Hah! That phrase so perfectly calculated to cause instant panic. That’s what they said when Jimmy went missing. Like the old joke: ‘Start worrying, details to follow’. Only it wasn’t a joke. Not funny at all. And they never got the details.

‘They simply want a word with you,’ Gillian went on. ‘Something to do with a lake, they said. But I told them they’d have to wait until your daughter was here. I’ve given her a ring and she’ll be over tomorrow morning. The police will come back then.’

A lake. The word shimmers in Molly’s mind, like sunlight glittering on the surface when the water is disturbed by a gust of wind. A lake known as the Mere, its corners dark and hidden, surrounded by overgrown willows and dense billows of bramble bushes. The humps of the islands fringed with sedge and bulrush. When the weather was calm, the sky, clouds and trees were reflected in perfect reverse, creating a double image that she remembers as clearly as though it were yesterday and still believes to be one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

Even now, her eyes are dazzled by the brilliant yellow of the marsh marigolds and her nose giddied by the sweet, medicinal scent of water mint. She can feel the smooth squelch of the grey-blue mud clinging between her toes, with its earthy, metallic odour. The air is filled with the sounds of small lives: the gentle cluck of a mother duck shepherding her flotilla of tiny ducklings, the sharp tick-tick of an alarmed coot, the distant call of cattle on the water meadows beyond. In the sky there is the squeal of swifts swooping low over the surface and, from time to time, the harsh, bossy squawks of geese as they circle before coming in to land, their webbed feet outstretched, like squadrons of small feathered aircraft.

Above all the noises of nature, if she listens carefully, she can hear the regular, unmistakeable thud of oars in rowlocks followed by the swish of the water as they pull forward. She leans over the side of the boat, trailing her fingers in the cool water. In the shallows are glimpses of a secret underwater world: grey shoals of minnows, tiny striped snails, worms, dragonfly nymphs and other murky creatures. In deeper water the lake grows black and mysterious, concealing all kinds of unknown terrors.

The memories are calling her, luring her back, but she resists them with all her might. At times they press into her head so ferociously that she is overwhelmed. Most of the time she manages to keep them at bay, but now, this very morning, the police are coming to ask her about a lake. She takes a deep breath, then another, trying to calm her thrumming nerves.