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missing. They could come up with no answers either. But we discovered that while we had begun our first day’s search, they had been hanging an exhibition of Susan’s at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Collingwood, close to the centre of Melbourne.
    I had forgotten all about this. Rachel was at the heart of the whole exhibition. Susan, a contemporary artist, assembles photographic images within a collage to create her works, and Rachel was her muse. Susan paid her a modelling fee for each sitting. Rachel had, for years, been portrayed in Susan’s artwork as Viking slave girls, sea captains’ wives, dancing maidens, heroines and sacrificial ‘lambs’, the Madonna and a host of angels from ancient, medieval and Renaissance literature.
    This exhibition was on show throughout March. Susan was worried someone in the Richmond area may have recognised Rachel from the thousands of pamphlets distributed beforehand across Melbourne, possibly attracting unwanted attention. I didn’t think this was likely but was prepared, as the week advanced, to accept all possibilities. So Dad and Susan hung a sign telling the public that the girl featured in the artwork had since disappeared and that if anyone had seen her they should inform the assistant at the desk.
    Later that evening, at home, we rang the numbers given in several ‘dancing girls required’ ads in the local papers, on the off-chance that Rachel had naively rung them for part-time work. But applicants needed to be eighteen plus, as we had already assumed. And they had to provide proof of age, so it was highly unlikely she would have even been interviewed. Nevertheless, they did inquire for us, to see if there were any new girls with the name of Rachel. No Rachel.
    We went through Rachel’s address books and school diaries looking for names of old friends. When she was thirteen I sheepishly read some extracts of her diary. This was the age she discovered she was a teenager with developing boobs. It was the age when she and her girlfriends would sit in huddles giggling about boys. I didn’t find anything I wouldn’t have expected, apart from a few swear words, and I’d felt so bad that I never did it again. My own mother said she once read my elder sister’s diary when my sister had been sixteen and vowed she’d never do it again.
    Well, now I was doing it again. I still felt as though we were invading her privacy. We began to make a search of Rachel’s room, finally going to bed about 4 a.m.
    For the second night in a row Rachel had failed to contact Manni.
    Since her birth we had known where she slept every one of those nights, for fifteen and a half years. This night our daughter was sleeping elsewhere.

4
    M AKING S OMEONE N OTICE
    Day 2: Wednesday, 3 March
    We didn’t sleep on Tuesday night. It seemed disrespectful to sleep. It would be dishonouring our daughter to sleep. I was already feeling guilty for sleeping some of Monday night.
    How could we sleep when Rachel might have been huddled somewhere so scared she perhaps feared for her life? Was she crying? Had she been raped? Had she been grabbed off Church Street and housed in an illegal brothel? Had some sleaze been watching her on the corner of Church and Swan Streets, while she cuddled Manni on the bench? Sometimes I would drive round the corner to see Rachel and Manni kissing their farewells and think, don’t they realise someone could be watching? Had this sleaze dragged her off the streets, fondled his way through our daughter’s clothing, stripped and raped her? Had he beaten and killed her, dumping her body somewhere in the bush? Was she dead?
    I sat up straight. ‘She’s not dead. I don’t feel it. I would know. We would know.’
    Mike didn’t reply. He wasn’t asleep.
    ‘Ring Ted. Michael! Ring Ted.’ I grabbed the phone.
    It was so early. I don’t remember how early. But we rang Ted.
    Ted and Betty are as near to family without actually being family. We met them when looking for