28

I sit on the train to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, feeling like a complete fool.

I’ve spent most of our winnings on a fruitless search. Of course she was going to have met someone else. Or maybe she secretly had a boyfriend all along?

Rain hammers against the train windows. I look around the carriage at the couples holding on to their luggage and to each other. They are preparing for exciting, romantic foreign getaways. I am heading back alone to the UK, feeling like I’ve been through this all before.

Is this why British men end up being dredged out of the canals?

As the train arrives at the airport, I check the electronic boards for information about the next departure. I am happy to fly to whichever UK airport is cheapest. It’s not like I have anything to rush back for. I’m in the queue at the easyJet counter when my phone rings.

“Hey, Jessie,” I answer, in a downbeat tone.

“Hello, Josh? Are you there?”

“Hello, can you hear me?” I say as I examine my phone to check how many bars of signal I have.

“Yep, just about, where are you right now?”

“I’m at Amsterdam Airport about to come home.”

“I can’t hear you. Can you speak up? Are you at the airport?”

The loudspeaker announcer rudely talks right over me.

“Yes, I’m at the airport, I’m on my way home,” I shout into the phone to try and be heard over the hubbub in the terminal, which is getting busier and busier as people flood in from the incoming trains.

“Why are you coming home? What’s happened?”

“It’s all over. The last shop we went to, the manager told us there was an English girl working there who has just left to move to New Zealand with her boyfriend. It fits with the message you received,” I summarize solemnly.

She is silent on the other end of the phone.

“OK, I’ll admit that does sound disappointing. But we don’t know for certain that this girl is her, and, well, the message could have come from anyone.”

“I don’t know. I think I should just leave it now. I’ve given it a go, but I think it’s time to come on home.”

“You can’t stop now.”

“But Jessie—”

“I’ve got some news for you. I was calling to say Sunflowers isn’t currently in Philadelphia. It’s on loan to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and has been for the last six months. The exhibition is ending there this month.”

I don’t really know what to say. I think back to that time I searched the Bristol Museum with Nan and Pap for the painting that had been loaned to a gallery elsewhere.

“Did you hear me?” Jessie asks. “I was telling someone at work about you, and they’d seen it in Paris a few weeks ago.”

“Yep, thanks for letting me know, but between what we found out today and the message you got, it seems like she was here in Amsterdam.”

“But just think if—just if—that message is wrong, you’ve already ruled out three of the five paintings now. So there’s a fifty-fifty chance she’s in Paris. Isn’t it worth one last shot?”

“Yeah, but that is only if what she told me in the first place was right, and she’s not moved, and a million other possible scenarios. She could be anywhere in the world, to be honest. And she clearly doesn’t want to be found, otherwise she’d have responded to your Instagram page.”

“I don’t think that’s the right attitude. We don’t know she’s even seen the page. Aren’t you meant to flip your coin for decisions like this?”

I’m shocked that Jessie tells me to trust the coin.

What’s happened to her?

I don’t want to put this decision to chance, or fate, or whatever higher force is controlling my life. I just want to go home. I can’t do this anymore.

“Come on, do it,” she says, sensing my hesitation.

I reluctantly get the coin out of my pocket and awkwardly try to flip it while holding my phone between my head and my shoulder. It falls onto the floor.

“Sooo?” I can hear Jessie saying.

I bend down to see which side is facing up.

“It says I should go to Paris,” I reply quietly.