By that time the police knew Silver had been abducted. It was the only possible explanation. They interviewed known local pedophiles. They began house-to-house investigations in the nearby town. On the Monday morning— Silver had gone missing on the previous Friday—a woman called Diana Lomax found him on the sands in a little cove about a mile from where he had vanished. He seemed fine, not distressed or even puzzled, but then he was always a self-contained level-headed child. He was dressed as he had been on the Friday, in exactly the same clothes, but they were clean, they had been washed. In his hand he held a small plastic spade with which he had dug a little pit in the sand and when Mrs. Lomax found him he was watching the water fill it, standing there, intently looking at the level rising.

She knew what construction would be put on her appearing with him but she was afraid to leave him there. Never mind the questioning and the implications of blame, she couldn’t leave a little child alone on that beach while she went up the cliff and called the police. Besides, his abductor might be nearby. Because he took some persuading to leave his newly dug pit, she bribed him with the chocolate bar she had in her beach bag with her swimming things. He refused to walk, of course, little children always do, so she carried him all the way up the zigzag path and across the meadow and into the hotel, where she sat him on the reception desk while she called up to the Silvermans’ room. Silver’s father came down. Silver laughed when he saw him and said, “There’s my dad.”

Jack Silverman called Diana Lomax “one of the Righteous among the Nations.” He seemed to worship her. He tried to give her money, then when that was refused, buy her some expensive present, a car or a valuable piece of furniture. That was refused too. Every Christmas he wrote to her and thanked her afresh for saving his son’s life, which was what he was sure she had done. He was always asking her to come and stay because he knew she liked visiting London. She appeared to prefer staying with her friends who lived somewhere near the Silvermans, but she managed to avoid telling Jack exactly where. It would have been apparent to anyone but his father, Silver said, it was apparent to his mother, that Diana Lomax wanted nothing more to do with the Silvermans. Reluctantly she agreed to Jack and Erica’s taking her out to dinner while she was in London and, protesting, let Jack pay for a car to take her to Paddington Station when she went home. She left without saying goodbye, but even that discourtesy made no difference to Jack.