A moorhen came into view, swimming in its jerky manner and making loud ticks of alarm. We soon saw why. A skein of at least thirty geese appeared in the sky, squawking to each other as they circled twice, before plunging downwards and landing on the water with their pink webbed feet held out as brakes. They regrouped, shaking their wings, extending their necks and honking comically, as though congratulating themselves on a successful flight.

Jimmy laughed, pointing.

‘They’re geese. Like we used to see in Hyde Park, remember? Noisy, aren’t they?’

The birds swam to the bank and hauled themselves out, settling down to preen themselves or idly crop the short grass, and all was peaceful again.

Soon after that the sun went behind a cloud, the breeze dropped and the surface of the water stilled and darkened. Without sunshine, the lake was transformed into a shadowy, mysterious place, full of potential danger. A chill went down my spine. It was easy to imagine how people had come to believe that fearsome creatures might be hiding in its bottomless depths.

‘Where dragon?’ he said, pouting.

‘Perhaps they’re all hiding today, Jim-boy.’ I put an arm round his shoulder, as much to reassure myself as him. ‘We’ll come back another time, shall we?’

It was that very afternoon, returning home from the lake, that we saw Pa wandering at the far corner of the cemetery. Jim was about to run across to him, but something odd about Pa’s behaviour made me hold him back.

He was pacing back and forth between the ancient gravestones with his head down and muttering to himself, although we were too far away to hear what he was saying. From time to time he would stop and look up to the sky with wide eyes, like a wolf howling at the moon. For the second time that morning I was filled with an indefinable sense of dread.

Jimmy shifted uneasily by my side. ‘Wass he doing, Moll?’

‘I don’t know, my darling.’ I took his hand and pulled him away. ‘We’d better go, though. We’re late for lunch.’

Pa didn’t turn up for the meal. Mrs D said she’d kept a plate for him in the larder, because he’d had to rush out for an urgent meeting with Mr Blackman.

As Blackman was the church treasurer, I assumed it must have been about money. Pa had already talked about the multiple problems the church faced: the wobbly flagstones along the aisle that threatened to trip worshippers every Sunday; the hole in the vestry roof that let in the rain; and the slit in the leather bellows that had now grown so large that the organ could no longer be played. Without accompaniment it became harder for the choir to pull the congregation along with them, so that our hymns were often slow and ragged, and painfully out of tune.

‘What about?’ I asked.