The Court Place SWAT team, led by the Cobbs and the Huttons, had swung into action, and the children were swept off by Ry, the towering Australian manny, to build a treehouse. We drove in silence for about eight miles until Ralph turned off the A30 or the B339 or whatever it was and said, after we had driven on an unmade road a couple of miles, through a sun-soaked wood, ‘I think… I’ll park… here.’ He was being very deliberate. Very quiet. As if he moved or spoke too loudly, it might provoke violence.

Then we walked a bit through the wood, following a path, until we came to a hut by a river, where Ralph keyed in a code and pushed open a wooden door. We entered a dark space, with trophies and plaques with gold writing and fishing rods hung on the tongue-and-groove walls. Bookshelves full of books about carp and grayling and gold-tooled volumes of the Fishing Gazette – i.e. an eclectic library – lined the walls. There was the head of a pike lying on a salver offering a silver beaker in its open, sharp-toothed jaws, reels scattered across a polished mahogany dining table, and polished gavels backed with the commemorative heads of 5 lb trout. Piles of waders snaked together in a little room on the right, with a couple of ancient waterproofs, and some stray wellies.

In other words, it was exactly the sort of place where Ralph would feel safe and happy. ‘Here we are,’ he said, and sighed almost, as if now we were there, in this holiest of holies, we could talk.

‘Ralph,’ I said, in a choking voice, going to the window. ‘Please don’t tell me it’s true. I just don’t think I can handle it. Not after–’ then I stopped, too choked to speak. The tears, never far from my eyes, welled and spilt down my face. I didn’t think they would ever stop. A stabbing pain started up in my chest. I sank into a chair, in case I was having a heart attack, which would conveniently delay the moment that Ralph would have to explain to me exactly why Clare, my former best friend, had turned up at our house, with a boy who looked exactly like our son Cas.

Despite being blinded by tears and emotion, I found myself reading a little, hand-typed sign that listed ten rules. The list had been taped to the tabletop in the bay of the window. Number six was, I noted, ‘When members are fishing, they may wish not to be disturbed. The aim is to do all that is conducive to the peaceable fishing by being slow-moving, quiet of foot and, as far as possible, hidden from the fish.’