‘But it’s too much of a coincidence that she was in both places,’ Jack said. ‘She’s on the list for the mindfulness retreat, and she was on one of the boat trips in Myanmar. Tom doesn’t believe in coincidences, do you, Tom?’ He didn’t respond. ‘She has to be the person that Hannah met, surely?’

‘But there was only one woman from this part of the world travelling on her own. And she was called Callie. She’s the one I told you about,’ said Nathan. ‘I tried to get to know her, but like I said earlier, there was something odd about her. I think I scared her.’

‘Well Dorothea Atwell wasn’t on her own, that’s true. Are you sure you don’t remember her?’

Nathan frowned. ‘We didn’t share surnames, but wait a minute. When you said the name out loud, it rang a bell that didn’t chime when I read it on screen. Dorothea could easily be shortened to Thea, couldn’t it? Who was she travelling with?’

‘Dr Garrick Atwell. Does that help?’

For once Nathan’s face betrayed a flicker of emotion. ‘Yes!’ But his moment of euphoria didn’t last. ‘Bloody stupid idea, though. They were both about a hundred and three, and in her letter Hannah was talking about going off on holiday with this woman she’d met. How likely is that!’

‘I don’t think you should dismiss the idea, Nathan,’ Tom said. ‘If Hannah was feeling particularly vulnerable, she may have seen this woman as a maternal figure – someone she could trust.’

‘If Hannah saw Dorothea as a supportive older woman, she might have at least told her where she was planning on going,’ Jack said as Tom walked back towards the kitchen island. ‘Can you have someone go out and talk to her, Tom?’

‘Not easily, no. How can I say I got her name? She hasn’t done anything wrong, and even if I could dream up an excuse, I’m not going to be able to get anyone to go tonight. The problem is that I have no official means of knowing about this woman.’

Both Jack and Nathan were looking at him, clearly waiting for him to come up with a solution.

‘Look, there’s one thing we could do. If Nathan were to tell me that he had paid someone to check out Hannah’s movements, friends, et cetera, and that Dorothea Atwell’s name had cropped up as a possible contact, I could register it as intelligence, and it would get into the system officially. Maybe someone from the missing-persons team would then be persuaded to have a word with the Atwells. Would that do?’