‘Oh my Lord,’ Molly gasps, peering through the curlicues of wrought-iron gates. The old vicarage has gone, and in its place are four mock-Georgian executive-style houses set in perfectly manicured green lawns surrounded by newly planted box hedges. Like dolls’ houses in a toy town, she thinks.

‘The poor old place was looking a bit derelict last time I was here,’ Bella says. ‘But there was scaffolding up the chimney, so I assumed they were restoring it.’

After her initial surprise, Molly feels strangely unmoved. She never loved that vicarage, it never really felt like home. A plain four-square building of no great historical importance, cheaply constructed in the interwar period, its rooms were voluminous, the plumbing basic, the windows ill-fitting, with no insulation and certainly no central heating. The fireplaces were greedy for coal and far too small to keep the place warm in winter.

The best thing about it was the garden – those spreading acres on which these new houses now stand. It had seemed, to her young city-bound eyes, to stretch away to infinity, merging without fence or hedge into the woodland and fields beyond. This was her childhood, or a part of it at least. And now it is gone. ‘Good riddance,’ she mutters under her breath.

‘Where now?’ Bella asks.

‘Down to the Mere. It’s at the bottom of the hill.’

‘You’re sure about this, Mum?’

‘Never been more sure,’ she says, although her heart quails at the thought.

They pass the Old Crown pub, offering ‘local ales and fresh cooked food’, and agree to return for a sandwich later, before the drive home. The houses thin out as they leave the village, with the woods to their left, down to the bottom of the hill where the road levels onto the river’s floodplain. The Tudor brick chimneys of Wormley Hall are just visible, peeping over the tops of the trees.

The first sign they see is hand-painted in uneven capital letters, nailed roughly onto an unsteady-looking post: SAVE WORMLEY MERE. Next is a larger official notice:

EASTERN WATER STOUR VALLEY PROJECT.
STRICTLY AUTHORISED VEHICLES ONLY.
DANGER, HEAVY PLANT TURNING.
NO ENTRY.

‘Heavy plants don’t sound too dangerous.’ Molly’s attempt at a joke is met with a sigh.

‘So where is this lake, anyway?’ Bella says, pulling up beside a gate leading to a rough farm track.

‘Just over there. The only way by car is along this track.’ Molly opens her window and the twittering song of invisible meadowlarks floods her ears from high above. She takes a deep breath, inhaling the smells of warm grass and spring blossom, with a hint of cow manure.