Steve gave a half smile. ‘She was really something by the sounds of it. What now?’

‘Well, I did push a bit more, but all he said was that he later re-couped a bit of money on-selling the rights to a producer in Hollywood. A French guy. He couldn’t remember the name exactly, gave me a couple of similar-sounding sorts of names, and then he hung up.’

‘So that was in the early to mid-1980s. A dead end?’

‘Maybe. I’m still thinking. Haven’t had time to search the internet or make calls.’

‘You’re not exactly sitting on your hands. You have a lot going on,’ Steve said, smiling at the waiter when their coffees arrived. ‘Let me know if I can help with the search.’

‘Thanks. Of course, we have a job to do here first.’

‘Sure do, and it’s getting bigger and more exciting by the day. Thanks for bringing me on this ride, Grace.’ Steve reached out and took her hand.

*

Wrapped in a damp sarong after an afternoon swim, Grace lost track of time as she worked her way through a maze on the internet trying to find the French Hollywood producer. She made one international call – it was a dead end. When she resumed searching online, the most promising lead came up as deceased.

‘Grace, honey, shall I go get Daisy from her friend’s place?’ called Tina, seeing her so deeply engrossed.

‘Oh, yes please, Mum. That would be great. Then I can keep working.’ She knew her mum had made friends with some of the other parents and grandparents at the school, and enjoyed the time with them at school drop-off and pick-up, and on playdates.

Grace was pretty sure she had the correct name of the producer now, as there were lots of references to him and his work, but he was long dead and the trail was cold. There was only one other person whose name matched the one the Aussie producer said he had sold the rights to, but it was a French-Canadian businessman who had nothing to do with the film industry and the link seemed tenuous at best. Scrolling through his references she saw he had addressed a business conference in Montreal. His speech had something to do with new synthetics. She clicked on the link and saw that it was in the early 1990s and sounded stultifyingly dull. Nothing to do with films.

Another dead end. Grace sighed. She had nowhere to go from here. Her mind switched gears. She had to think of some way of adapting Tim’s story that he’d told them at lunch, working a fictionalised framework around it, perhaps. K’tut’s life was a dazzling drama. But without the imprimatur of it being a true-life story, she knew it didn’t have the same punch.