‘Dandy’s useful,’ I said urgently. ‘She catches rabbits, and she can cook well. She can make wooden flowers and withy baskets. She can do card tricks and dance. She’s very very pretty, you could have her in the show. She could take the money at the gate. She only steals from strangers!’

‘Won’t you come on your own to be with my horses?’ Robert Gower said temptingly.

‘Not without Dandy,’ I said. My voice quavered as I saw my chance of getting away from Da and Zima and the filthy wagon and the miserable life fading fast. ‘I can’t go without Dandy! She’s the only person in the whole world that I love! If I didn’t have her, I wouldn’t love anyone! And what would become of me if I didn’t love anyone at all?’

Robert Gower looked at Da. ‘A guinea,’ he said. ‘A guinea for the pony and I’ll do you a favour and take both little sluts off your hands.’

Da sighed with relief. ‘Done,’ he said and spat in his palm and they shook on the deal. ‘They can come to your wagon at once,’ he said. ‘I’m moving on today.’

I watched him shamble back to the wagon. He was not moving on today. He was running away before Robert Gower changed his mind on the deal. He would celebrate getting a guinea for a pony and cheating Robert Gower – a warm man – out of an eleven shilling profit. But I had a feeling that Robert Gower had planned from the start to pay a guinea for the pony and for me. And maybe he knew from the start that he would have to take Dandy too.

I went back to the wagon. Dandy wriggled out, pulling the baby behind her.

‘I want to take the babby,’ she said.

‘No Dandy,’ I said, as if I were very much older than her and very much wiser. ‘We’ve pushed our luck enough.’

We were on our best behaviour for the rest of that week at the Salisbury fair. Dandy went out to the Common outside the town and brought back a meat dinner every day.

‘Where are you getting it from?’ I demanded in an urgent whisper as she spooned out a rabbit stew thick and chunky with meat.

‘There’s a kind gentleman in a big house on the Bath road,’ she said with quiet satisfaction.

I put the bowls out on the table and dropped the horn-handled spoons with a clatter.

‘What d’you have to do for it?’ I asked anxiously.