Forward Slash by Mark Edwards, Louise Voss Read Free Book Online Page B

that something was very wrong. And she knew that sick feeling wouldn’t go away until she spoke to her sister and found out exactly what was going on.
    Boris trotted into the garden, nails clicking against the paving, and sat at her feet. She stroked his smooth head.
    ‘I need to make a new To Do list,’ she said.
    She opened the Notes app on her phone and thought for a moment. What did she need to do?
    Call airports
,
she tapped on the tiny keyboard.
    Call mum and dad.
She knew she ought to do that now, but she was reluctant. The worst thing she could imagine – no, not the worst thing by far, but something annoying and upsetting – would be her mum coming over and getting involved. Her parents caused enough problems from Spain as it was.
    Find the hot date.
    That had to be the most important item on the list. She chewed the inside of her cheek, worriedly. Why hadn’t she brought the laptop home with her last time? She was going to have to go back to Becky’s flat to get it.
    She tackled Item One first, starting with Heathrow, but they told her she would need to speak to the individual airlines, so she looked up which ones flew to Vietnam and Cambodia. She called Emirates, then Malaysia Airlines and Cathay Pacific. They all told her the same thing: nothing.
    ‘Our passenger lists are completely confidential,’ a bored-sounding Australian woman said. ‘We’d only be able to give that kind of information to the police.’
    Amy thought about calling the police again. But her instinct was that she would need more information to go back to them with before they would take her seriously.
    She pulled up outside Becky’s flat and went inside, carrying her crash helmet. She had been riding now for four years. The leather felt like a protective shell, the wheels made her swift and hard to catch. Half-cheetah half-tortoise, she thought, and suppressed a smile.
    As she passed Gary’s door, he came out. ‘I heard your bike,’ he said. ‘Any news? I only got back about an hour ago – pub lunch with the footie lads.’
    ‘Nothing,’ she said.
    ‘Maybe she’s back home now. Shall we go and have a look?’
    The flat was still empty.
    Amy checked her watch. It was 6 p.m. ‘Nice day?’ she asked.
    ‘Yeah, not bad. To be honest, I lost us the match because I was worried about Becky. Kept looking at my phone to see if I’d had a missed call from you.’
    Amy scrutinized him. ‘That’s sweet of you.’
    He smiled his lopsided smile and ran a hand through his thick hair. His shirt, she noticed, was slightly too small for him and rose up to expose an inch of belly. She remembered his body from earlier. He had that thing going on – what was it called? A V cut. Those lines of muscle that ran in two diagonals from his abs down towards his groin.
    She told Gary about her visit to Katherine and the hot date. ‘I came back here so I could take another look at Becky’s—’
    ‘Computer,’ he finished.
    She was grateful to him for reminding her of his annoying habit and taking her mind off his abs.
    ‘Do you want a coffee?’ he asked. ‘I’ll make one in my flat and bring it through.’ He slunk off and she sat down with Becky’s laptop, pressing a button on the keyboard to bring it back to life.
    She went straight to the ‘Old Emails Back-Up’ folder and scrolled through it, looking for interesting messages – particularly, anything connected to Internet dating.
    It was an unknown world to Amy, something she had never tried, although she had been tempted a few times on cold nights in her flat when it was dark outside and the thought of having someone to watch TV with, to share her bed with other than Boris, filled her with yearning. But she was happy with her dog, for now, and too busy with her fast-growing business. That’s what she told herself.
    ‘You need to move on,’ she heard Becky say. ‘There are good men out there, Amy.’
    It had been four years since ‘that thing’, as she called it in her head,