He stood and moved towards me. I stood too. We were so close, with barely a foot between us. This is it, I thought, holding my breath, he’s going to put his arms around me, and then he’s going to kiss me. Her heart began to thud as she looked into his tanned face and saw her reflection in his eyes. What greater happiness could there be than this?

My first kiss was just seconds away, inches away. And I couldn’t imagine a more romantic place for it. But that is not what happened. Kit moved past me to the door. ‘Suppose we’d better get back now,’ he said. ‘They’ll be wondering where we’ve got to.’

He’d said he liked me. He thought I was pretty. Was my breath not sweet? Did I look at him the wrong way? Did I say something that put him off? I couldn’t imagine what I had done wrong.

15

When we returned to the shore the others were lounging about on the grass, drying off, but Jimmy was nowhere to be seen.

I didn’t panic, not at first. ‘Anyone seen my brother?’ I asked.

‘He was here for a while, watching us,’ Robert said casually. ‘But then I looked and he’d gone.’

‘Did you see where?’

He looked blank, and the others all shook their heads. Had they not thought to check?

‘I’ll help you find him,’ Kit said. ‘He can’t have gone far. Come on.’

We looked in the boathouse and along the path leading round the edge of the lake, calling Jimmy’s name all the time. I wondered whether he might have followed the path into the woods to find Eli, but then we reached a great iron gate, locked with a padlock and chain.

‘He’d never have got through there,’ Kit said.

We checked the moat and then retraced our steps through the knot garden and through a door in a long red-brick wall into the largest kitchen garden I’ve ever seen. None of the gardeners working there had seen a small boy. By now, I was beginning to worry.

‘He’s probably back in the house with Ma,’ Kit said.

We found Jimmy helping to put away the birthday tea. He turned to us with a guilty look, his mouth full of biscuit. I should have guessed that was where he would be.

My first response was to hug him tightly, my face in his biscuit-smelling hair. My second response was fury. ‘For heaven’s sake, Jimmy. You mustn’t run away like that without telling people,’ I shouted. ‘We had no idea where you were. We were worried stiff.’

My third reaction was to feel guilty; sickeningly, gut-wrenchingly guilty, and ashamed at myself for leaving him alone with the boys. I’d been cross with them, but Jimmy was hardly their responsibility. He was mine.