‘Best-selling, award-winning children’s books,’ Bella adds. ‘You’re too modest, Mum.’

‘You told me you were going to be a writer, that day on The Retreat. I was impressed that you were so clear about what you wanted to do, even at that young age, Molly.’

‘It’s been a way of keeping Jimmy alive in my mind, imagining him as my reader.’

The smile fades from Kit’s face. ‘I’ve just remembered. Those bones in the lake. Were they his?’

‘No, they weren’t. We’re still none the wiser, I’m afraid.’

‘Did they never tell you what I told them about Jimmy’s plan?’

‘No,’ Molly says, more cautiously. ‘Go on.’

‘Do you remember how we talked about occupying Eli’s hut to save it from demolition?’

‘Like the suffragettes occupying buildings and chaining themselves to railings?’

‘Just that. Jimmy must have overheard us, because he told me he was going to save the hut. He made me promise not to tell you, cos you’d stop him . . .’

No. No, no, no, her head screams.

Kit is still talking, ‘. . . or something like that. I just wondered . . .’

Molly finishes his sentence. ‘And then he couldn’t get out?’ She gasps as she pictures the scene: Jimmy letting himself into the hut with the key he knew was always kept under the wheel arch. She drops her head into her hands, overcome with the sudden, terrifying memory. That day Eli showed them how to set the fire, how to use the matches – Jimmy loved that. Had he tried to keep himself warm, brew tea? Perhaps gone to lie down on the bed and then somehow the fire caught and he couldn’t get out. And no one ever knew.

‘I did tell the police about that,’ Kit was saying. ‘But who knows whether they took any notice of me. After Eli killed himself, I think they became convinced that Jimmy’s disappearance was all to do with him. It was a lazy conclusion, an easy way out.’

Molly’s head is full of flames and her ears ring with the screams of a terrified little boy. She is too horrified to weep.

‘Did anyone find out who torched the hut?’ Bella asks.

‘Most people thought it was lightning,’ Kit says. ‘Or Eli himself.’

Although she hasn’t the heart, or the voice, to say so right now, Molly has never believed the lightning theory; and Eli would never have burned his beloved hut. She’d always believed it was Blackman. But now she is beginning to think it might just have been a tragic accident.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she hears Kit saying. ‘I thought you already knew.’

Bella says, ‘Seems not, Kit. But we’ll definitely follow that up with the police, won’t we, Mum?’

‘I didn’t mean to upset your mother.’