifteen years older than you?’

‘Twelve years older,’ he said. ‘Twelve years, three months and twenty-four days.’