Good Girl Bad (4)

Miss Ambrosia, the cafe where Tabby works on Saturdays—only to be told that Tabby hadn’t worked there for over four months.

Where was Tabby going on Saturdays, then?

Where was she getting money from?

Rebecca mentally kicks herself. She’d looked into GPS tracking when she’d bought Tabitha her first smartphone. For a while, she’d obsessively checked her location, but Tabby was always exactly where she said she’d be. Even after that interview with Ms. Paisley, when Rebecca was watching her closely, checking her location again daily—well, she’d gotten slack. She thought Ms. Paisley had it wrong. Tabby was never over in Richmond, where Trent lived. She was always with her best friend Freddy, studying, or else at work.

Rebecca had stopped checking. She really didn’t think Tabby was the type to sneak around.

Now, though, she wonders what data she’d be able to access. Tabby’s phone was right here. Didn’t Google Maps keep data on everywhere you’d been? Was that true? And if it was, please dear God let Tabby’s passcode be the same as it always was—the day she got Charlie, her twelfth birthday present. But he had arrived a week early, so it wasn’t like she was using her actual birthdate, which Rebecca had told her a hundred times would be foolish, anyone could guess it.

Now, she grabs the phone off the table, presses the home button. Nothing. The phone is dead, and she scours around for a charger, usually lurking in every second power point, so many phones seemed to populate their home.

Personal phones. Work phones. Kids’ phones.

Old, discarded phones.

Finally, she spies a cord hanging out from under the microwave, and plugs Tabby’s phone in. It takes forever even for the little red battery symbol to blink on. Impatiently, she turns away from it.

“Did you know Tabby had quit Miss Ambrosia?” she asks Genevieve, trying to be gentle, but it’s hard to keep the urgency, the accusing tone out of her voice.

The girl has pulled Charlie’s stiff little body onto her lap. So different from Tabby, Genevieve is short and dark-haired, her brown eyes now staring vacantly into the distance. Charlie was Tabby’s dog, but Tabby shared him generously with her little sister. She made sure to give Genevieve turns walking and feeding him, so the dog loved them both eagerly, joyously. Right above her, in fact, is an enlarged photo of the three of them. Charlie is clutched between the two girls, the love on their faces palpable through the camera lens. Tabby is crouched down—she’s easily a foot taller than Gen. Her long, blonde hair is sun-bleached and messy, cascading over a slim, tan shoulder. Her blue eyes sparkle, staring right at you out from the wall.

Rebecca shivers. Leroy loves that picture. “Bottled joy” he called it, insisting that it was the one they frame, but it’s always made Rebecca uneasy. Tabby looks older than she ought to in it. In a tank top and tiny shorts, she looks worldly, seductive. When she’d snapped at Leroy that perhaps that was why he liked it, he’d looked at her strangely. She still can’t quite fathom the look that he gave her.

“They look like happy kids,” he’d said, and she wondered if he could sense her jealousy, if that was why he was so restrained. God, she was basically accusing him of lusting after her teenage daughter, he was well within his rights to fly completely off the handle. Instead, that strange look. Like he didn’t even know who she was in that moment.

It wasn’t as simple as the ageing mother envying the blossoming of youthful beauty. Rebecca herself was beautiful, she had no doubt and no insecurity about that. Tabby even looked a lot like her, really. Taller and slimmer, but their features were similar, their striking blue eyes.

No, it wasn’t that. But it was hard to put her finger on the pang that the picture gave her, every time.

She wished she’d put her foot down, ordered a different print.

Now, though, she focuses back on Genevieve, who solemnly shakes her head.

Rebecca has no reason to doubt her. Gen has always been compliant, cautious, responsible. Tabby is more like her, Rebecca—impulsive, flamboyant. Sure of herself.

Or at least, she used to be.

Is she still flamboyant?

Things have changed, Rebecca knows that. But they’ve changed so slowly, so incrementally, that she hasn’t paid that much attention. Now, though, she realizes that the word flamboyant no longer applies to her eldest daughter.

Genevieve, on the other hand, was never flamboyant. Genevieve is steady. Calm. Rebecca trusts her absolutely.

Rebecca casts her mind back to the Saturday just gone. Tabby had left on her bike at about 11 a.m. as she always did. She covered the lunch shift, making coffees and toasting fancy baguettes for a little café one suburb over from them. Or at least, that was what she was supposed to be doing. Rebecca was sure, in fact, that Tabby had boasted of a promotion not that long ago. Managing that shift. Definitely not more than four months ago.

So where had she been going every Saturday for four hours?

“Did you call Freddy?” Gen’s voice is faint. Rebecca thinks that she hasn’t grasped the seriousness of the situation. All she can think about is the damn dog. And the dog definitely needs thinking about, but right now, Rebecca just wants to know where Leroy and Tabitha are.

“Yes. I spoke to Fred. They haven’t seen her this weekend. Freddy had already left for school by the time I called.”

Fred and Frederica. For the hundredth time, Rebecca thinks how vain. Silly, even. To choose a name for your kid that’s basically the same as your own. The amount of times there’s been confusion over who is being referred to when you say “Freddy” is ridiculous.