Ethie got more and more exasperated.

‘WILL you come here?’ she called. ‘You wretched PIG of a horse.’

Furious, she ran after Polly, hoping to head her off and get her in a corner, but time after time the pony kinked her tail and cantered off to the opposite corner, where she stood tossing her mane and looking triumphant. Ethie got hotter and hotter, dressed in her farming gear, heavy breeches, boots and jacket. The sound of the Hilbegut Court clock chiming nine was the last straw. They’d agreed to leave at nine, allowing plenty of time for the pony and cart to reach Monterose station. Polly should have been caught, groomed and harnessed by now.

Ethie could have cried with rage, but she wasn’t good at crying. She’d seen girls at school who cried daintily into lace hankies with hardly a sniff. But if Ethie cried, it was ugly. Loud and snorty and convulsive, so embarrassing that people pushed her away instead of comforting her. So Ethie had turned her tears into anger, stamping about for hours with her face set rigid like a cardboard mask.

As the clock chimed, Kate appeared at the backdoor with her mother, dressed in her new grey and scarlet uniform. She looked good in it, her hair plaited in two thick braids, each with a red ribbon, one over each shoulder, the round grey hat just at the right angle over her expectant face. She was chattering as usual, and she and her mother were standing by the cart waiting.

‘I can’t catch this infernal damned pony,’ Ethie roared. ‘How am I supposed to harness her if she won’t be caught? She won’t. She WILL NOT. I’ve finished with her. I’m not doing it. She’s the most impossible, stupid damned awkward animal in the whole of this farm. It’d be easier to catch a cow than catch THAT.’ Ethie snarled like a dog and flung the halter over the gate. ‘You catch her if you want to go to the station.’

‘ETHELDRA.’ Her mother’s voice boomed like a foghorn when there was a crisis. Even the chickens froze, and the two farm dogs slunk away and lay shivering against a wall. Sally only called her oldest daughter by her full name – Etheldra – if she was extremely displeased. ‘Get a hold of yourself,’ she thundered, ‘your father is ILL, and we have to get Kate to school. Pick up that halter.’

Begrudgingly Ethie did as she was told, her face dark as a Victoria plum.

‘I can catch Polly,’ said Kate.

‘Not in your uniform please,’ objected Sally, her voice back to normal.

‘I won’t get it dirty, Mummy. It’ll be all right.’

Kate took the halter from Ethie’s angry red fist.

‘Don’t worry, Ethie, I’ve caught Polly lots of times,’ she said, picking up a fallen apple from the garden.

When Polly saw Kate coming into the field she turned into a different pony. She trotted over to Kate, making whickering noises in greeting, then she took the apple and stood placidly while Kate slipped the halter over her head.

‘Oh, well done. That’s my girl,’ said Sally, but Ethie refused to look pleased. Her temper had set in for the day, like a weather front. She glowered and muttered as they led Polly over to the cart. The three of them harnessed her up between them, buckling straps and organising the cart in silence. Only Kate talked, nonstop, to the pony, and Polly flicked her ears back to listen. Kate ran her hand down the pony’s sleek forelegs and inspected the neat little hooves.

‘Kate, your UNIFORM,’ protested Sally. ‘It’s already covered in hairs, and you can’t start school smelling like a horse.’

Kate giggled, and Ethie’s frown wavered for a second as she caught her sister’s mischievous eyes.

‘Don’t START,’ said Ethie, rolling her eyes and tutting.

Kate had lifted up Polly’s near foreleg. ‘She’s got a shoe loose.’

‘Oh lor,’ said Sally. ‘How bad is it?’

‘One of the nails is up.’ Kate fiddled with the metal shoe. ‘She ought not to go on it, Mummy.’

‘We can’t bother about it now,’ said Sally, ‘just hope for the best.’ She handed Ethie a watch on a chain. ‘It’s nearly half past nine. You’ll have to drive hard to get there. But be careful, Ethie, don’t get reckless, especially in Monterose with all those motorcars they’ve got now. And just remember, Polly might be frightened by the trains. Get there early and move her away before it arrives.’

Kate turned to say goodbye to her mother, looked searchingly into her eyes, and there was a moment when both of them almost cried.

‘Don’t you worry – Daddy will get better,’ said Sally. ‘You just keep your chin up, Kate.’

‘Will you COME ON, Kate.’ Ethie was up in the cart, the reins in her hand, a tall whip propped in its slot beside her. The sun beat down on her face, her pimples itched annoyingly and her hair stuck to the back of her neck. She felt as if an over-tuned engine was hammering away inside her, and that she, not Polly, was the one being driven.

Impatient to start, Polly set off at a furious trot, the high wheels of the cart bumping over the stony driveway. Kate sat facing backwards, drinking in her last look at Hilbegut Farm, waving as her mother got smaller and smaller. The two stone lions stared sightlessly after them as they sped into the distance towards Monterose.

Freddie was earning lots of money. He was amazed to see the St Christopher’s girls turning up at the station in their grey and scarlet uniforms, arriving in a variety of motorcars and horse-drawn carts. He ran to carry their luggage, mostly brown leather suitcases with names on the lid and hard knobs at each corner which bruised his shins mercilessly. The girls intrigued him. Neat plaits and clean pink faces, so different from the ratty-tatty bunch he saw at school. Their voices were different too. Ringing and confident. Except for a few who looked apprehensive and timid, and one who was sobbing relentlessly.

They were arriving early, so Freddie had plenty of opportunities, even a queue waiting for him. Time after time he carried cases over the cream and brown footbridge with girls who smelled of mothballs and soap, padding beside him in polished shoes. One tiny blonde girl was terrified of walking over the bridge where she could see the gleaming railway below through cracks between the boards. Her distraught mother was trying to drag her.

‘I’ll take her,’ said Freddie, sensing the child’s genuine terror. Remembering the times he had coaxed Annie a step at a time, he used those tactics now, holding the child’s icy little hands and making her look at his eyes as he talked her over the bridge. Then he squatted down and looked into her face. ‘When you come back,’ he said, ‘I’ll be here again to help you, you needn’t be afraid. My name’s Freddie. All right?’ The child nodded gratefully, her big eyes shining under the new oversized hat.

‘You’re a very special young man.’ Her mother, draped in fox furs and an immaculate cream suit, looked at Freddie approvingly. She opened her heavy pigskin handbag, took out a coin that flashed in the sun, and pressed it into his hand. A florin! Two whole shillings. He’d never had one before.

‘Thank you.’

‘My pleasure. And the name is Joan Jarvis.’

The platform was now crowded with children and their parents. The man in the signal box pulled a lever with both hands, and the red and white signal clunked down. A train whistle screeched through the cutting and from the top of the bridge Freddie could see puffs of steam rising from the hills. Charlie pounded over the bridge, a rolled-up green flag in his hand.

‘Be glad to see this lot off,’ he winked at Freddie. ‘Spoilt little madams, ain’t ’em?’

Freddie leaned on the bridge to wait for the train, while he tied the precious florin into his hanky, which was now so full of money it weighed his pocket down like a stone. He relished the anticipation of counting it and hiding it under the floorboards.

Then he heard a terrible sound.

The clatter of hooves on the road, the banging of wheels. And screaming. Everyone seemed to be screaming.