Taking a statement from kids is even worse, because not only do they like to make stuff up, but if they get scared, hungry, tired or just fed up with your questions they can, especially if they’re badly brought-up kids, tell you to fuck off. With impunity. Now add in the suspicion that in a magic-related case it’s just possible that the truth really is wearing a pink tutu, and you can end up with six hours of video and a couple of hundred pages of transcript.

You start with the transcript, a highlighter pen and your notebook.

Why had Hannah got out of bed?

Because she’d arranged with Nicole to go for a night-walk.

What was a night-walk?

When you go and walk around at night – duh!

Had they gone on night-walks before?

Only when it was hot.

How long had they been doing this?

Hannah couldn’t remember. ‘Ages,’ she’d said.

What did they do on night-walks?

Go for a walk, silly. Look at the moon. Sometimes they would do naughty dancing.

And what was naughty dancing?

That was when you took off all your clothes and danced around in the buff.

There then followed at least thirty pages where the child psychologist attempted to establish when and where this naughty dancing took place, who instigated the idea and were there any adults involved?

Hannah was cheerfully open that they danced about in the churchyard, sometimes in the field behind Hannah’s house and, if they felt particularly daring, at the road junction by the Rushpool. Generally speaking they weren’t totally naked because they left their sandals or flip-flops on. She was amused by the notion that an adult might be involved and asked why an adult would want to watch them dancing.

‘They might want to know what you were doing out at night,’ said the child psychologist and gently steered Hannah back to the night, as we like to say, in question. On that particular night, whose idea had it been to go for a night-walk?

Hannah said that Nicky, which is what she liked to call Nicole, had suggested it that night.

Was she sure?

She was sure that she would like to stop for a drink and something to eat and could she watch telly because that’s what she really wanted to do, and she’d quite like to do all that back at her own home if that wasn’t too much trouble.

There followed what is generally known as a multi-agency conference in which the police, social services, the paediatrics registrar and the child psychologist discussed their options for an hour before agreeing that yes, Hannah should go home.