What he’d discovered there Mrs D found difficult to put into words.

‘Oh, my dears,’ she said, lifting her cup with a trembling hand. ‘Such a shock. Who’d have thought he’d . . .’

‘He would what?’ Pa snapped. He didn’t sound like my father any more. His tone was brusque and impatient, because really the only news we could cope with was whether Jimmy had been found, safe and unharmed.

‘I mean, wherever did he get that rope?’

A chill went down my spine, and everything in front of my eyes seemed to shimmer and swim.

Mrs D turned to me. ‘My poor dear Molly. You were so fond of him, weren’t you?’

‘Was it Jimmy?’ I almost shouted.

‘Your brother? Oh no, darling. Not Jimmy. It was Eli. He’s only gone and hanged himself. From a tree. Right by his hut, or where it used to be.’

‘Was he . . .?’ My father faltered, unable to say the word.

‘I’m afraid so.’ Mrs D shook her head. ‘He’d used a ladder, you see, and kicked it away. George climbed up and cut him down, but he was long gone, poor old boy. There was no saving him. We called the police, of course, and a doctor. He pronounced him dead at the scene.’

Neither Pa nor I could find anything to say. We were already in shock, and this just doubled it. I found myself shaking uncontrollably and had to sit down. Eli must have been distressed at being moved out of his hut and then finding it burned down, but I never realised that he would give up hope so completely.

And then an even darker thought arrived, dizzying in its obvious clarity. We knew that the police had been to see Eli the previous day and interviewed him about Jimmy. Knowing from my own experience how their questioning could make you feel guilty for no reason at all, it was reasonable to assume that poor Eli would have felt they suspected him of having something to do with Jimmy’s disappearance. He might even have thought they were going to arrest him.

I felt utterly certain that Eli was entirely innocent. He would never have harmed anyone, let alone the boy he seemed to have developed a great affection for. But was I being too naive? A further terrifying thought crashed into my head: why would Eli have done something so drastic if he was completely innocent and knew nothing? Did this mean that he had actually harmed Jimmy, or was somehow responsible for his disappearance? Or were there darker forces at play here, adult things I had no experience of? Now that Eli had done what he had done, would the police – and everyone else – simply assume that he was guilty?