‘We always had to count the number of rings to check who along the line the call was for, and because Gregory was on the brink of a tantrum, I just took the call and left all the whining to your father,’ she said with a guilty look. ‘Your aunt was only wondering if we were still going to cards with all the creeks up. We chatted for a while, and apart from the television, everything was quiet by the time I got off the phone, so I managed to get the mess you’d all left washed up and put away, in peace.’

James knew where he fitted in to the story, sitting in front of the television in the living room by himself, meaning he’d missed the first scenes of confusion.

‘Then Daniel came back without Gregory,’ his mother whispered.

He still remembered the alarm of his parents shouting his little brother’s name, and glimpses of other sounds and sights from his five-year-old perspective.

‘Your father reckoned the garden gate must have been left open and Gregory had only wandered down to the creek, so he went to check. I searched the whole house,’ she said. ‘You started following me, and I made it into a little game, but he wasn’t hiding anywhere inside.’

James recalled his father wrenching the old telephone into life.

‘Doris and Bill turned up and we all searched,’ his mother said. ‘At some point, your grandparents arrived, because they’d seen Kevin in the police car turning down the lane off the Kippen Road. Then you came in carrying one of your dolls, and the look your father gave you was awful. Doris made us all a cup of tea and Gladys sent everyone out to keep searching, then sat you on her lap. Your grandmother never liked men hanging around the kitchen, but she made your father stay and sit with me,’ she added, looking as though that hadn’t brought her much comfort.

‘Then Gladys and Doris started telling stories about other kids who’d gone missing and turned up inside wardrobes or wandered off into the bush for an hour or two,’ she said. ‘Before your uncle came in and said the police were looking at the dam.’

In previous tellings, this moment had always been a turning point.

‘Everyone started shouting at the idea that a little boy could have walked that far up the driveway,’ his mother said. ‘I was a pre-school teacher, and they all looked at me like I shouldn’t have allowed a child to get lost, but Kevin just let me take him through the house to see Gregory’s room and his bed. Your father trailed us, seeing the solution around every corner, until he went off in a huff to search the machinery shed again.’