‘He’s been up into town every day since the floods came,’ she put in. ‘And Rob’s there now, asking round. You know, to see if anyone . . .’ Her voice faded away and she cast an anxious glance at her husband, afraid perhaps her tongue might say too much.

They were standing in the warm kitchen at Rookery Farm and now, from the corner near the range, seated in a rocking chair with a shawl around her shoulders, came Grandma Eland’s gentle voice.

‘Come here, lovey, and sit with me. Rosie, get the child some hot soup. She can’t have had anything warm inside her for days. If Esther weren’t so stubborn . . .’

‘Now, Mam,’ Danny turned, forcing a laugh, ‘dun’t you start.’ But he put his hand on Ella’s thin shoulder and urged her towards the fire.

Moments later she was sipping at thick vegetable soup, not really hungry but not wanting to refuse their kindness, when the back door was flung open and Rob burst into the kitchen.

‘Dad – Dad . . .’ His face was red, his eyes wide and his coat flying open. As always, his socks were wrinkled around his ankles.

He did not see Ella sitting in the corner beside the range before he blurted out, ‘Dad, they’ve found your car.’

The four people in the room stared at him and then the boy became aware of Ella’s white face, her eyes, wide with terror, staring at him.

‘Oh, heck,’ she heard him mutter. ‘I – I didn’t know you was here.’

Danny was the first to speak, his voice a hoarse, strangled, whisper. ‘Kate? What about Kate?’

The boy dragged his gaze away from Ella’s face back to his father’s. ‘They – Sergeant Darby wouldn’t tell me.’

‘You – you went to the police station?’

Rob nodded. ‘I thought they might be the people most likely to know owt. He – he said I was to ask you and the mester . . .’ Rob jerked his head in the vague direction of Brumbys’ Farm, ‘to go an’ see them. He – he wouldn’t tell me any more,’ he added again, leaving the listeners well aware, as Rob himself had heen, that there was more to tell.

Under his breath, Ella heard Danny say, ‘Oh – my – God!’ and he passed his hand across his forehead and up into his hair again.

Swiftly, Rosie was at his side, touching his arm. ‘Go straight away, love, and find out. Get the—’ She clapped her hand to her mouth to stop the words she had been going to say – ‘get the car out’. The phrase had come automatically to her lips before she had stopped to think. But, of course, their car was not here.