First One Missing by Tammy Cohen

how you behaved after a tragedy. Firstly, you had to be seen to cry. Sally could not over-emphasize the need for tears. You had to look on it as a kind of transaction. You want to find out what’s happened to your kid, so as the grieving parent there are certain things you’re expected to give – and one of those is grief. But Emma Reid hadn’t cried even at the funeral. Sally hadn’t been there, but she’d had reports. And, of course, it hadn’t gone unnoticed. Emma had been ‘stoic’ in the face of tragedy, the Mail said, which everyone knew meant ‘hard’.
    And, secondly, you had to maintain a presence. Just be in evidence from time to time – drop in on the school your child used to go to, lay a few flowers at the spot where the body was found, open the odd charity auction. It didn’t take much, but people needed something in return for their investment of time or money or empathy. But Emma Reid had never seemed to grasp that it was a two-way street.
    Helen Purvis. Now, she was different. She had an innate understanding of what was expected of her. Sally tried to ignore the pang of guilt that flared up at the thought of Helen Purvis. Mina, her life coach, had told her guilt was a wasted emotion. And she was absolutely right, but on the topic of Helen Purvis, Sally’s no-guilt resolve wavered.
    She hadn’t wanted anything to happen with Simon Hewitt. He wasn’t at all her type. But she had been going through a particularly fallow period romantically. Plus she’d just had a rather big horrible birthday. So she was vulnerable. And Simon Hewitt took advantage of that. She’d first met him at the time of Megan’s murder, and he’d been in a terrible state. She’d got a couple of comments from him but that was about it. She didn’t even think he’d registered her existence, to be quite frank. But when she went back to do her in-depth catch-up interview with Helen nine months after Megan’s death, he’d known exactly who she was, and by the time of the next murder, the Reid girl … well …
    She still couldn’t say what she’d found attractive about him. He’d been a good deal thinner back then than he was now. In fact she’d been quite shocked the last time she’d seen him. One read about chickens being pumped full of water so they weighed more – Simon Hewitt looked like it’d been done to him. You could almost see liquid moving under the skin at his wrists like the mattress of a water bed.
    She’d been shocked when he made a pass. She knew she hadn’t exactly been blameless, but then she wasn’t the one breaking her marriage vows. They’d only slept together twice, and the sex hadn’t been much to write home about. And then there’d been that awkward scene that last time they went to bed. They’d been about to do it and he’d suddenly started convulsing on top of her and had rolled off her and curled up in a ball, sobbing. She hadn’t known what to do. She’d comforted him as best she could, but there had been no coming back from that. The next time he’d got in touch she’d told him she could no longer cope with the moral ambiguity of the situation. She’d always considered herself a good person. And now she couldn’t face herself in the mirror. That was one good thing about having affairs with married men, Sally found, there was always a ready-made get-out clause.
    With men like Simon, though, you never knew if they were going to have an attack of conscience and confess everything. Several times since their short-lived affair, she’d had the definite suspicion that Helen knew something, though she’d always been, if not friendly, at least cordial. Sally had to admire her. She was a pro. She would do whatever it took to keep her daughter’s death in the news – even if it meant being civil to her husband’s ex-lover.
    Sally wasn’t proud of sleeping with Simon Hewitt. In fact she was cross with herself for muddying the waters, and she’d never have done it if she’d known