My heart breaks to hear her little frightened voice. ‘I love you, Mom,’ I say, almost in tears myself.

‘I love you too, Dahlia.’

I end the call.

‘What’s wrong?’ Mark asks.

For a moment I don’t answer. I can’t. My mind is a big, empty blank. Then the words come to me.

‘It’s my sister.’ I look at his concerned face. ‘Daisy. She and her friend, Marie, went backpacking in Australia. My Mom hasn’t been able to contact either of them for the last two days.’ I am surprised to hear how calm my voice is. I think I don’t, or just can’t bring myself to believe anything bad has happened to my sister. Not to sunny Daisy. Who’d want to hurt her laughing, freckled sweet face?

Mark narrows his eyes. ‘She’s nineteen right?’

I nod.

‘I don’t get it. Is it really so unusual if a nineteen-year-old on a backpacking holiday doesn’t call her mother for two days?’

I press my lips together and take a deep breath. ‘Daisy promised my mom she would call every day. She knows very well if she doesn’t call my mom will worry like crazy. I’m twenty-four and I’ve been living in this country for the last year. I still have to call my mother at least twice a week or she’ll go out of her head with anxiety.’

I start biting my thumbnail, realize I’m doing it, and stop.

‘Besides, my sister is not like other girls her age. She is incredibly responsible. She always keeps her word no matter what. If she hasn’t called it is because she can’t. I’m just praying that they’ve lost their phones in the desert, they’ve had their phones stolen, or something equally innocuous.’

Mark rubs his face thoughtfully. ‘Don’t get me wrong, but she’s a teenager on holiday. Is it so unthinkable that she could have let her hair down in a place where no one knows her? In fact, it is usually teenagers who are the most responsible that feel the need to let off steam when they are far away from home. She could be trying to appear more of an adult by not reporting in to your mother daily, having fun, meeting people, partying and kicking up her heels a bit.’

I shake my head. ‘Daisy doesn’t drink. She’s into clean living, healthy food and mystical things. She does yoga and chants mantras. The reason why she wanted to go to Alice Springs in the first place was because of the Aborigines. She thinks they are special and she wanted to go on a long ‘dreaming’ walkabout with them.’

‘There you go then. She’s on a walkabout.’

If only it was as simple as that. ‘She would have told my mom then. Warned her that she would be out of touch for a few days.’

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ Mark asks, frowning, finally getting the seriousness of the situation.

‘Can you drive me home please?’

‘Of course,’ he says, and springs up instantly.

I get my bra on, quickly button up, and numbly follow him out of his apartment.

‘Have the police been called?’ Mark asks in the lift.

I can’t think. All my thoughts are muddled. ‘I don’t know, but I don’t think so. There must be a simple explanation,’ I insist. I realize I am desperately clutching at the idea that it is all a simple misunderstanding.

In the car I get onto Daisy’s Facebook page. As my mother said, Daisy stopped posting two days back. Her last post was a picture of her and Marie standing outside Olive Pink Botanic Gardens in Alice Springs. I go into Marie’s page. Her last post has a picture of her feeding a tame kangaroo. She is laughing, and I can see a little bit of Daisy in the photo too. I click out of Facebook and go into my email account. Daisy’s last email to me is from five days ago. I read through it carefully. There is nothing in it but a great excitement and happiness to be out in the big wide world. I find Marie’s mother’s number in my address book and call her.