It took a while to work out exactly what had happened. I went back to the hangar with Shatter and Tyler and D’Arcy. We stood next to the hole in the ground and looked up at the legendary hole in the roof.

‘That’s where Eric. Fell through,’ said Shatter. ‘And that’s where he. Landed.’

‘He fell through the roof and made a hole in the floor,’ said Tyler.

‘So it was Eric who made the legendary hole in the roof,’ said D’Arcy. ‘The roof broke their fall. So little Arthur got away safely.’

‘Though he probably didn’t know where he was,’ I said. ‘Or what had happened. Accidents can make big holes in your memory as well as in roofs.’

A plane flew over. Shatter said it was going to Dublin.

‘Eric’s knightly duty was to take care of Arthur. That was his noble quest.’

‘His leg must have. Got stuck but that. Didn’t stop him,’ said Shatter. ‘He left it behind and went. Looking for. The boy.’

‘That explains why his leg was here,’ said Tyler. ‘But it doesn’t explain how he ended up in Lost Property.’

‘Of course it does!’ I said. ‘Eric takes things literally. He’d lost Arthur. Where’s the most logical place to go looking if you’ve lost something?’

Tyler smiled. ‘Lost Property.’

‘While he was in there looking for Arthur, he slipped into battery-saving mode, and he stayed there. Everyone forgot about him. Like King Arthur asleep in his cave. They say King Arthur will wake up when he’s needed. Well, I needed Eric, so he woke up. He was told to take a message to Arthur, and that’s what he did. Just not exactly the right Arthur. I guess it’s what you would call a happy accident.’

Mum keeps a notebook of all the times you open an eye or move a hand or say a word. The days that you do that get closer and closer together now. Sometimes, you do two or three on the same day. Sometimes I think you must feel like I do on a winter’s morning, when it’s time to get up, but I roll over and shut my eyes for five more minutes.

‘It’s exactly like that,’ says Mum. ‘Except it might take Arty five days, five weeks, five months. We don’t know. And you know what? It doesn’t matter.’ She reached down and wound her fingers in with yours again. ‘I could sit like this forever, as long as I know he’s coming home.’ She had a look on her face that I’d seen somewhere before. But I couldn’t think where, just then.