Frustrated by her inability to get any assistance from Snow, Ruby contacted the local police, who suggested she lodge a missing person’s report.

‘They gave me a link to a form I could fill out online,’ Ruby said. ‘I had hoped for a little more urgency than that but the police told me there was a process to follow, and it didn’t help that I was still in London. I explained that Mum had by then been missing for something like thirty-six hours, and the police seemed to think that was no time at all, and in fact told me to call back in twenty-four or forty-eight hours, as if that might somehow make a difference.’

It was painful to hear Ruby recount that story. We’d both stopped eating and the food on our plates had gone cold. I pushed mine back and said, ‘Probably they thought, “She’ll turn up any minute and we won’t hear from this lady again,”’ and Ruby nodded and said, ‘Probably. They certainly seemed surprised when I was on the phone again the next day, still trying to find out what happened. And by then I’d called the British embassy in Canberra, and I’d called Australia House in London too, but I really couldn’t seem to get anyone to take it seriously.’

Frustrated by what must have seemed like the snail’s pace of the investigation, Ruby flew to Sydney to meet the police, and it was shortly afterwards that she gave the first press conference at the Rose Bay cop shop.

I asked Ruby if she’d tried during that first visit to get in touch with Snow and she said, ‘Yes, of course. I called her and told her I was in town and asked her if I could see her but she made it plain that she wanted nothing to do with me. She said something to them along the lines of, she never wanted to meet Mum in the first place and now there were all these relatives ringing up and she wasn’t the type to welcome that kind of intrusion.’

I could see that Ruby was absolutely perplexed by that. It sounded pretty cruel to me too. I said, ‘Did you ever have her address?’

Ruby said, ‘I do. Mum gave it to me before she left.’ And she fished it out: 27 Bat Street, Bondi.

I sat thinking for a minute. I live in Bondi, and have done since before it got all trendy and expensive – meaning before they started making Bondi Vet and Bondi Rescue and before Lara Bingle and all the hipsters moved in. I know Bat Street reasonably well – it’s one of the streets that overlooks the beach.

‘It’s not more than twenty minutes by taxi,’ I told Ruby. ‘If you want to go out there, I’m happy to accompany you. I’ll even knock on the door.’

I don’t deny I had an ulterior motive. I was thinking that if Snow let us in, I’d get one of the stories I’d been trying to get all along, which was the sister of the missing British tourist appealing for anyone with any information to come forward.