My guilt was hardening into something so painful that it seemed to grip me by the throat, threatening to throttle me: I was probably to blame for Jimmy’s disappearance. How could I admit that I had gone out last night, when Pa was asleep in a drunken stupor? Suppose Jimmy had been woken by the lightning, tried to wake Pa, then went out searching for me and somehow got hurt? Because of me, he would have been out all night in that terrible weather, cold and wet and afraid. If only I’d checked on him properly after I got home, then we could have found him sooner and brought him home. But now . . .

‘Thank you so much, everyone,’ Pa was saying. ‘But we don’t want any fuss. Jimmy will back before we . . .’ He seemed to sway slightly, and I caught his arm. His cheeks were hollow, his hair stuck thinly to his scalp and he seemed to have aged two decades.

‘Come on, Pa, we should get back,’ I said. ‘Let’s hand over the search to the others for a little while.’

Mrs D was waiting for us with more hot chocolate. Less welcome was the arrival of Mr Blackman, bustling with self-importance. He needed to be at the centre of everything, even the hunt for a missing child.

‘Henry,’ Pa said, shaking his hand. ‘They say you’ve set up search parties. Really, there’s no need. Jimmy’ll soon be—’

Blackman interrupted. ‘You’re not to worry, Vicar. You look all done in, the pair of you, if you don’t mind my saying so. You stay here in case he turns up, and we’ll look after the search. We’ll find him soon enough, safe and well, never fear.’ He thanked Mrs Diamond, turning down her offer of hot chocolate, and let himself out of the door.

The rest of the day was a blur. Waiting was pure agony. The minute-hand on the clock ticked around so slowly it felt as though time had stopped. I’d rather have been out searching, but Mrs D persuaded me that Pa needed someone to stay with him, and he certainly looked too exhausted to carry on.

Reassurances felt hollow and meaningless, but talking about anything else seemed irrelevant and unimportant. So we sat, wordlessly, with nothing to say to each other, straining our ears for the sound of the front-door latch. Jimmy could breeze in at any moment, calling out, ‘Home,’ in his usual way, and the torture would be over. But the moments slipped into minutes and then into an hour, and then two, then three. It felt as though the walls were leaning in, threatening to suffocate us.