Late summer, 2015

There were other advantages, I was beginning to discover, to Bee’s prayer group.

Bee and Gatsby had completely disappeared, having not had the lease renewed on the property he had taken six months earlier.

We knew for certain, now, the damage they were doing to each other: Gatsby had told us he was suicidal; and we had witnessed for ourselves the dreadful state the relationship left her in, when she came home.

Obviously, it was my daughter I cared about. But we also had a duty to Gatsby, knowing he was vulnerable.

I spent hours on the telephone to the Police HQ in Peterborough. Telling the most senior person I could reach of the risks to both of them.

Yes, they knew all about it. For the umpteenth time in Bee’s illness, I briefly felt I had a ally…

Their previous address had been given to me by Bee’s GP, when she had asked me to ring and help with something.

Shaun and Ben drove over to Cambridge to see if they could find her. Without me: I would cause her to panic or be angry.

You missed them by a few hours, the neighbour said.

A member of her prayer group had contacts. A retired policeman. Working as a private dick.

For two hundred, he would track her down.

Surreal.

Another had a son, working in Cambridge for the summer holidays. He didn’t mind giving it a go.

Looked at Gatbsy’s mug shot on the internet. Looked up the office address of the company.

And then by complete fluke, spotted Gatsby, coming out to go home, when he happened to be driving past.

A car chase! Presumably at about ten miles an hour, through the bicycle-cluttered winding streets of Cambridge... Left here, right there, a couple of miles along, round a roundabout... and then of course, lost him because he was in a car. And Gatsby, being a Cambridge man, was sensibly on a bicycle.

None of this was very serious. We laughed and laughed at the absurdity of it.

And yet, of course, it was.

Deeply, deeply serious. Beneath all these jinks.

We had no real idea where she was.

Presumably in Cambridgeshire.

Presumably with Gatsby.

Almost certainly in a very bad way.

That was all.

Why had she left us? Why gone back to a situation so toxic? How could it ever be resolved or end?

They were both so addicted to the other. Both being wrecked by it. We couldn’t see what could possibly break and free either of them.

We never did trace her using these schoolboy tactics.

Instead, it was a telephone call in early autumn.

As horrible as the one Serena recorded last week...