We set off again along the other path through the woods, still calling Jimmy’s name. When we reached Eli’s glade, another horrible shock awaited us. Where the hut had once stood was a pile of charred timbers and sodden grey ash. All that was left of the structure were the four metal wheels, now fallen at crazy angles as their wooden axles had burned away; and the cast-iron stove, which now stood upright in the centre of the devastation, as though wondering what all the fuss was about. It would have looked comical, had it not been so terrible. The hut’s metal chimney had been felled like a tree and now lay in several charred and crumpled sections, strewn around the glade. We stood for several moments, stunned into silence.

It was Pa who broke it. ‘Lightning strike, do you think?’

I could hardly speak. My stomach churned, and I felt sick and shivery. The place I’d come to see as some kind of haven was now showing all the signs of hell. The blaze had clearly been so ferocious that it had consumed almost everything, even metal items. The large milk churn in which Eli kept his water lay on its side, partly melted. Enamel mugs had apparently been thrown by some fiery force – I spied one several yards away from the main blaze. Saucepans had taken on crazy shapes; a frying pan was folded in two, like an omelette.

Blackman would be pleased. This is what he wanted, wasn’t it, getting rid of the hut? And now the storm had saved him the bother. At the back of my mind was something Blackman had said. It had sounded slightly odd at the time, and now I remembered. ‘That hut was neither suitable nor safe,’ he’d said. Was. Past tense. Could he have torched it himself? Or got someone else to do his dirty work?

We retraced our steps to the vicarage, feeling certain that Jimmy must, surely, have grown hungry and decided to come home by now.

Mrs D was waiting by the front door, her face pale and strained. ‘No sign of the little laddie?’

‘You haven’t heard anything?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ll get Hubby onto it, shall I, Vicar? The more eyes, the better?’

‘Oh, I don’t think we need to mobilise the troops yet, thank you, Mrs D,’ Pa said. ‘Jimmy’s so well known in the village that surely someone will have seen him.’ He seemed quite convinced that Jimmy had strayed away unthinkingly and would turn up at any moment now. I prayed he was right.