“So, they might be following this route.” Suze is still peering at the map. “L.A….Las Vegas…Look, they went to the Grand Canyon….”

“But they might not be following that route,” I say quickly, before she can decide that Dad and Tarkie must be at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and we need to go there at once in a helicopter.

“Is your father the sort to retrace his steps?” says Alicia. “I suppose what I mean is, is he redactive?”

Redactive? What’s that?

“Well.” I cough. “Sometimes. Maybe.”

Alicia keeps asking me really difficult questions like this. And then she blinks at me in silent triumph, as though to say, You don’t understand, do you?

Plus, she speaks in this soft, serene way, which gives me the creeps. Alicia has totally changed style since she was a bossy PR girl in London. She wears yoga trousers and her hair in a low ponytail, and her speech is sprinkled with new-agey expressions. But she’s still as patronizing as ever.

“Sometimes he retraces his steps, sometimes he doesn’t,” I improvise. “Depends.”

“Bex, you must have more information,” says Suze tetchily. “Tell me about the trailer park again. Maybe you missed something.”

Obediently, I begin: “Dad wanted me to look up his old friend Brent. When I found the address, it was a trailer park and Brent had just been evicted.”

As I speak, a hotness comes over me and I take a sip of water. This is the point where I messed up most of all. Dad kept asking me to look up Brent, and I kept putting it off, because…well, because life was so exciting, and it seemed like a boring Dad errand. But if I’d just done it, if I’d got there earlier, maybe Dad would have been able to talk to Brent before he got served with an eviction notice. Maybe Brent wouldn’t have taken off. Maybe everything would be different.

“Dad couldn’t believe it,” I resume, “because he thought Brent would be rich.”

“Why?” demands Suze. “Why did he think Brent would be rich? He hadn’t seen him for what, forty years?”

“Dunno. But he was expecting Brent to be living in a mansion.”

“So your dad flew out to L.A. and went to see Brent.”

“Yes. It must have been at the trailer park. Apparently they ‘had it out’ about something.”

“And it was Brent’s daughter who told you that.” She pauses. “Rebecca.”

We’re both silent. This is the weirdest part of the story. Yet again, I replay the scene in my head. Meeting Brent’s daughter on the steps of the trailer. Feeling the hostility burning off her like heat off a sun-baked tarmac road. Staring back at her in bewilderment, thinking, What did I ever do to you? And then the killer line: “We’re all called Rebecca.” I still don’t know what she meant by “all.” She certainly wasn’t about to explain.

“What else did she say?” Suze asks impatiently.

“Nothing! She said, ‘If you don’t know, I’m not telling you.’ ”