Agnes left the Crown at 9 a.m. the following day – 21 September – and caught the 11 a.m. Qantas ‘City Flyer’ to Sydney. She made her way by taxi to the Sir Stanford hotel, arriving shortly after lunch.

Ruby said, ‘As far as we know, Mum took it easy that first afternoon in Sydney. She checked in to the Sir Stanford, then she went to the Opera House and took some photographs and sent them to us on email. She went to Darling Harbour, where there’s a Wildlife Park, and took plenty of photographs of the big insects for Rocco.

‘It wasn’t until the next day – the 22nd – that she was due to go to Delaney House. And what has always struck me as strange is that, having flown twenty-seven hours to get to Sydney to meet her sister, she spent less than three hours with her that day.’

CCTV footage from the Sir Stanford shows Agnes leaving the hotel at 12.25 p.m., and Snow says she arrived at Delaney House at 1 p.m.

She returned to the hotel at 3.20 p.m. and one of the first things she did was send an email to Ruby from the computer in the foyer, which I’ve copied in its entirety here:

My dearest Ruby,

Well, it’s done. I have met my sister and I don’t know what to say. Snow put on quite a spread. She lives in a large house at Bondi. You can tell Rocco I went to Bondi!

I’m not sure how I feel.

Snow looks quite a bit like me – twenty years ago!

Not much of a sense of humour.

There was a man named Mark there. They have the same last name – Delaney – but they aren’t married, apparently. It’s very odd.

I wasn’t too impressed with either of them to be honest.

They take care of little kiddies with disabilities. It was a strange set-up. You expect something wonderful but that was not what I found. I will tell you more when I see you, but for now I’m fairly certain that I’ve decided we probably do need to get a lawyer to look at my father’s will. Not for me but for the children.

I’ll explain in person.

I’m going to have a bite to eat now, then an early night and I will call you, probably from Bangkok. The flight is at 11 a.m. so don’t worry if you don’t hear from me in the morning.

Love you very much,

Mum

Ruby didn’t pick the email up until twelve hours after it was sent, obviously because it landed in her inbox during the night in England. By the time she retrieved it, her Mum was supposed to be in the air, so she did not try to respond.

‘After I saw the stories about the dust storm, I called British Airways and they confirmed that all flights out of Sydney had been delayed and they gave me a new estimated arrival time,’ Ruby said, twisting the end of a paper napkin. ‘I thought, well, let’s see how things go, and I kept checking and checking, and finally BA sent out an SMS saying the plane would land at such-and-such a time.