But that wasn’t what Marsh had called round to discuss that morning. He had come to talk about Angus Moody. He had known nothing about the find at that point. If Anna had allowed me to let him in, he could have told me that Nick was alive, that Nick was coming home. He had known since the end of May but had had to keep it secret because it was imperative that the men involved in Angus’s fraud weren’t alerted to Scotland Yard closing in on them. Marsh had been in danger of unintentionally wrecking everything with his investigation into Nick’s disappearance, hence the reason for its abrupt loss of momentum. He’d had to keep things ticking over, without actually doing anything.

Nick had regained consciousness in rushing water, caught between the branches of a fallen tree. Somehow, he found the strength to drag himself out. He lay on the bank floating in and out of consciousness, listening to the birds and the river, the rustle of leaves in the breeze. He had staggered through the woods, eventually finding himself behind the Moodys’ swimming pool changing room.

‘It was so strange,’ he told me. ‘Because I thought I was sixteen, that somewhere around, the other children were together, hiding from me.’

He went to the house and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He remembered where they used to hide a key and let himself in. He was concussed, in shock and delirious and convinced that it was 2000 and he was there with his parents. He had hallucination after hallucination, until it got to the point where he was too scared to sleep.

‘It was like the day Izzy drowned was on repeat. Everything I did. Every conversation I had. That moment I woke and she was kissing me, and I reacted like a lunatic. It was torture.’

He’s not sure how many days passed before things improved. Maybe three. Possibly as many as five.

‘I suddenly knew how old I was. I remembered what had happened, the sequence of events, everything.’

He told me about the menacing text he’d received, only minutes before he went to Anna’s house to confront her.