‘And that was that. At first I rather enjoyed it, you know. Jack showed me all the things he has shown you, and more.’ There was an intensity, a longing, in her gaze that troubled Tom for a moment; and then it passed. ‘I started learning about the plants and things in the woods. I didn’t know about the Captive, of course, and Kit couldn’t tell. I started to be able to make draughts, and to send myself to places with a quicker recovery. It felt like one long day, sometimes, and then at other times like months. One morning, I remember, after Jack had taken me to the shores of Troy, I suddenly had an image in my mind, of my mother. And then I remembered her, and how worried she would be. I tried to leave.’

‘Your parents? John Temple? Did they not come looking for you?’

‘Jack put a glamour on me. I didn’t know until a policeman came up the drive. I saw him get off his bicycle. I’m not sure I realised how much time had passed, because Jack had been showing me things. He was quite handsome, as policemen go, and I remember thinking he looked more like a matinee idol than a sergeant. He pushed his bicycle across the bridge and left it leaning against the post. He banged on the door, and as nobody answered immediately, I went down. I stood right in front of him, and said, ‘What can I do for you?’ I knew he was looking for me. But he couldn’t see me. He called up the stairs, and eventually Jack appeared, ignoring me, and told the policeman he hadn’t seen anything.

‘I was furious after that, darling. And it was worse when a day or two later I was walking in the fields, trying to find a way out, and I saw John Temple coming along. He looked distracted. He was holding his book of poems – the one he’d read to me out of. And I called to him and shouted over the hedge, but I could not get near him. Once I thought he stopped, puzzled, as if he’d heard something in his innermost heart. And I knew then that he did really love me, because he had heard me, distant though I was.’

She took her silver locket off her neck and opened it. Inside was not a lock of hair, as Tom had been expecting, or a portrait, but a folded piece of paper. Zita flattened it out carefully and showed it to him.

It was an obituary from The Times, dated January 1982. It was yellowing and printed in close type. It had been very neatly clipped.