Suze rang the police last night, but it wasn’t a success. They didn’t exactly rush round to the house with their sirens blaring. In fact, they didn’t rush anywhere. Suze didn’t tell me what they said, but I could hear her getting quite shirty down the phone. I think they implied that Dad and Tarkie were probably just at a nightclub and would reel back in the morning and she should stop stressing out.

Which, you know. Might be true.

I’ve searched Dad’s room for clues, of course. The first thing I found was a jolly note on his pillow, telling me that he was off on a ‘little trip’ and he had ‘something to put right’, but that I wasn’t to worry and he would be back with Tarquin in ‘two shakes of a duck’s tail’. Apart from that, my findings consist of:

1. The map from his trip, all those years ago

.

2. A copy of Vanity Fair from 1972

.

3. A napkin from Dillon’s Irish Bar. (Relevant?)

I look yet again at the map. I’m holding it really carefully, because it’s pretty fragile, and I’m tracing my finger over the ancient red-biro line marking their route. Los Angeles … Las Vegas … Salt Lake City …

What is he ‘putting right’? What’s been going on?

I wish for the millionth time that I’d listened more carefully when Dad was telling me about his trip. I can remember vague details and stories – like the time they staked their hire car in a poker game, and the time they got lost in Death Valley and thought they were going to die – but nothing solid. Nothing that actually helps us.

Mum had no idea about it when I spoke to her on the phone, either. In fact, she was in such a state that I couldn’t get much sense out of her at all. She was packing, and Janice was helping, and the two of them were getting in a total tizzy about how to carry their money without being mugged. She and Janice are both coming out on the next possible flight to LA, leaving Martin to ‘man the phones at home’ as Mum put it. She’s convinced that Dad is dead in a ditch somewhere, and kept talking about ‘If the worst should happen’ and ‘If he’s alive, God willing’ until I finally snapped and yelled, ‘Mum, he’s not dead!’ Then she accused me of being insensitive.

I’ve left about five messages for Brent Lewis’s sister, Leah, but she hasn’t replied. The only thing I can think of doing now is going back to that trailer park where Brent Lewis lived. I know he’s been evicted, and I haven’t heard from his daughter, but maybe some neighbour will have a number for him, or something? He’s my only connection with Dad’s trip, or any of it.

‘If you’ll take the children to school, I’ll head over to the trailer park straight away,’ I say to Suze. ‘Jeff will drive me.’

‘Fine.’ Suze doesn’t look at me properly. She hasn’t looked at me properly since last night. Her phone is clamped to her ear, and she’s stirring her tea obsessively with her other hand, round and round and round.

‘Who are you phoning?’ I venture.

‘Alicia.’

‘Oh.’ I turn away.

‘Hi,’ says Suze into the phone. ‘No. Nothing.’

I feel a tweak of hurt. She’s talking in the kind of intimate shorthand you use when you’re really close to someone. Like the way we talk. Used to talk.

I can almost feel tears rising at the thought of Suze and Alicia being that close, but then I have only had about two hours’ sleep. I kept checking my phone for messages from Luke, but there weren’t any. I’ve composed a million texts to him, but I haven’t sent any of them. Every time I even picture him, I feel such a tidal wave of hurt that I don’t know where to start.

I rub my eyes and drain my coffee. ‘OK, Jeff,’ I call. ‘Shall we go?’

As Jeff comes into the kitchen, his demeanour is gloomier than ever. He hasn’t reacted well to the news of Dad and Tarkie disappearing. He seems to feel it’s all his fault, even though I keep reassuring him that it isn’t.

‘The site’s secure,’ he says. ‘Mitchell’s on patrol in the yard with Echo.’

‘Great,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’

Jeff heads to the kitchen door and checks it, then goes to the window and runs a finger along the glass. He murmurs into his headpiece, then goes back to check the door again. God, he’s making me edgy.

‘The kitchen’s fine!’ I say. ‘We’re safe! Look, Jeff, my dad just took off. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘Shouldn’ta happened,’ he says heavily. ‘Not on my watch.’

‘Well, let’s go, and maybe we’ll find something out.’ I push my chair back with a scrape. ‘Suze, I’ll keep you posted.’

‘Fine.’ Suze’s eyes are fixed resolutely beyond me. Her jaw is tight and her hair is lank. I know she didn’t get any sleep at all.

‘Look, Suze,’ I say tentatively. ‘Please don’t worry. I’m sure everything’s fine.’

She doesn’t even answer. I can see her mind grimly whirring around all the worst possibilities. There’s nothing more I can say.

‘OK.’ I bite my lip. ‘Well … I’ll talk to you later.’

We’ve been driving twenty minutes or so when my phone rings and I reach for it eagerly. But it’s not Suze or Dad, or even Luke, but Sage.

‘Oh, hi Sage.’

‘Hey, Becky!’ Her voice peals happily down the phone. ‘Are you super-excited?’

‘What?’ I say blankly.

‘Our Camberly show! It airs in, like, ten minutes! I’m totally psyched. Aran was just on the phone. He was, like, this is huge already, babe. I mean, have you seen the hits on YouTube? And that’s just the trailer!’

‘Right. Right.’ I try to wrench my head away from Dad and into the world of Sage. ‘Yes, I saw that. It’s phenomenal!’

It’s true, it is pretty phenomenal. There have been wall-to-wall trailers for the last two days, for what they’re calling The Big Showdown: Lois Meets Sage. They were on this morning while I was making coffee, but we turned the telly off because it was all getting a bit too much.

(Well, in fact, Suze threw her phone at the telly and yelled, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ So I zapped it off.)

‘So are you watching?’

‘I will be!’ I say, hastily turning on the in-car TV. ‘I’m in the car but I’ll be watching it in here. I can’t wait. I’m sure you’re amazing in it.’

‘I’m awesome,’ says Sage in satisfaction. ‘So the other thing is, I had this great idea for my premiere outfit tonight. You have to come over and help me with it. Where are you now? Could you be here in, like, fifteen minutes?’

‘Fifteen minutes?’ I stare at the phone. ‘Well … no. Sorry. I have some stuff I have to do this morning. It’s kind of a family emergency.’

‘But you’re styling me!’ says Sage, sounding affronted.

‘I know. I’m coming round later, remember? Can we discuss it then?’

There’s silence down the phone. Oh God. Is Sage pissed off?

‘What’s the idea?’ I say hastily. ‘I bet it’s brilliant.’

‘I can’t tell you. I have to show you.’ She gives a huffy little sigh. ‘OK, if you really can’t come now I guess we’ll meet later. You’ll be, like, totally oh my God.’

‘Wow! Sounds amazing. I’ll see you later. OK?’

I ring off and turn up the volume on the TV. It’s showing a weather report for the East Coast and I find myself wondering if Dad and Tarkie could have got on a plane.

No. They wouldn’t do that. Would they?

Even though I’m sure both Mum and Suze are overreacting to the situation, I feel a little chill. People you love shouldn’t disappear, simply telling you vaguely they have ‘something to put right’. They shouldn’t do that.

Suddenly I realize the Camberly show is starting. The familiar titles are zooming over the screen and shots of Camberly in evening dress and running along the beach with her dog are flash-cutting with shots of her famous white house, where it’s ‘filmed’. (It’s really filmed in LA, on a studio set. Everyone knows that.) Normally, there are several sections in the show. There’s an interview and a song and a cooking slot, and often a competition. But today is a ‘special’. It’s all about Lois and Sage. As soon as the music dies away, the camera focuses on Camberly, looking sombre, and a backdrop of Sage’s and Lois’s faces blown up, glaring at each other. It all looks very dramatic.

‘Welcome to my home,’ Camberly says, in serious tones. ‘And to a unique and momentous hour-long special. Sage Seymour. Lois Kellerton. Meeting for the first time since their infamous encounter at the ASAs. We’ll be back after this.’

Music plays again, and the titles swoosh around the screen. I stare at it in slight outrage. An ad break already? I will never get used to American telly. Yesterday I started watching an advert and it went on for twenty minutes. Twenty whole minutes! (It was quite good, though. It was all about this brilliant barbecue grill thing, which gives you a ‘restaurant-quality finish’ with none of the calories. I wrote the number down, actually.)

I sit impatiently through a zillion ads for pain relievers, and then watch as Sage appears on the screen, sitting on the sofa with a rapt Camberly. At first, it’s very boring, because she gets Sage to tell her exactly what happened at the awards ceremony, in every detail, and shows the video clip about ten times, and asks Sage over and over, ‘And how did that make you feel?’

Sage is acting devastated. She keeps using phrases like ‘I felt so betrayed’ and ‘I just don’t understand Lois’ and ‘Why me?’ in a broken voice. I think she’s overdoing it, myself.

Then it’s another ad break – and then it’s time for Lois’s appearance. And even though I know they’ve cooked all this up, my heart is beating faster at the thought of them together on the sofa. God knows what the American public is feeling. This really is a TV event.