Apples Never Fall

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.”

Chapter 30

LAST OCTOBER

“I’ll try the apple crumble,” said Joy to the waitress at the David Jones cafeteria, where she sat opposite Savannah, surrounded by a triumphant array of stiff, shiny, string-handled shopping bags at their feet.

“With ice cream or cream?” asked the waitress.

“With both,” said Joy firmly.

It was a family tradition to always try the apple crumble whenever it was on the menu, in the forlorn hope that they might one day find an apple crumble as good as the one Stan’s mother used to bake. It was her signature dish, like Amy’s brownies. Everyone apart from Joy got misty-eyed when they ate apple crumble and said, “Not as good as Grandma’s,” while Joy thought to herself, Trust the old bag to never share her secret recipe. One day someone would work out the missing single ingredient and then she’d be properly dead.

“Please may I have the apple crumble too?” said Savannah in that funny, almost childlike well-mannered way she had. “Also with ice cream and cream.”

“Same as your mum, then.” The waitress flicked her notepad closed. It was the second time that day they’d been mistaken for mother and daughter as they’d shopped, trying on clothes in adjacent change rooms. “Do you want to see what your daughter thinks?” a shop assistant had said to Joy as she tried on a long-sleeved floaty floral dress in a color she would never normally wear.

Savannah had convinced Joy to buy the dress. “You look really beautiful,” she’d said, eyes narrowed. “And it’s twenty percent off. It looks well made.” She’d dropped to her knees on the floor beside Joy and folded back the hem of the dress to show her. “Look at the stitching on the lining. That’s real good quality.”