They are both sitting on the gritty roof, but they could be floating in mid-air. This could be a magic carpet ride they are on. Jane only has to look up, and then she can see whatever she wants. Forget her nightmare and the pictures in her head. There are far better pictures in the sky.

‘What do you see?’ she asks Jane again.

Jane draws in a shuddery breath. She puts her hands down from her eyes and looks up. ‘I see a man. And a woman,’ she says.

‘Like in the zoetrope!’ says Prin.

And Jane says: ‘Yes.’

‘Well, what are they doing?’ Prin asks next. ‘Dancing?’

Jane shakes her head. ‘No. Not dancing.’

Prin kneels up on the flat of the roof. If she tilts her head back, it makes her dizzy. She opens her mouth to the cool night air. ‘I can see horses,’ she tells her cousin. ‘Dozens of horses.’

Now Jane gets up on her knees too. ‘They want me to go to them,’ she says.

‘Who?’ says Prin.

‘The handsome daddy and the beautiful mummy. The ones there, in the sky.’

Prin looks across at her cousin. Jane is actually standing right up now, and she isn’t that far from the edge of the roof. ‘Do they?’ Prin says slowly. ‘How do you mean?’

‘You said … if I imagine hard enough, it’s true. Like the flying …’ says Jane. ‘On the beach. With our wings.’

‘That’s right. You can imagine,’ Prin says. ‘Anything you want. Anything at all, you can make it real.’ She’s just about forgiven her cousin for the hammer – and the zoetrope.

Jane holds out her arms. ‘I can reach them,’ she says. ‘I really think I can reach.’

She looks so funny to Prin, balanced up there. In one part of Prin’s mind, she knows very well what could happen. The part that pictures that is the hard, mean part of her, the one that remembers the feeling in her stomach as Daddy carried her away from the shed, Jane crying in Mum’s arms behind them.

And then, with another part of her mind, it all feels so true. The stars, the dancing couple, the dream of flying, the magic of it all. And maybe it really can happen, the flying, if she just imagines, maybe if they both imagine really hard …

When she gets to her own feet, Prin finds she is standing just behind Jane. Her hand comes to rest on her cousin’s elbow. Jane’s skin is soft and dry and warm. The night feels so magic. If she could just have a tiny lift … she really does look as if she can fly. And there are parents waiting for her, up there in the sky, a mum and a dad that Jane can have for her own …

Prin thinks this, but only thinks it, she’s sure. She’s sure the thought never entered her hand …