We reached The Retreat first, a flat island quite close to the shore and nearest the Hall. A narrow boarded walkway led from a small landing stage to a summer house that had seen better days. ‘It was built by my grandmother,’ Kit said. ‘Apparently she couldn’t bear being cooped up in the house with the children and used to escape to her island to write her poetry.’

I imagined myself sitting there, notebook in hand, writing my novel. ‘Do you still have any of them?’ I asked. ‘Her poems, I mean.’

‘Dunno, to be honest. She’s still with us, though. Lives in the Dower House, but doesn’t go out these days. Not since my uncle died.’

Rabbit Island, so called because in the past children had kept their pet rabbits there, was the smallest – simply a round hump of land rising a few feet above the water. Even so, the willows had dug their roots deep into what soil they could find and towered high, out of all proportion to the size of the island.

‘Mum and her brother thought their precious pets were safe there,’ Kit explained. ‘But one day the rabbits disappeared and no one knew what had taken them. They thought perhaps a hawk, or a cunning fox that had learned to swim. It was a tragedy. No one’s kept rabbits there ever since.’

Pirate’s Lair was the largest island of all, a conical hillock with steep sides, away from the main body of the water. Long ago someone had cut away part of the sloping side and built a wooden landing stage, which was now derelict, although it was still possible to make out a signboard roughly painted with a skull and crossbones.

‘We used to play here every summer with my cousins, when I came to stay with Grandma,’ Kit said. ‘We had a lot of fun.’

‘Don’t they come any more?’

‘Too many sad memories for them after my uncle died, I suppose.’ He sounded wistful. Was he actually a bit lonely here in the big house, with his boarding-school friends scattered far and wide for the holidays?

Finally we rowed across to a long, low island called The Crocodile because it had a flat ‘snout’ end, a hump towards the middle and a tapering ‘tail’ end.

‘Has it got anything to do with the legend?’ I asked. ‘Old Eli says if the creature is disturbed, it will bring evil to the village.’ I laughed, to show I didn’t believe it either.

‘That old dragon story,’ Kit scoffed. ‘We don’t take any notice.’

‘Where . . . dragon?’ Jimmy, who had been as good as gold for a full half-hour, began to wriggle in his seat. I put a restraining arm round his shoulder, which he instantly shrugged off.

‘He’s obsessed with the idea,’ I explained.