Cass’s husband Adam had been half-watching the evening news when a story about a Victoria Cross came on. A school somewhere up north had been planning to sell a VC. The medal had been entrusted to them in the 1920s by a grieving mother or widow whose son, or husband, had been killed in action during the First World War. The school now wanted to use the money raised from the sale to build a sports pavilion. A sum of money – a large sum of money – was mentioned. It was this which made Adam’s ears prick up. He hadn’t known medals could be so valuable.

The words ‘Victoria Cross’ sounded a sort of mental klaxon. It reverberated, like the afterthrum of a bell. Hang on a minute. He sprang up and went through to the kitchen.

‘Didn’t someone of yours win a Victoria Cross?’ he asked Cass, who was cutting up leeks with her Japanese cleaver.

‘Mmn. Yes. I can’t remember what his name was, someone on Mum’s side. It’s here, somewhere. There was a collection of them.’

‘Here? Where?’

‘I’m not sure. They used to be in that glass table on the top floor, do you remember?’

‘When you say they, how many are you talking about?’

‘Well, there was only one VC, obviously. But there were always a few other medals with it, a collection: probably about seven? Something like that.’

‘Well, apparently they’re worth a couple of hundred grand.’

She put the cleaver down. ‘You’re joking.’

‘I’m not. You might want to start thinking where it’s got to.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘They just said so, on the news.’

‘Jesus,’ said Cass.

‘Exactly,’ said Adam.

Cass couldn’t think when she’d last seen the medal. After supper she’d gone to look through the little drawers in the old desk her mother had used as a dressing table. It wasn’t there. Then she and Adam together had gone through every drawer they could think of: the three shallow drawers in the sideboard in the dining room; the tallboy on the half-landing where most of Nick’s drawings had ended up; the dresser in the kitchen. Next they went up to the first floor and started through the chest of drawers in Georgie’s old room. The mirrored cabinet and the shelves under the basin in the guest bathroom. The blanket chest on the landing. At last they had moved up to the third floor and gone through every nook and cranny where the medals might have ended up: the old wooden wardrobe in the back room, the bedside cupboard in the little room Jake had slept in as a child. Nothing.

The following morning Cass rang Georgie.