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suggest, Miss Coltman. Why don’t you speak to your mum and dad, call some of your sister’s friends, and have a look for her passport? It sounds very much like Rebecca has gone away of her own volition. People do things that are out of character all the time, believe me.’
    ‘I know, but—’
    ‘I expect you’ll get another email in a day or two, or a postcard, saying she’s having a lovely time in Vietnam, wish you were here.’
    She could feel him closing down the call, and she tried to hang on. ‘So you’re not going to do anything?’
    ‘I’m sorry, miss, but if she hadn’t sent the email it would be a different story. The fact is, though, that she did. She has clearly told you where she’s going and what she’s doing.’
    ‘But what if someone else wrote the email? Or forced her to write it?’
    ‘There’s no evidence of that, is there?’
    ‘No, but …’
    She hung up, feeling utterly deflated.
    As the call had gone on, her conviction that something had happened to Becky had become increasingly weaker. Norris was probably right. Becky had decided to go away. Her wheelie suitcase wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Maybe what she should be worried about was
why
Becky would do something so uncharacteristic. What had driven her to it?
    She rubbed her face, feeling totally confused. More than that, though, she was sick with worry. Had Becky had some kind of breakdown?
    She read over the email for the tenth time. And then it struck her. How could she not have seen it before – or maybe that was what had been niggling at her?
    I’ve always wanted to visit Vietnam and Cambodia.
    When Becky had returned from her gap-year travels, she had made Amy sit through all of her printed photos. Thailand, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines – and Cambodia. She had bemoaned the fact she hadn’t got to visit Vietnam – for some complicated reason Amy couldn’t recall, involving trains and visas and a boy from Oxford – but she had definitely been to Cambodia. She had visited the Killing Fields near – what was it called? – Phnom something. The visit had affected Becky badly. She told Amy she’d had nightmares about it for weeks afterwards, about the families who had been brutally murdered. The children. In fact, it had disturbed her so much that she refused to talk about it further, said she wanted to forget she’d ever been. Now, when she talked about her time in Asia, she would list all the places she’d been, and she would miss out Cambodia.
    But she had definitely been there. And even though she didn’t talk about it, or want to remember it, she herself would remember she’d been there. So why would she write,
I’ve always wanted to visit Cambodia
?
    She picked up the phone, ready to call Officer Norris back. But she hesitated. She could hear his exasperated sigh in her head. There were a couple of things she needed to do first.
    She went into Becky’s bedroom and looked around. The blinds were open and sunlight poured into the room. She heard a car pull up outside and rushed to the window to look out, hope flaring. It might be Becky coming home in a taxi. But it was a Royal Mail van, parking up behind Amy’s motorbike.
    Where would Becky keep her passport? She opened her bedside drawer and found condoms, assorted jewellery, Vaseline, old keys – but no passport. She checked every drawer in the flat, along with the bookshelves, various boxes and chests, every place she could think of where her sister might keep her important documents. There was no sign of it.
    Everything she did made her feel conflicted. Half of her wanted evidence that her sister had indeed gone away through her own free will. The other half wanted confirmation that her instincts were correct.
    She sat back down at the computer and brought up Becky’s address-book program. She knew a couple of Becky’s friends from work, had met them at a party last year, here at Becky’s flat. Becky’s best friend from work was called