Pushing her to one side, Ronnie scoured the carriages of the approaching train, which blasted smoke as it clanked to a halt. Waiting until the guard and the station master were busy clipping tickets at the end of the platform, Ronnie bolted almost the whole length of the train, until he came to the luggage compartment piled high with leather-bound trunks, large suitcases and a crate of clucking chickens. In a blink he had opened the door and was inside the compartment, where he quickly burrowed under a pile of empty mail bags. Hardly daring to breathe, Ronnie waited tensely for the train to pull away from the platform; when it did, he let out a long sigh of relief, at which point he heard his little sister’s whimpering close by. ‘Ronnie, Ronnie, where are you?’

Back at Hope Farm, Mrs Larkin was sufficiently alarmed to phone Mary Vale when neither Sally nor Ronnie returned home with the rest of her brood. Thinking they might have taken it into their heads to pay a visit to their mother, Mrs Larkin picked up the big old-fashioned phone which stood on a marble-topped table in the hallway of the farmhouse. Speaking into the mouthpiece, she asked Sister Mary Paul if Ronnie and Sally had dropped by.

‘I’ll go and check if they are with their mother,’ the kindly nun replied. ‘Hang on a tick.’

It certainly took longer than a few ticks for the arthritic old nun to walk down the length of the ante-natal ward to make enquiries of Dora, who assured Mary Paul that she had seen no sign of the Pickles kiddies. Passing on the message, she said, ‘They’re not here, Mrs Larkin – nobody’s seen them.’

Not wanting to cause panic, Mrs Larkin replied, ‘Not to worry – maybe they decided to walk home. I’ll let you know when they turn up. By the way, don’t mention anything of this to their mum. I wouldn’t want to worry her when it’s all probably a storm in a teacup.’

‘Of course not,’ Mary Paul assured her.

Calling her children together, Mrs Larkin announced, ‘Everybody in the farm truck – we’re going to look for Ronnie and Sally.’

After they had driven into Grange, Mrs Larkin and her children split up into separate search parties. Two of the boys she sent to the park and the town centre; the other two hurried off to search the Esplanade; while she and May went to the railway station.

‘Meet back here in half an hour,’ she instructed.

Thirty minutes later, when the train Ronnie and Sally were on was pulling into Carnforth Station, the Larkins regrouped, none of them with good news.

‘Not a sign of them anywhere,’ they all concluded.

The eldest lad, who was starving hungry, suggested the missing pair might by now have returned on foot to Hope Farm.