False Money by Veronica Heley

Duty? She would go out for a short walk, and then put in an hour or so on the laptop. She was going out that evening, anyway, so couldn’t give it much time.
    She made the mistake of booting up the borrowed laptop straight away and never got out for her walk.
    It didn’t seem that Tomi had used it much. A few emails to her parents and friends – Bea took a note of their email addresses in a notebook. She couldn’t find the notebook she’d used last night, so started a new one. There was a lot of spam, which Tomi hadn’t bothered to delete; reminders about library books she’d ordered, which were now in and waiting for her to collect them; some query about her subscription to a Health Club; and so on and so forth. Nothing particularly interesting. Bea switched to the ‘Sent’ box.
    The girl’s style had been chatty, friendly and, now and then, ungrammatical. Most of the emails were to friends, with a weekly one to her mother. None to her father. Tomi chatted about how she was getting on at work – nicely – and where she’d been with Harry, the boyfriend who Chris said had now moved on to someone else. She’d been to an art gallery with a different friend – unnamed. Not Harry? – and to some dance or other, very swish. She’d been worried that her old red dress mightn’t have been up to scratch, but it had passed muster. She wondered about buying some more clothes if this whirl of activity went on. Possibly second-hand?
    Health Club. Chris and Oliver belonged to the Health Club down the road, didn’t they? Maggie had had a subscription for a while. Bea wasn’t sure whether or not Maggie still used it, because it was rather posh. Expensive.
    What was Tomi’s salary? There wasn’t anything on the laptop about that. She’d worked for a magazine, hadn’t she? There must have been something in the paperwork at her flat about it, terms and conditions, etcetera.
    Bea made herself a cup of tea before delving into the files which Harry had left on the laptop before handing it over to Tomi. He’d deleted them, but they were still hanging around if you knew where to look. Bea could imagine Harry’s lordly attitude as he handed his old laptop over to Tomi. ‘Play about with this one, if you like. I’ve got a new one.’
    The phone rang. It was Chris, sounding strained. ‘I phoned round all the hospitals again. She’s not there. So where is she?’
    Bea didn’t reply. What was there she could say?
    Chris gave a little cough. ‘Sorry. Think I’m going down with something. Can’t settle to anything. When’s Oliver due back?’
    â€˜I’m fetching him on Wednesday.’
    â€˜Not till then? I went round to Harry’s just now. Tried to talk to him about Tomi, but we . . . we’ve never really got on. There was a bit of a confrontation, I’m afraid. He’s, well, everything I’m not. Dependable, earning a mint, public school background, upper class right back to the umpteenth generation. Thinks I’m a charlatan.’
    â€˜Surely not,’ said Bea, who had sometimes thought along those lines herself. ‘What you mean is, you were tugging Tomi one way, and he wanted her to conform to his background?’
    â€˜He wasn’t thinking of marriage. He liked showing her off: black is beautiful, causes heads to turn, my girl has been the star of an art-house film. You know? Plus she worked on a magazine. She ticked all the right boxes as a girl to be seen around with, but she said he never took any notice if she expressed an opinion of her own.’
    â€˜You saw different things in her.’
    â€˜I liked her.’ Frustration in his voice.
    â€˜You think she’s dead, too?’
    Silence. The phone clicked off.
    Bea went back to the computer to continue searching through Harry’s emails. Lots of spam. Sent emails, arranging meetings.