She stops kicking with her feet and looks out of the window instead. The seatbelt is tight across her shoulder, digging into her neck a bit. She can feel the shiny clip in her hair too, hard against her scalp. None of the scenery outside the window is familiar. She doesn’t know where they are, and she can’t actually remember the name of the place they’re going to. All she knows is, they are going to fetch her cousin – a cousin that Prin has never even met before – who is going to come and stay with them for a bit. There was a whole other bit about today and what it is about; she overheard Mum and Daddy talking about it in the kitchen when she was supposed to be in bed. Where else should she go? Mum was saying and, I just think it’s all such a mess, Daddy said. But then Daddy caught Prin, creeping in the hallway, and she ran back up to her room, hands and feet like a monkey on the stairs, half wanting to giggle and half wanting to scream, until she could get to her bedroom and slam the door tight. In the end, Daddy didn’t come in, but she couldn’t hear any more of what they were saying either.

Prin likes the idea of having a cousin come to stay. Mum has told her that the cousin is quite a bit younger than Prin, only seven, which Prin is pleased about because it means she’ll be able to decide what games they will play or whose turn it will be to go first (it will be Prin’s). At school, the other girls don’t tend to listen much to what Prin has to say. They pick on her and tell her she’s stuck up, but Daddy has said it’s because they are jealous, because Prin lives in a big house and always has nice things.

The car comes bumping to a halt. ‘All right,’ Daddy says. ‘Here we are!’ He checks his watch – the big shiny watch that he sometimes lets Prin play with – and says that they have arrived right on time. Daddy cares a lot about being on time; he gets snappy on school days if they are ever running late.

They have arrived at someone’s house. Prin doesn’t recognize it. It doesn’t belong to anyone she knows. It’s quite a big house, but you can tell just by looking that it isn’t as nice a house as Prin’s. Mum and Daddy are undoing their seatbelts, so Prin undoes hers too. She opens the car door and slides out, careful that the puffy skirt of her dress doesn’t catch. The shoes pinch again as her feet touch the ground, but when Mum comes round the car to check on her, she just smiles up at her and doesn’t show it.