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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.

Sitting 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.

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 ‘Create 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.

With her fingers crossed, she hit ‘Upload’ and watched as it appeared on the Home page of her site, Becky’s pixellated face beaming out at her. Sadness threatened to choke her, but she blinked away the pain of the moment – she had also decided that she was done with feeling sad. Not until she knew for a fact that she had something to be sad about. Becky was missing, but no news was often good news. Until the moment that Becky’s body was discovered (God forbid), she refused to be overwhelmed by this any more. It was a problem that needed solving, that was all.

Her appeal would also go out in the monthly Upcycle.com newsletter to all her subscribers, due to be sent that afternoon by the online marketing company – the email included whatever was featured on the site’s Home page. So Becky’s picture would land in every single mailbox on every single subscriber’s computer. And if even a quarter of them shared it on Twitter or Facebook, the number of people seeing it would increase exponentially.

Amy felt better. Better enough to face something she knew she ought to have done days ago but hadn’t been able to deal with, and about which Cliff’s comment earlier had given her a nudge of guilty conscience: she took out her phone and rang her parents’ number. Last time she’d rung she had only asked Carmella, the housekeeper, if Becky was there, she hadn’t said why she was asking. She couldn’t keep it from them any more.

The long European ringtone abbreviated into a staccato crackle of answer. ‘Hello – Mum?’

‘No. Is Carmella. Miz Coltman away.’

‘Oh. Hi, Carmella, it’s Amy again. Is Dad there? When will Mum be back?’

‘No. Away. On holidays.’

It seemed as though she wasn’t the only one not very good at communicating with her family members. Her parents definitely hadn’t mentioned anything about any holiday.

‘Where?’

‘I doan know. They are in … hmmm … many places, on the sea.’

‘On a
cruise
?’

There was a brief commotion as an obese woman in a wheelchair, pushed by her tiny husband and both talking loudly about lemon cake, came through the door with some difficulty, and Amy had to put her finger in her free ear to hear Carmella’s reply.

‘
Sí
. A crew-se.’

‘Where – the Caribbean? The Fjords?’

‘Hmmm … he go to Miami firsts.’

So, probably the Caribbean then. ‘Oh. I don’t suppose you know if they got around to getting a mobile phone before they left, do you?’

Her parents never had a mobile because, as they said, they didn’t need one in their village in Spain, and it was far too expensive a way to communicate with their family and friends in the UK. They were also complete Luddites when it came to computers and were not on email. Consequently, they never fully understood – or even tried to – what Upcycle.com was all about, nor had any idea how successful a business Amy had made of it.