"Find her first" by Emma Christie

An audio book.

It's mostly Andy's PoV and Betty's PoV. There's more than one time-line. In one, on the funeral day of Andy's mother, Stef had got an ultimatum through the mail.

Andy is a paramedic. When he was little, his sister died in the bath. It might have been his fault - negligence. Andy had a brief affair with his boss Vicky. His partner of 15 years Stef (who used to be a paramedic, who's had 3 miscarriages) did art when she took a break from work. Her teacher's Richard. Her sister is Alison - "pruned into an only child long before the cutting season".

Andy and Stef live in Portabello. Betty cleans for them, and liking chatting to Stef. Andy says that Stef is away on an art Retreat - actually he and Alison are carrying out a plan (Alison tells Andy she's losing her nerve). Betty, puzzled that Stef has left her phone and paints behind, researches into the Retreat. Her studio mates say that there's no Retreat, that there were rumours of Stef having trouble at work and home. The police tell Andy that Stef's id card (an old one she's lost) has been found in the flat of a criminal, Alex. Andy investigates. Alex's neighbours say that paramedics has saved his life (against his wishes - he kills within hours) after he slit his wrists.

We get a bit of Stef's PoV. After the funeral she wanted to get away from sad Andy. There are complaints about her being drunk on the job.

Betty follows Richard to a hut in the woods. He's carrying a bin-bag. Betty finds a sequence of paintings of Stef, her body gradually disappearing. There are flies and blood.

Betty finds Stef on her favourite hill which she'd painted many times (her dead babies are buried there). Stef has Motor Neurone Disease (hence the complaints that she was drunk at work; hence the sequence of paintings). She wanted to kill herself while she could still move her hands to work a syringe. The plan was that she'd inject herself, then Alison would find her. Stef's hand's are too weak so it's lucky that she was found by Betty (who is Alex's half-sister and lives with him). Betty helps.

The language can be elevated - "two soft, grey silhouettes tattooed onto the frosted window".

Other reviews

• John Verpeleti (I must admit to being confused by the 'now and then' timelines, some italicised chapters and a story delivered with rotating third-person accounts ... If a totally unknown plot path is your thing, then this is one for you)
• Vicky Weisfeld (A smaller number of chapters are told from Stef’s point of view, from six months earlier ... these time shifts can be a mite confusing, but in the end make sense.)