‘Not immediately. We assumed Jimmy was asleep and would come down in his own time, which is perfectly usual during school holidays. I went up to his room at about a quarter past nine, when he hadn’t turned up for breakfast. His bed had been slept in, but it wasn’t warm any more. He’d been gone for a while.’

‘Thank you. That is helpful. Now, does your brother have any friends of his own in the village, or at school? Who does he play with?’

‘No one really. He comes with me most of the time.’ I sent up a silent, guilty prayer: Bring him back safely, God, and I will never be grumpy about having to take care of him, ever again.

‘And what do you do, when you go out together?’

‘We go for walks, or picnics – you know. To The Pines, or into the woods. Sometimes down to the lake and the Hall. We are friends with the family.’ He was scribbling so fast now that I paused to give him time to catch up. ‘Kit taught us how to row.’

He looked up sharply. ‘On the river?’

‘On their lake.’

‘Any other friends?’

‘The Timpson twins. We see them sometimes. Or the other lads: Robert Parsons, Ashley, Brian and Peter.’

His next question caught me off-guard. ‘How well do you get on with your brother?’

‘We get on fine. I love him, of course. He’s my brother.’ It sounded so defensive. ‘His language is a bit limited and he might never be able to look after himself, but he’s such a happy boy, always smiling.’

‘He’s a Mongol, I understand?’ That terrible, shocking word. It had been used by the hospital when Mum first had Jimmy, but after that she’d banned it.

‘No,’ I said angrily. ‘Well, yes. But it’s such an ugly term that we don’t like to use it. He has a mental disability.’

I watched him writing: Mental disability.

‘Your mother . . .?’

‘She died. Nearly two years ago.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Goddard. So it’s just your father looking after you?’

‘And Mrs Diamond, our housekeeper. We couldn’t do without her.’

‘Indeed. Thank you. Now, have you got any idea why your brother left the house, and where he might have been going?’

‘He was anxious about a toy he’d left on an island when we were out rowing with Kit. We told him not to worry, but . . .’ Wondering was so painful.

‘A toy?’

‘A stuffed parrot. Part of a pirate’s costume.’

Watching him write Check lake and Stuffed parrot on island so painstakingly in his notebook, I felt a hysterical urge to giggle.

‘Thank you, Miss Goddard. We’ll get our people on to that right away.’

‘Kit checked the island this morning. He went out in his boat. He found the parrot.’