Jo grew up here in the town of Lostwithiel. Whenever we visit her parents, our two children repeat what they’ve heard. Lost within the hills, they say, is where we’re going.

A small town in the hills, either side of a tidal river. The river is sometimes just a few metres across, sometimes much wider. It has a bridge that is more than 700 years old. At low tide, the river flows through four of the six arches. At high tide, it flows through five. Two or three times a year, or when it floods, the river flows through all six arches. Last year, it flowed right over the bridge and into the riverside houses.

We come here from London in the holidays and spend a few nights with Jo’s parents, and in summer months the children play in the river, as they do this hot afternoon. It’s mid-tide, the river flowing through four and a half arches. The rough sandy-stone bottom of the fifth arch is only half submerged, and our children walk along the dry part under the bridge.

I can’t see them now but they’re old enough, seven and ten, to play together on their own for a minute. Bella and Ben, their brown curls always tangled. I exhale and lay back on the grassy bank, eyes closed, sun warm on my face. Water laps softly at the rivershore, birds and children do their chattering, small stones dig into my back.

It was just a few seconds I think, as I sit up, that I’d dozed, realising that I must have been dreaming the leeches sucking blood out my legs. I brush my hands over my legs at nothing there. And realise a silence, only the soft sound of the water this still day. I stand up and jump down the bank, following the way the children went a moment or so ago. There’s only a thin strip of sand now and my feet get wet as I bend my way through the fifth arch. But I see no children on this other side of the bridge either, just the river, with its little mud-stone beaches. I shout their names, and the sound seems to ripple the water. I look back through the arch at the grassy bank, at nobody there either. I walk a little further upriver and shout again. I call Jo’s phone in what I now suspect is still a dream, hearing my voice say things like I can’t find the children, they went under the bridge and they’re gone. I look up at the hills that rise from either side of the river and wonder if they’re getting lost within them. I look ahead at the trees that gather more thickly further upriver until they become forest. I look into the water and see no signs, no splashes or body parts, not even a ripple now—nothing but a duck with a fish in its beak, a fish too large for it to eat.

The tide is high now. The river runs fully through all five arches.

I climb up the bank and look into the river from there. Still nothing. The water is clear today; they’d be visible even if they were underwater. I start walking along the bank, toward the trees. Until now I have felt too calm, as though nothing is real. Now I feel a flutter of something between panic and sorrow, something between searching frantically screaming their names and sitting on the ground to sob. I keep it all at bay and continue walking, calling for them every ten seconds or so. I hear Jo’s shouts now as she has found her way to the river, and I shout back at her. People start gathering round, and I run back to her. Russell is among them, a retired policeman who lives on the corner of Jo’s parents’ street. Small town busybody, I’m thinking, as he stands there with his hands in his blue jeans pockets. And sure enough, here’s old farmer Jago walking over, has to be in on everything, and suddenly I hate this parochial place. Luckily Jo is here to tell them calmly how we’ve lost our children—they’ve probably just got caught up in their game, she adds. Has anyone seen them: two messy brown-haired children wearing just shorts? A woman with her dog offers to walk up the back streets to look for them, and Russell and Jago offer to walk further downriver, taking any opportunity for a gossip. We decide to call the police in five minutes if there’s no sign.

Jo and I continue again upriver, where we sense they’d have wanted to go, where there’s the woods and a little clearing to the left up ahead, where a massive old tree is fallen, its roots exposed. They climbed all over that tree last summer, grazing their knees on its growling bark. They’re not climbing on it now. There’s just the ivy growing over it, a single bee crawling, looking tired. We stand there for a moment, watching the bee. 

A slight breeze sends a chill through me, setting me off again towards the thicker trees, the beginning of the forest, Jo following close behind. As I enter the shadows a hint of smoke catches in my nose. D’you smell that, Jo asks, and we’re pushing through the undergrowth, the smell growing into our lungs as brambles scratch our legs and arms—even Jo’s cheek has gained a neat red line when I glance back at her, with a smudge of blood across her nose. We press on, stamping down the brambles, hacking against them with branch-sticks before we see another clearing in the shade, an area of sunlight. We barge on toward the light, until we burst out into it.

They are here, our two children, sat next to a small fire, eating fish. They don’t see us straight away. The noise of the fire and their eating of fish keep their attention away from our entrance on the other side of the clearing. We stand there for a second, staring. We look around, and it’s just them, alone, with a side of trout each on a white dinner plate, picking at it awkwardly with a fork and putting flakes into their mouths. On the fire is a wire mesh on which the trout must have cooked. On the floor is a silver spatula that must have been used to lift the trout off onto the dinner plates. Astonished and suddenly furious, I shout at them what on earth are they doing, why did they leave the river, why didn’t they tell me where they were going.

A woman wearing a deep brown hijab appears, and it is then I see a tent edging half in and out the trees. She’s staying in the tent, I guess, or living in it. She looks at us, says hello. What’s she doing here? We’ve got to get the children back to the river, I tell her, everyone is looking for them. Come on, I say to Jo, grabbing one of each child’s hands and pulling them away, back into the trees, looking back and saying thank you, I guess for the fish.

As we approach the river again we see Russell and Jago and the dog-walking woman are gathered back together, cheering as they see the children with us. They got lost in the woods, we explain. Now they are found. The river is still high, flowing through the five arches.

Mum, our youngest starts, looking up at me as we walk back up the hill to Jo’s parents’ house, still in a daze. Mama, she says, looking at Jo: I didn’t want the fish to start with, but actually it was tasty. Jo asks her again what happened, and this time Bella tells us they’d just gone a little way into the trees by themselves where they were playing with the piskies, and then they were lost. The way they thought went back to the river was just more and more trees. Then the woman had come, and showed them the way to where the sweet berries grow. She’d taken their hands and the children followed her because they didn’t know what other way to go. And the woman led them in further, until she sat them down next to the fire and put the fish on the fire and one minute later gave them the fish.

You should never go off with strangers, you know that, Jo says to them. They tell us she isn’t a stranger, we’ve seen her before. I don’t believe them, but I’m glad they’re found and we’re coming to Jo’s parents’ house, so I leave it.

Later, Jo tells me she wants to take some food to the woman, see if she needs anything. I tell her she should stay away. But Jo goes anyway, taking apples, carrots and hazelnuts. I run after her to catch up, leaving the children with Jo’s parents, shouting back that we won’t be long. Jo takes my hand and we walk down the hill together, over the bridge with the river fallen to four arches, and retrace the way through the trees. The shadows are longer now. As we get to the clearing, we hear voices and slow down. We peer through the trees, and see more than the woman: there’s about six adults in the shadows, and three children. Jo steps out, offering the food. I creep behind her. The woman sees us and smiles, starts thanking us and offering a place around the fire, and as we stand there hesitating about getting back to our children we’re amazed to see Russell walk in another way through the trees.

What are you doing here, Jo and Russell ask each other the same. Jo says we brought food; Russell says he’s been coming from time to time, since the group arrived. He asks us to please never breathe a word. Not even to Jo’s parents, because just one person will tell just one person until the wrong person knows. We promise, and he sits us down. He tells us slowly now, about how he’s part of a network stretching to the coast, consisting of a bunch of nosy old busybodies who pretend to be a bunch of nosy old busybodies but who secretly assist people who come to shore. This group in the trees had come halfway upriver one night, on a small fishing boat on a high spring tide. Russell’s friends had loaned them four canoes to help them travel further upriver. They paddled under the bridge of a crescent moon, when the river flowed through all six arches. They’re living here in the woods, for now.

Old farmer Jago is in on it too, he tells us as the sun sparkles low in the leaves. He shows us the two wooden huts they’re building for the coming winter. But he’s a right-wing anti-immigrant GB News watcher, I say, remembering the winter evening we’d seen it flickering through his open curtains. I wonder now if that’s part of his disguise.

These people from afar, they give us fish by their fire and show us the real meaning of Lostwithiel. It doesn’t mean lost within the hills, not at all. It derives from the old Cornish word Lostgwydeyel, so they heard. Lostgwydeyel means the place at the tail of the woodland. The woodland has a tail, because it is a living being. Up here in the woods, is the heart.