Kenny carried Tina on to the bus while I paid our fares. Kenny liked to sit upstairs at the front of the bus. He used to pretend to drive it, stretching his arms out like he was holding the big steering wheel and making brrrrum‑brrrrum bus noises. But he’d stopped doing that now. Or at least he’d stopped doing it on the outside. I think he still drove the bus in his mind, guiding it round the corners and slamming on the brakes if an old lady was at a zebra crossing.

Tina sat in between us, her tongue dangling out of her mouth. She liked an adventure even more than Kenny. My dad had said we had to keep her on the lead when we got off the bus, otherwise she’d be eating lamb chops while they were still part of the lamb. Sometimes Tina looked out of the window and sometimes she looked at Kenny. When she looked at Kenny, you knew that all she was thinking was the doggy version of “I love this”. And maybe, “I love you”.

It was meant to be spring, and when we started out it was like any other normal day – a bit dreary and grey, but not that bad. There was even the odd flash of blue in between the clouds. But the sky looked heavier and angrier every time I looked out of the window. The snow began to fall as the third of our three buses climbed up onto the moors.

“Snowing!” Kenny said, his eyes wide with wonder.

“Don’t get excited,” I said. “It won’t set. It never does.”

But I was wrong.

First the snow was really just rain with big ideas, melting the second it hit the windows of the bus. Then it was wet flakes that turned to slush on the road. And then the snowflakes became smaller and blew around in the wind. But when the snow landed on the fields beyond the stone walls, it stayed.

We were sat on the three buses for two and a half hours in total. It sounds boring, but it wasn’t, not really. There was always something new to look at, and Kenny being happy made me feel happy, too. We ate the biscuits and drank half the cola. A few people chatted to us and asked where we were going. Old ladies, mainly, in big coats and hats. It was mostly me that replied. Kenny was shy. When we were kids, sometimes other kids would shout names at him, and so that made him wary. But old people were normally nice.

One lady had a dog – a fluffy white girl dog with a tartan coat and a pink ribbon. Tina was sometimes grumpy with other dogs, and she’d have a go at any that were bigger than her. But she got on OK with this fluffy one, and they sniffed noses.