"The Tennis Church," by Sophie Hannah, in The C Word, Spellbound Books, 2021.
The proceeds from this book go to support Britain's National Health Service. The title refers to COVID, but few of the stories make any reference to that plague. Always weird to come across an anthology with no editor.
"I haven't disappeared," said the voice on the other end of the line. No hello, no introduction, nothing.
Nice starting point. The person receiving the call is Charlie Zailer, She's a cop. And the caller, she realizes is Tasha, an old friend she hasn't heard from in years. What was this strange conversation about?
Charlie has her own problems, mostly in-laws who have a very different worldview than she and her husband. And oddly enough, that is not unrelated to the trouble with Tasha who, on Christmas day, does seem to have disappeared.
A clever story with a satisfactory ending.
