The ground was softer and cooler here, offering my feet a little break. I ran through the field and climbed over another wooden fence into the next field, which held five brown cows and one calf that could not have been very old at all. It was so scrawny and cute. But the big ones weren’t. They stared at me with their huge, widespread eyes like they were trying to force me to go away with the power of their stare. Though I was dying to stare back at these incredible creatures and unpick them with my eyes, I stared off to one side. I had learned about the way animals acted around their babies in one of Mother’s nature books. I knew that mothers might attack if they felt someone was going to approach their baby, so I took a wide berth, steering clear in case they thought I posed a threat to the little calf. I smiled as the calf tried to gambol over to me and one of the adult cows blocked its path.

I dodged a pile of dung and climbed over another wooden gate. I was now only three fields away. Countryside stretched out on all sides of me and I found myself admiring how beautiful and glowing the landscape was; colours so vivid they hurt; colours so vivid they brought happy skips into my heart. This field was another grass field and easier on my feet. I ran faster, flying over the grass, pumping my arms and legs and feeling like the bird-girl in my made-up book.

I reached the end of the field which was edged by another thorn wire fence. I remembered there were photographs of this type of wire in Mother’s Holocaust book. The only reason I’d seen them was because I’d peered over her shoulder when she’d been reading it. There had been some other disturbing photographs too. Ones I didn’t like to remember because they made me think about how much evil there must be in the world.

Taking more time than before, I climbed carefully over the fence and paused for breath on the other side before walking forward. This was another grass field, abandoned, I thought, until I saw it: a bull. Bulls were dangerous. And really strong. I’d read about them. In Spain, it was a tradition to put a bull in a big ring and taunt it with a red cloth to make it mad.

There was no way I was going to try to make this bull mad. It was black and unbelievably huge. Scary but amazing. It had its back to me, which meant I might be able to sneak past it and get to the other side of the field without it noticing me. If I was lucky.