‘What a terrible to-do last night. Didn’t get a wink,’ she said, hauling off her rubber boots and hanging up her mackintosh in the scullery. ‘They say the wind was hurricane-force at times. There’s a load of trees down in them woods – they takes it bad when they’re still so heavy with leaves. The river’s flooded its banks at Bures and there’s talk of a lightning strike up Assington way. But our church looks safe and sound, leastways from what I could see from the road. Thank the good Lord we was spared, eh, Vicar?’

It was just a five-minute walk from her house to ours, yet somehow she’d managed to gather all this information by half past eight in the morning.

‘Where’s the little laddie then?’ she asked.

‘Sleeping in, I expect,’ I said. ‘After all that disturbance, it’s not surprising.’

After a few more minutes I decided to check. Jimmy was not in his bed. The covers were disturbed, but the mattress and pillow were cold. Downstairs in the scullery his wellington boots and mackintosh were missing.

‘Not to worry. He’ll have gone out to play,’ Pa said.

I was certain he was right – jumping in puddles was one of Jimmy’s favourite occupations – but somehow it didn’t reassure me. While Mrs D rabbited on about the storm and the damage to the apple and blackberry harvest, I couldn’t help worrying.

‘I’m going out to find him,’ I said.

‘Finish your porridge, dear, while it’s hot,’ Mrs D said. But I had no appetite and excused myself. Jimmy should be easy to spot, I thought, in that red mac. But he wasn’t in the garden, nor did he appear when I called his name. I went to the church and walked all round the graveyard, even into its furthest recesses; I knew he liked to hide in the shed where Eli and the volunteer gardeners kept their tools, but he wasn’t there, either.

Everywhere was sopping wet; the puddles linked into small streams. It had stopped raining, but the trees were so laden that each gust of wind brought further torrents of water down on my head. I was glad of the rubber boots Pa had insisted we bought before moving to the country. I’d mocked him at the time – when would I need such ugly, uncomfortable footwear? How wrong I’d been. They’d been useful right up until the hot weather began and sandals became the only option, and now here I was wearing them again.