When their daughter was born in 1968, that had restricted her freedom for a while, but now that Nicole had started preschool, Val was determined to make the most of her spare time.

She brushed her hair and smeared on some pale pink lipstick, then grabbed her handbag and car keys ready to hurry out the door, but just at that moment the phone began to ring. It could be Tony checking on her, so she picked up.

“The Doyle residence,” she said in her telephone voice.

“Is that Valerie Scott?” a voice asked. A woman’s voice. “Daughter of Irwin Scott of Bondi Junction?”

She hesitated, heard the woman’s breathing down the line. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m calling from Sandy Bay nursing home in Bondi Junction. Your father has been here for six months. He named you as his next of kin.”

Val was surprised. She hadn’t realized her father had her phone number. They hadn’t spoken since she left home to marry Tony. “My father and I are estranged,” she told the woman, “so I can’t imagine why he would give my number.” Of course, she realized, he probably didn’t have anyone else.

The woman exhaled loudly. “I’m afraid your father has dementia. His mind is deteriorating rapidly and he’s started saying some very odd things. We’re not sure what to do. If they’re true, we should call the police, but you never know where dementia patients get their ideas from. That’s why we thought we should call you first.”

“What kind of things?” Val glanced at her watch and frowned. She didn’t have time for this.

“He keeps repeating over and over ‘I didn’t want to kill her.’ Then sometimes he says ‘There was so much blood’ and wrings his hands.”

“Jeez.” Val was listening hard now. Could he be talking about her mother? Had her father killed her? She shook herself. He was an objectionable character, but not a murderer. Funny that that had been the first thought to enter her head.

“You understand we’re in a tricky position,” the woman continued. “We wondered if you would come and talk to him, see if you can find out what he’s talking about.”

Val had always suspected her father knew where her mother had gone, but had never been able to get any information out of him. If he had dementia, there was no time to be lost. “I suppose I’d better come,” she said, biting her lip, then wrote the address on the notepad by the phone, carefully ripping out the page and slipping it in her handbag so Tony wouldn’t see. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Maybe tomorrow.”

She hurried out the door and drove to the harbor, her mind turning over the odd conversation. It didn’t make sense; at least, she hoped it didn’t.