I couldn’t bear to wait any longer. ‘Please, Pa. Please tell me what happened?’

A muffled ‘Come in’.

‘How did it go – your trip to the bank?’

‘It’s fine, sweetheart,’ he said. Sheaves of paper surrounded him on the desk, all covered in figures. ‘It’ll be sorted out soon enough.’ The drained look on his face told me he was lying.

‘You don’t have to pretend, Pa.’ He looked at me for a long moment. ‘You have to trust me. I’m old enough to share things with, you know.’

He gave a great sigh and gesticulated to the papers on his desk.

‘I barely know where to start, my darling. Henry’s right: there is a third bank account, which up until December was showing a sum of around five thousand pounds. But over a period of a month, starting from when I first became a signatory to the account, that money has been withdrawn, and now it’s nearly all gone.’

‘But who’s taken it?’

He shook his head. ‘The bank says it could only have been Henry or me.’ Miss Calver’s words resounded in my head: Tell your pa to take care around that man. ‘Henry claims it couldn’t have been him, because any transactions he makes are supposed to be approved by me.’

It didn’t make any sense. ‘I assume you . . .?’ I couldn’t finish the sentence.

‘You don’t think I . . .?’ Pa’s face seemed to collapse, and I feared he might be close to tears. ‘Look, my darling, I know I’m not the most organised person in the world, but I might have noticed if I’d taken all that money out of a bank account, don’t you think? Five thousand pounds. What on earth would I spend that sort of money on?’

He dropped his head into his hands. He seemed so brittle, as though he might fall into pieces right there in his study. A heavy dread slithered into my stomach. ‘What’s going to happen now?’ I whispered.

‘We’ve agreed to keep it between us, while the bank makes further enquiries,’ Pa said. ‘But after that, Henry says, we have to call in the diocesan auditors. Hence, all of this,’ and he gestured to the papers again. ‘I need to get my head round who was doing what before I got here, so I’m ready.’

On Saturday our turn on the church rota came round again.

I never minded. It always reminded me of Mum, who would, I hoped, be looking down on us approvingly from her cloud. And I’d heard from Mrs D that our helpfulness had been commented on in the village. ‘Earning all kind of Brownie points for your pa,’ she said drily. I could never tell whether she was being funny or serious.

The ladies doted on Jimmy, bringing him biscuits, and he glowed in their attention.