The phone rang. Sarah ignored it. ‘Sex and laughter. The heart and lungs of a relationship.’

‘I’d better get the phone.’

‘When do you think it’s time to turn off the life-support machine?’

‘I’d really better answer that.’

‘When should you disconnect the shared mortgage and bank account and mutual friends?’

I picked up the phone, glad of an excuse to interrupt this conversation. ‘Hello?’

‘Beatrice, it’s Mummy.’

You’d been missing for four days.

I don’t remember packing, but I remember Todd coming in as I closed the case. I turned to him. ‘What flight am I on?’

‘There’s nothing available till tomorrow.’

‘But I have to go now.’

You hadn’t shown up to work since the previous Sunday. The manageress had tried to ring you but only got your answerphone. She’d been round to your flat but you weren’t there. No one knew where you were. The police were now looking for you.

‘Can you drive me to the airport? I’ll take whatever they’ve got.’

‘I’ll phone a cab,’ he replied. He’d had two glasses of wine. I used to value his carefulness.

Of course I don’t tell Mr Wright any of this. I just tell him Mum phoned me on the 26th of January at 3.30 p.m. New York time and told me you’d gone missing. Like you, he’s interested in the big picture, not tiny details. Even as a child your paintings were large, spilling off the edge of the page, while I did my careful drawings using pencil and ruler and eraser. Later, you painted abstract canvasses, expressing large truths in bold splashes of vivid colour, while I was perfectly suited to my job in corporate design, matching every colour in the world to a pantone number. Lacking your ability with broad brushstrokes, I will tell you this story in accurate dots of detail. I’m hoping that like a pointillist painting the dots will form a picture and when it is completed we will understand what happened and why.