The receptionist who put the call through can’t remember if it was a man or a woman, but I don’t suppose that matters all that much. Only a handful of people in the world knew that Agnes Moore was staying at the Sir Stanford that day: her daughter, Ruby, and her son, Steven, in England knew; Doug Grenfell knew; and so did Snow Delaney.

Chapter Seventeen

Dear Jack,

People say that I don’t seem to care that my sister went missing after coming all the way out to Australia to visit me, but think about it from my point of view. I didn’t want her to come out in the first place. Plus there seems to be this big fascination about what happened between us while she was at Delaney House, when nothing of any interest happened – we basically had lunch.

I didn’t even want to have the lunch, remember? I got talked into it by good old Doug, and pretty much as soon as I agreed I wished I hadn’t. I wanted to get it over with, but Doug had apparently told Agnes that she’d be able to meet some of the kids we had staying with us. I was so annoyed by that, and then the bell on the gate went and I was hardly even ready.

Was I curious to see what Agnes looked like? The answer is no, not really. But after she pushed the intercom I watched her on the security camera we had on the gate. The first thing I noticed was that she had a straw hat on with a ridiculous floppy brim, and I remember thinking, ‘That’s an old lady hat.’ And she was dressed like an old lady – she had on a straight skirt, made of some kind of brown material – and she had an old lady face, and Mark, who was looking over my shoulder, said, ‘Anyone who saw her would think she was going to church.’

He buzzed her in, and I watched her coming down the path, thinking, ‘Let’s get this over with.’ She had two of those Harrods shopping bags – green ones – and you can guess what was in them. It was so typical: English shortbread in one of those tartan boxes for me, like you can’t get them here or something! – and she had some Beefeater dolls in plastic tubes, which I suppose she thought we would give to the kids we were looking after.

Anyway, I opened the door and I was going to shake her hand, but she dropped the bags on the porch and said, ‘Oh, Snow!’ like we were actually family, and went to hug me. I’m not much of a hugger, so that was a bit awkward.

I invited her into the kitchen to put her bags down and I introduced her to Mark. She was raving about the house, going on about how she loved the trees in the front yard, the ones that Mark had cut into animal shapes. I’d already laid the table for lunch and I wasn’t keen for things to drag on. I’d cooked a leg of lamb, since that’s a sort of British thing. I did honeyed carrots and new potatoes, and gravy in a boat. She was at least nice about that, saying, ‘I can’t believe you’ve gone to so much trouble.’