After about six months, Auntie Ivy was starting to feel better, and rang to ask when we were going to take Joseph back to her. She was completely alone now and obviously missing his presence. I couldn’t get rid of him soon enough. I felt I had failed – my aunt clearly loved the boy and I wondered if he was a different child when he was with her. Maybe it was my fault – perhaps subconsciously he was reacting to my rejection of him. Whatever the reason, I felt a massive sense of relief when Frank took him back to Dorset.

Joseph didn’t know, of course, that we were his real parents – I thought it would be wrong to tell him. He had always thought of Auntie Ivy as his mother, and to all intents and purposes, she was.

Time passed and we settled back into a routine. I thought of Joseph from time to time, but was glad that he was far away. The memory of how he would stare at me with his strange, coal-dark eyes made me shudder. Outwardly, he resembled Frank, but those eyes seemed to harbour something wicked behind them. There appeared to be nothing of his father in his character. It was as though there was something missing, something not connected properly. I hoped that he would outgrow his odd behaviour and surly manner, and develop into a decent human being. But three years later, we were dealt a blow when my aunt became seriously ill suddenly, and we had no choice but to bring the boy back to live with us once more.

I can’t begin to tell you how life changed for us – and not for the better. With age, rather than improving, Joseph’s behaviour grew more erratic and unpleasant. We felt duty-bound to shield him from the world, or more to the point, to protect the world from him. We kept the boy in the house most of the time, only letting him play in the garden when we knew the neighbours were out. I attempted to educate him at home, but he wasn’t receptive to anything I tried to teach him. He was prone to aggressive outbursts, both verbal and physical. He was quite a big lad for his age, and sometimes he would lash out at me without warning, a vicious punch or a sharp kick. I grew fearful of his irrational rages and where they might lead.

He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in inflicting pain and injury, and I discovered several mutilated frogs and mice hidden in his room, poor creatures that had clearly fallen victim to his sadistic tendencies. The worst was the neighbours’ poor cat. I think there may have been more, but I couldn’t be sure. As you can imagine, it was extremely disturbing and I wondered what else he was capable of.