I know he’s right but it doesn’t feel like that. It’s like I’m volunteering to walk into a blazing fire. I want to back out, walk away like I always do when the going gets tough. My mother always told me I needed to see things through to the end. ‘Don’t give up,’ she would say when all I wanted to do was give up. But more often than not, I did give up. I gave up swimming when the lessons got too hard, gave up the guitar at the first sign of sore fingers and gave up college, twice.

In front of me I see a simple white door with a flyscreen attached. The flyscreen is open.

Jeff is hovering, his eyes still on me, his arm outstretched to show me the way.

‘Come on Becca, what do you have to lose?’

I don’t know, Jeff. How do I know what I might lose when I don’t know what I’m going to hear? I don’t know why this woman was killed looking for me. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. Before pushing the gate open, I pause. There’s no turning back now. ‘Okay, here goes.’

The path is only about twenty steps but it feels miles long. Every journey starts with a single step and all that crap. I’m walking slowly so I don’t get there, yet. Jeff walks ahead and rings the doorbell. Eventually I’m standing beside him. There is no answer. Great.

‘No one here, we’ll have to come back later.’

Just as I turn to leave, the door opens. A small dark woman, hair tied back showing her youth, a small tattoo of a butterfly on her neck, stands in front of us. She looks at us cautiously. Words elude me so I look to Jeff.

‘Is this Thomas Collins’s house?’ he asks.

‘Who’s asking?’ she says, in an accent that isn’t local.

‘Well, my name is Jeff and this is Rebecca Wall. We were hoping to speak to Thomas.’

‘Thomas is not home, he’s at the base.’ She is about to close the door on me, on my hopes, when I hear a voice calling out from a room behind her. ‘Wait!’

A tall handsome guy, his face molded by sadness, arrives behind the woman and pulls the door open. His dark, lifeless eyes seem far too old for his face, in total contrast to the photo I’ve seen of him on the internet where he stands tall in his army suit. Honor carved on his happy expression.