‘Janet recalls Evelyn saying they were going to stay with a friend called Anne Marsden who lived in Lambeth in south London. We have established that your sister-in-law and an Anne Marsden were at secretarial school together. Anne Marsden lived in a road called Upper Marsh in Lambeth, very near Waterloo station, and on the night of Sunday the seventeenth of January, there was a Luftwaffe bombing raid and a number of bombs fell in that area. Quite a few houses on Upper Marsh were hit and four were destroyed, including the Marsdens’.’

‘The bodies of Anne Marsden and your sister-in-law were found, but Henry’s body wasn’t. Now I have to make an important point here, Richard: no one would have known that Evelyn and Henry were staying at the Marsdens’ house. More to the point, the rescuers at the scene would not have known a little boy was there so wouldn’t have been specifically looking for him. Furthermore, about an hour after the bombing, an air raid warden found a young boy wandering down Royal Street, which runs off Upper Marsh. The boy was very dazed and was taken by ambulance to St Christopher’s hospital, which is nearby. The boy was concussed and confused and it transpired he’d also broken his wrist. He had no idea what his name was and said very little at all throughout his time at the hospital.

‘Now I have to say Mr Gilbey has been terribly helpful: once we became aware of the situation, he was most generous in terms of helping us. Thanks to him, the Metropolitan Police allocated a couple of officers to make enquiries in the hospital. Between us, we’ve talked with everyone who came into contact with this boy. He certainly matches Henry’s description: we obtained recent photographs from your house, and everyone we showed them to agrees that it’s the same boy. We are as certain as we can be that it was Henry who was found in Royal Street that night and taken to St Christopher’s hospital.’

‘And he was in the hospital for how long?’

‘Two weeks.’

‘It took that long to establish who he was?’

‘It was a week before Janet returned from Scotland – it was only then that anyone realised that Evelyn and Henry were missing. It took us a further ten days to discover where they’d been staying and what had happened. By the time we made enquiries at St Christopher’s, I’m afraid Henry had been adopted just a few days previously.

‘I’m not going to pretend it’s not a dreadful, dreadful predicament, Richard. We’ve worked tirelessly to identify the couple who adopted him, but with no luck so far. We’re giving this top priority, I can assure you. I’ve taken personal charge.’

‘I simply do not understand how a couple can walk into a hospital and walk out with someone else’s child – my child!’