‘We went round the streets,’ I told her, ‘Joe and me. We were circling; going along all the alleyways between the houses. Everyone we saw, we asked them: “Have you seen a little boy? This high, dark hair, wearing a tracksuit, a blue anorak.” Everyone joined in the search, all the neighbours. We could hear people calling Daniel’s name for miles. We kept meeting people who were looking for him and they didn’t know we were his parents, they asked us to help, described our own son to us. Everyone was so kind. Everyone was trying so hard and I was thinking: “It’ll be all right. It’ll be okay. How can anything happen to him when all of London is looking? When everyone wants to be the one who finds him?”’

Valentina was watching me intently. Her hands were on her belly, protecting the baby.

I turned the key ring that Irma had given me between my fingers and continued: ‘We reached the building site, and it seemed secure, there were signs everywhere saying: Danger, Keep Out! and signs saying there were dog patrols and we thought it would be impossible for anyone to get in, but we walked the perimeter anyway, to make sure, and there was a hole at the foot of one of the hoardings, only a small hole, but big enough for Daniel to crawl through. As soon as I saw it, I knew.’

I remembered every detail, how my hair had been plastered to my head and mascara was in my eyes, making my vision blurry. Joe and I had tugged at the hoarding, kicking it until the hole was big enough for us to wriggle under like commandos, and we found ourselves in a wasteland; acres of mud and piles of rubble, giant machines standing still, stacks of pipes, huge wooden bobbins wound with stressing cables. My hands and knees and front were plastered in mud. Joe began walking around the inner circumference of the hoarding calling Daniel’s name. Something had drawn me forwards.

‘They had dug a hole,’ I told Valentina, ‘a shaft for the lift to go down to the basement of the building they hadn’t even started to build. I didn’t know the hole was there, but I could feel Daniel, as if he was calling me and I…’