‘I haven’t seen her since lunchtime,’ Amy says. She sounds tired. ‘I thought she was sulking in her room. Or drinking in that bar at the top of the road.’

‘Wasn’t she with you?’ Matt asks me.

‘You told me to get out, if you recall.’

‘I meant, get out of the way for a few minutes, so we could calm down and clear up. I didn’t mean for you to disappear all afternoon. Bee left the house when you did. With you,’ he adds pointedly.

I jump up and snap on the outside light and we all blink in the glare. I go inside and knock on her bedroom door, then push it open. She’s not there. I check every room, and the shed in the garden.

Lotte and Theo trail after me, calling in sing-song voices, ‘Bethany, where are you?’

Luca looks inside his apartment and comes out, shaking his head.

‘She’s probably at the festa,’ says Matt. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. Right, you two monkeys, it’s time to have a big, bubbly bath and hit the hay.’

‘But we haven’t had any tea! Or lunch,’ protests Theo.

‘You’ve had cake,’ says Matt.

‘And many, many snacks,’ adds Luca.

I don’t look at him. It’s bad enough acting like an utter tosser in front of your family, without a stranger witnessing it too.

Chloe shrugs. ‘Can I go to the festa too?’

Matt shakes his head. Chloe slouches off to her room, but she knows him well enough not to push him. I guess she’s annoyed Matt wouldn’t let her hang out with Carlo and his friends and watch the fireworks.

‘The last time I saw her today was at lunch,’ I say, echoing Amy.

I can’t remember whether Bethany left before I did, because all that I can dredge up is my rage and shame, and the incessant chop of the knife that Amy had been wielding.

My sister calls Bethany, but it goes to voicemail.

‘Nick? What’s going on?’ asks my father.

He’s sitting at the table, his hands resting on the wooden surface. His wrist bones, jutting from his shirt cuffs, are bony, and his hands are flecked with age spots. He looks forlorn and I think how lonely old age is; even in the midst of family, even surrounded by others, he is isolated, as powerless as a child, but without the vitality. He is no longer the leviathan he once seemed to me.

‘We don’t know where Bethany is.’

‘She’s probably in her room. Or out. She always was a party girl,’ he says.

Not any more, I think. Her towering ambition and rigid selfdiscipline put an end to that.