Katie and I start to move. She’s still clutching her balloon; the raindrops drum on it. I hang back and let her toddle but she’s dawdling, and the others are far ahead of us, tearing up the zigzag slope to the station. They look like people on a helter-skelter. I pick her up and put her in the sling. As we pass a side path, the wind whips up her balloon and snatches it from her hands and she howls. I run down the path after it, chasing it as it bobs away from us before being whipped up into the air again and onto some gorse where it bursts instantly, the yellow rubber caught and flapping on the thorns. Katie’s face erupts in red and she screams, as if she’s going to burst too.

‘Never mind, Katie,’ I say. ‘We’ve got another one. We can blow it up on the train.’

I break into a jog as we reach the zigzag, Katie bawling and arching her back all the way. Jessica trots up behind to overtake us, and Ayo’s parents are a little way behind her, running with the suitcase and buggy.

‘Her balloon popped,’ I say to Jessica as she passes us.

Jessica makes a face of concern. ‘I think I’ve got another one,’ she says, feeling in her bag as she runs. ‘I’ll look on the train. And they’ll have some more.’ She points down to Ayo’s family.

‘We’ve got one,’ I call after her. ‘Katie, you can have a red one. We’ll do it on the train.’

‘Don’t. Want. A red one,’ screams Katie, and she cries as if her heart is broken.

I run halfway up the zigzag, ruining my knees – we weigh what we did when I was nine months pregnant – and then I feel Katie’s foot digging into me and realize she hasn’t got her wellies on. I call to Jessica up ahead and run back to look for them.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ shouts Jessica, but it does. I skitter past Ayo’s family to the bottom of the slope. Nothing there.

‘Want the yellow one,’ sobs Katie. ‘Want the yellow one.’ And I hold her to me tight.

Jessica looks down at me from the top and I wave her on. As I stop and lean forward to rest I see the others running out of sight into the station and then I see the train pulling into the platform, and then out again as I lean against the zigzag wall for breath.

We watch all the carriages with the people inside chug out west round the coast towards London, carrying everyone home. Katie likes trains.