Olivia took over. ‘We didn’t hear from her for weeks. This was before social media, or mobiles, remember. The only way we could send her messages was through her parents and they still weren’t answering. We wrote, but the letters always came back. The nuns couldn’t help. They said they were doing what they could to mediate, but they admitted they didn’t know where Jeannie was either.’

‘Then I got a letter,’ Maxie said. ‘A week before we finished school.’

‘It was written with cut-out newspaper letters, like a joke ransom letter.’

‘The name of a hotel in Melbourne, a date, a time. We knew it was her.’

‘So we turned up. It was a good hotel. Not a dive. She was sitting in the foyer waiting for us.’

‘Where had she been?’

‘She didn’t tell us. Ever. But she’d booked a room in the hotel. She smuggled us in, and we stayed the night. We watched movies. She ordered room service.’

‘How was she paying for it?’

‘She wouldn’t tell us.’

‘We tried, Eliza. We spoke to her all night. We asked about her parents, about finishing school —’

‘She was —’

‘Manic. High.’

‘Was she taking drugs?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

‘We were never sure.’

‘She told us she’d gone home that weekend and there’d been another enormous fight with her parents. Her father’s mother was staying then, too. They read her the riot act. Told her how disappointed they were. How she’d let herself down again. Let them down. That she was fooling herself if she thought her stupid behaviour would ever get her anywhere. Her father was in a rage. She’d told us before about what a bad temper he had.’

‘And she told us she said to them, “Well, it sounds to me as though you don’t like me very much, do you? So let me fix this situation as best I can, for all our sakes.” She packed a suitcase. And she left.’

‘They let her walk out? A seventeen-year-old?’

‘She’d just turned eighteen.’

‘We also think that’s when she stole something. Maybe a few things. We never knew for sure. But she made a joke about a necklace she was wearing when we met her. It looked expensive.’

‘That’s how she could afford to go travelling overseas?’

‘We think so.’

‘She told me she’d received an inheritance.’

They both stayed silent.

‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this before now?’

‘Jeannie told us she’d tell you everything herself.’

‘We had to promise not to tell you.’

Eliza had gone still. ‘Are my grandparents alive?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘Do they even know Mum died?’

‘We don’t know, Eliza. I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t try to contact them back then?

Olivia and Maxie’s silence was their answer.

‘What are their names?’ Eliza asked.