It was a beautiful clear day, the sun shining, visibility as good as it could be, the sea calm. No one was about except themselves. They ran across the meadow where Rachel had seen the butterfly and they searched the little wood. They called Silver’s name, “Michael, Michael, where are you?” Julian went back in the direction of the hotel in case Silver had decided to return there on his own, a most unlikely thing for him to have done, but possible. Rachel ran on ahead, calling him. Jack Silverman found a way down the cliff, one of the zigzag paths that wound between the bushes and the mats of pink and yellow daisies, but Erica decided enough time had been wasted and returned to the hotel where she called the police and, for good measure, the coast guard. No mobile phones in those days, at least none in private use.

All the hotel guests, or all those who hadn’t gone off somewhere for the day, joined in the search. One party took the two miles of beach, another the cliff top and a third the wooded hinterland and the coast road. That road, on the far side of the wood, not far away, was the most terrifying of all things to Erica Silverman, worse than the sea. Traffic went along it quite fast, as in those days there was no speed limit on it.

There were four houses at that point. They had no view of the sea, for the woodland interrupted it. At the end of the row was a shop that sold newspapers, basic groceries, ice cream, and beach toys. No one in the houses or the shop had seen Silver. No one came upon a little body on the roadside verge or on the sands or caught up in the dense mass of vegetation that covered the cliff. He had been with his brother and sister, they had looked elsewhere for a few seconds and in that fraction of a minute, he had disappeared. It must have been longer, of course, but people always minimize time in these situations. The Silvermans were distraught, the parents despairing, the brother and sister guilty and frightened. All of them passed a terrible day and an even more dreadful night. Silver’s disappearance was on television, reporters appeared, cameras were everywhere. The weather continued glorious, even hotter than on the day he vanished. Some sort of regatta was scheduled for the day after and it went ahead, but amid protests. Silver’s mother said she could never see a sailing ship after that, not a picture of a yacht, or even a painting of a three-masted schooner, without the whole of that terrible weekend coming back to her in all its details.