‘I know. But we will cope with it. We have to,’ he said. ‘Come to bed, darling. We have better ways of communicating than this.’

In the small hours of the morning Isobel woke with a terrific start to bloodcurdling yells. She and Giles had talked long into the night and then made love with a passion that would have been the envy of many long-married couples. She leaped out of bed and ran barefooted down the passage. The landing light was on and the door of the little room that had been Edward’s before he was promoted to a larger one upstairs on the top floor was ajar, propped open by a book. Rory was sitting up in bed screaming hysterically. Isobel gathered him in her arms, murmuring all the old words of comfort that she had used to Amy and Edward when they were little. ‘It’s all right, darling. I’m here. It’s only a dream. Wake up. I’m here.’

‘The Hat! The Hat!’ screamed Rory, incoherent with terror. ‘Get him off! Take it away, take it away!’

‘I will, darling. It’s all gone now. No more Hat.’ Isobel hadn’t the faintest idea what, or who, the Hat was, but after years of practice, particularly with Amy, she knew about exorcising nightmares. Rory wound his arms so tightly round her neck she was nearly strangled, but his screams subsided to sobs, and the sobs gradually became intermittent, though with each one she could feel his bony little body shuddering. She rocked him and murmured to him until he was completely quiet and he leaned against her exhausted, thumb in mouth.

‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s a good boy. Would a drink of hot Ribena make you feel all better?’

He nodded, looking up at her through dark lashes from greeny-brown eyes that were so uncannily like Giles’s – so unlike her sister Lorna’s big blue ones. He took his thumb out of his mouth for a moment. ‘Don’t go,’ he said, before jamming it back in again.

‘I won’t be a minute. I’ll just go and boil the kettle and come right back and we’ll have a hot drink together. I’ll sit on your bed and talk and we’ll have a picnic. Where’s Rabbit?’

Rory burrowed down the bed and came up with the battered one-eared rabbit that was the most treasured possession he had brought with him from the States, though he’d come with a trousseau of immaculate new clothes to cater for every possible variation of weather or social occasion. ‘I think you’ll find he’s got everything he could possibly need,’ Lorna had said on the telephone, but Isobel thought he’d come without any of the things a child really needed – except perhaps Rabbit.

‘You pop to the loo,’ she said now, ‘and by the time you’ve done that I’ll be back.’