Presumed Dead Read Online Free Page A

slowing to a stop not far from his.
    “Yes?” He walked back to her.
    “If you’ve time for a quick character assassination of my mother, Aunt Joyce is just the woman to do it.” She nodded at the car, her expression surprisingly grim. “My aunt and uncle, Joyce and Len.”
    Joyce, when she got out of the car, wore an expression very similar to Holly’s. Len was the only one with a smile. He was late forties, Dylan supposed, with thinning dark hair.
    “Hello, love.” Len hugged Holly, then held her at arm’s length. “It’s so good to see you.”
    “You should have phoned,” Holly said.
    “She wanted to come and see what had happened with—” Len nodded toward Dylan. “Is this him?”
    “Yes. This is Dylan Scott. Dylan, my Uncle Len and my Aunt Joyce.”
    “Pleased to meet you both.”
    Dylan’s hand was shaken by a smiling Len. It was then, somewhat reluctantly he thought, shaken by Joyce.
    “You’re going ahead with it then?” Joyce asked.
    “Dylan has agreed to try and find out what happened to Mum, yes,” Holly said. “Shall we go inside? Dylan, can you spare a few more minutes?”
    “Of course.”
    He wouldn’t miss this for anything. Several things were puzzling him. For example, how, when presumably Joyce and Len had taken Holly in out of the kindness of their hearts, there was so much animosity between aunt and niece. And how this surly, dour-faced woman could be Anita Champion’s sister?
    With four of them inside Holly’s home, the health and safety experts should have been on full alert. Holly refused to sit down so Joyce and Dylan took the sofa, and Len perched on one of the stools he’d carried through from the excuse for a kitchen.
    Joyce’s face still hadn’t managed a smile. She had hair that, unlike her sister’s long blond locks, was a greying brown colour. It was lank and uncared for. Her face bore no traces of makeup. Her skirt was brown, and the jumper she wore beneath her brown jacket was also brown. Everything about her was dull and drab. And brown.
    “You must have been close to your sister,” Dylan said.
    “No.”
    If he’d told her she was the ugliest woman he’d ever clapped eyes on, and it was possibly true, he couldn’t have insulted her more. “Oh, I thought that, as you took Holly in—”
    “I’ve never shirked my responsibilities, Mr. Scott. We had no children, Len and me, and we’d never wanted any. But as I said, I’ve never shirked my responsibilities.”
    “I see.” He saw why there was little love lost between the two women. Holly had been a “responsibility” from the age of eleven, it seemed. “Did you see her often? Anita, I mean?”
    “Twice a year, maybe. We had nothing in common.”
    “We were glad to have Holly.” Len smiled at his niece. “She was as lovely then as she is now. We’re very proud of her.”
    “Holly doesn’t want to hear this,” Joyce said, “but Anita was only interested in two things. One was Anita, and the other was men. You’re probably thinking it was unusual for a woman to go off like that. Not in Anita’s case, it wasn’t. She thought nothing of leaving Holly alone for a weekend while she stayed with some man or other.”
    “A weekend is one thing,” Dylan said, “but to vanish completely—”
    “Before we moved down here,” Joyce said, “Anita asked if we’d mind Holly for the weekend. I can remember it as if it was yesterday. She was supposed to collect her on the Sunday night because it was Holly’s first full day at the primary school on the Monday. Of course, Anita being Anita, she didn’t turn up, did she? It was left to me to take the kid to school. Do you know how long Anita was gone?”
    “Er, no.”
    “Then I’ll tell you. Almost a fortnight!”
    “That’s—”
    “Typical of Anita. She was the most selfish person I ever knew. From the moment she was born, she thought the world owed her something.”
    “You were—how old when she was born?”
    “Five.”
    “She can’t