The beard does most of the talking. He’s tall and awkward and rather poker-faced, while the girl smiles a lot. Whatever could a pretty young thing like her want with chasing criminals? Both perch themselves uncomfortably on the hard kitchen chairs that Bella has pulled up for them, and there’s a smattering of introductory small talk.

‘Apologies for inconveniencing you like this, Mrs Goddard. I hope you are feeling up to a little chat? Can you hear us all right?’

She feels like shouting, For heaven’s sake, stop patronising me. Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. But she remembers, in time, that she has determined to present herself as a sweet and slightly dotty old lady.

‘It’s all right, my dears. I can hear you both perfectly well, thank you,’ she says with as much grace as she can muster. ‘But perhaps you can tell me to what we owe this unexpected pleasure.’

The man clears his throat, pulls a small notebook and pencil from his pocket. How charmingly low-tech, Molly thinks to herself, just like the bobbies who questioned her back then.

‘Mrs Goddard.’

‘That is my name, yes. Molly Goddard. Not “Mrs”.’

Bella darts a look that says: Don’t be difficult, Mum. It’ll only cause trouble.

‘Msss Goddard.’ He holds on to the ‘s’ for too long, so that it sounds like an angry fly.

‘If you insist, Constable.’ She has been single for so long – after that disastrous short-lived marriage – that she can barely remember a time when she was Mrs, but neither has she ever accepted being a Ms, or a Miss, and it irritates her when officials always insist. Her young readers know her as Molly Goddard. Dear Molly, they write in their wobbly, unformed hand as though they know her personally, and she considers it a great compliment.

He clears his throat again. ‘We understand that for a short period from December 1949 to September 1950, your father, John Goddard, was the vicar of Wormley, in Suffolk?’

‘That is correct. We lived in the vicarage, with my brother and a housekeeper. My mother had died the year before.’

‘And we understand that in the late summer of 1950 your brother James—’

‘Jimmy,’ she interrupts.

‘Your brother Jimmy disappeared.’

The lump in Molly’s stomach moves higher, pressing on her lungs and making it difficult to breathe. ‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘Everyone gave up looking, and we never got any explanation.’

Bella puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right, Mum?’

‘If this is too distressing, we can stop,’ the policewoman says. ‘We can come back another time, if you like?’

‘No, let’s carry on. I want to know why you are here, after all these years. Has anything happened? Have you found something?’