Suze rang the police last night, but it wasn’t a success. They didn’t exactly rush round to the house with their sirens blaring. In fact, they didn’t rush anywhere. Suze didn’t tell me what they said, but I could hear her getting quite shirty down the phone. I think they implied that Dad and Tarkie were probably just at a nightclub and would reel back in the morning and she should stop stressing out.

Which, you know. Might be true.

I’ve searched Dad’s room for clues, of course. The first thing I found was a jolly note on his pillow, telling me that he was off on a ‘little trip’ and he had ‘something to put right’, but that I wasn’t to worry and he would be back with Tarquin in ‘two shakes of a duck’s tail’. Apart from that, my findings consist of:

1. The map from his trip, all those years ago.

2. A copy of Vanity Fair from 1972.

3. A napkin from Dillon’s Irish Bar. (Relevant?)

I look yet again at the map. I’m holding it really carefully, because it’s pretty fragile, and I’m tracing my finger over the ancient red-biro line marking their route. Los Angeles … Las Vegas … Salt Lake City …

What is he ‘putting right’? What’s been going on?

I wish for the millionth time that I’d listened more carefully when Dad was telling me about his trip. I can remember vague details and stories – like the time they staked their hire car in a poker game, and the time they got lost in Death Valley and thought they were going to die – but nothing solid. Nothing that actually helps us.

Mum had no idea about it when I spoke to her on the phone, either. In fact, she was in such a state that I couldn’t get much sense out of her at all. She was packing, and Janice was helping, and the two of them were getting in a total tizzy about how to carry their money without being mugged. She and Janice are both coming out on the next possible flight to LA, leaving Martin to ‘man the phones at home’ as Mum put it. She’s convinced that Dad is dead in a ditch somewhere, and kept talking about ‘If the worst should happen’ and ‘If he’s alive, God willing’ until I finally snapped and yelled, ‘Mum, he’s not dead!’ Then she accused me of being insensitive.

I’ve left about five messages for Brent Lewis’s sister, Leah, but she hasn’t replied. The only thing I can think of doing now is going back to that trailer park where Brent Lewis lived. I know he’s been evicted, and I haven’t heard from his daughter, but maybe some neighbour will have a number for him, or something? He’s my only connection with Dad’s trip, or any of it.

‘If you’ll take the children to school, I’ll head over to the trailer park straight away,’ I say to Suze. ‘Jeff will drive me.’