Maya is the second eldest daughter of Wilma Bayliss, St John’s cleaner-turned-social worker.¹ A deputy headmistress of a primary school², Maya is more agreeable to meeting with Strike and Robin than her older sister, Eden, and eventually convinces her sisters to meet them for an interview.³ Strike and Robin meet the Bayliss sisters at a cafe called Belgique in Wanstead.⁴ 

Eden is in her fifties but Robin thinks she looks much younger. “She was smaller in build than Eden, the darkest skinned and, in Robin’s opinion, the prettiest of the sisters. Her long, braided hair was tied back in a thick ponytail, she wore square-framed glasses over her large, wide-set eyes and her full mouth, with its naturally up-tilted corners, conveyed warmth.” ⁵ 

^{1, 2: Troubled Blood, Chapter 37
3: Troubled Blood, Chapter 49
4, 5: Troubled Blood, Chapter 53}