They were not companions. Dandy would always seek my company for choice. On the road once more we fell back into the casual companionship of our childhood. When I drove she sat beside me, leaning back against my shoulder. When she drove I would deal imaginary hands of cards on the driving seat, stacking hands with all hearts, dealing off the bottom, dealing off the top, dealing out of the middle.

‘Did ye see that, Dandy?’ I would ask her over and over. Her eyes were sharp enough but I often fooled her.

When she went poaching she would bring me back a little trophy – a blue feather shed by a jay, a single early white violet. When I rode Sea and she was driving I would sometimes rein him in to go alongside the wagon, glancing at her from time to time, watching her lazy absorption in her private dreams.

‘What are you thinking of, Dandy?’ I asked her once and she smiled at me her sweet feckless smile.

‘Same as you,’ she said, nodding at the thick muddy road and the leaden wintry sky. ‘Of a warm hearth and a good meal which has been caught and cooked by someone else.’

When we settled for the night and Katie was out of the way, rolled up tight in blankets in her bunk, Dandy would hand me her comb without speaking and I would comb and braid her hair as I had done since we were the smallest of chavvies. Then sometimes, if I was not feeling prickly and untouchable, I would let her tackle the tangles in mine, comb it smooth and plait it for the night.

Then I would kiss her good-night as she lay in her bunk. Her skin smelled musky: the smell of female sweat and warmth, hay and cheap perfume. The beloved familiar smell of my sister.

She and Jack were not friends. When Jack wanted company, wanted to walk alongside someone on the road, wanted someone beside him on the driving seat, he would crane his neck around the side of his wagon and whistle, ‘Hey! Merry!’

When he rode Snow I was often riding Sea and we sometimes left the road for a canter across the fields or a gallop to the top of a hill. If I was walking behind the wagons he would fall into step beside me and we would chat – idly, easily. He would tell me about the villages and towns he had worked, I would tell him about breaking horses, cheating gulls and sharping cards. He learned to leave me alone when I shook my head and strayed away from the line of wagons. He learned to keep his hands out of my wind-blown curls and his arm from around my shoulders.

‘Don’t pull me about,’ I said irritably, one evening when we were watering the horses down by a stream and he had put a careless hand around my waist.