‘Ma was on the gate, and the little babbies sold sweets that she made to the audience. We were making good money.’

He stopped again.

‘And?’ Dandy prompted.

Jack shrugged. Shook the past off his shoulders with one quick movement and then a long stretch. ‘Oh!’ he said wearily. ‘She was just a woman! Da saw Snow and wanted to buy him. Ma wanted to go back to the village with the money we’d made and settle down and Da go back to cartering.

‘They argued about it – night and day. Da wanting Snow with all his heart and promising Ma that he’d make his fortune with the horse. That she’d have a cottage of her own and a comfortable wagon for travelling. That we’d move up in the world. He knew he could do it with Snow.

‘Ma couldn’t win the argument. She didn’t understand the business anyway. So she went to a wise woman and got herself a brew from the old witch and then told Da – pleased as punch – that she was pregnant and that there would be no money for Snow. And that she would not give birth to a child on the road but that they would have to go home.’ Jack smiled, but his dark brown eyes were like cold mud. ‘I can remember her telling him: “I’ve caught you now,”’ he said. ‘She got a belly on herself to trap him.’

‘What did your da do?’ I asked.

‘He left her,’ Jack said briefly. ‘All this happened at Exeter, our home was outside Plymouth. I never knew if she got herself home. Or the babbies. Or what happened to the one she had in her belly. He took the money he had been saving and bought Snow and we moved the next day. He wouldn’t let her in the wagon though she begged and cried and my brothers and sister cried too. He just drove away from her, and when she tried to get up on the step he just pushed her down. She followed us along the road crying and asking him to let her in, but he just drove away. She only kept up for a mile or so, she had the little ones and they couldn’t walk fast. And she was carrying the babby, of course. We heard her calls getting fainter and fainter as she fell further and further behind.’

‘Did you ever see her again?’ I asked, appalled. This calculated cruelty was worse than any of Da’s drunken rages. He would never have left Zima so, whatever she had done. He would never have pushed Dandy and me off the step of the wagon.

‘Never,’ Jack said indifferently. ‘But don’t you forget that if my da can do that to his wife of fifteen years, who bore him four children and had his fifth in her belly, he can certainly do it to you two.’