His gaze shifts towards me and I feel the weight of sadness in his eyes. There’s indecision too, written all over his face. He wants to tell me something but Mum’s warning him not to.

‘What is it, Dad?’

‘Derek!’

‘It’s okay. You can tell me.’

Mum pulls at my hand. ‘It’s nothing you need worry about, Claire. Just a bunch of drunks in the pub speculating. We know no one in the family had anything to do with Billy’s disappearance.’

I ignore her. I can’t tear my eyes away from my dad who looks as though he might burst from the stress of keeping his lip buttoned. ‘Dad?’

He shifts his weight so he’s leaning against the door frame and bows his head, ever so slightly, finally breaking eye contact with me. ‘They think Jake had something to do with it. I overheard a conversation when I was coming out of the loo in the King and Lion the other night. No smoke without fire and all that.’

‘Absolute rot!’ Mum snaps the laptop lid shut. ‘Everyone will have forgotten all about it by next week and then, when the dust has settled, we’ll ask the Bristol News to run a story about Billy and Jake as kids. If the Standard are going to shaft us we’ll get them onside instead. We’ll dig out some photos of the boys in their primary-school uniforms. The readers will see them when they were young and sweet and they’ll forget about Jake’s little outburst. It’s all about the cute factor. You’ll see.’

‘Cute factor?’

‘It’s a PR trick to gain public sympathy. I read about it in a book I got out of the library, the one by the PR guru who was arrested for sex offences. Dirty bastard but he knew his stuff.’

I can’t help but marvel at the woman sitting in front of me. Six months ago she didn’t really know what PR meant never mind the tricks ‘gurus’ use to gain public sympathy for a client. Whilst I could barely speak for grief she went part-time at the garden centre and asked a friend’s son to create the findbillywilkinson.com website so she could post a few photos of him and include the police contact details. Now there’s a Facebook page and a crowdfunding site. She’s read every book that’s been written by the parents of other missing children and she spends hours on the Internet looking for the contact details of journalists who might be interested in covering Billy’s story.

‘So can you dig some out?’ Mum asks. ‘Some photos?’

I nod my head. ‘Of course.’

‘Are you all right, love?’ Dad says. ‘You look a bit peaky.’

I can’t tell them what happened yesterday. I don’t want to worry them, not until I know what I’m dealing with.