And then there is a moment where she thinks Daddy still won’t keep his promise, but then Mum lays a hand on his arm and says, maybe it would be a nice thing to do, and they have nothing they have to get straight back for, do they? So then Daddy catches Prin’s eye in the mirror above his head and smiles at her and Prin grins back. She turns towards her cousin who is all sort of squashed down in her seat in the corner of the car, as if she’s trying to squash herself away, and asks her, ‘You like ice cream, don’t you?’ And when her cousin answers, ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Prin feels so pleased that she made sure Daddy stuck to his word.

They stop at the ice-cream shop not far from home. It’s the one Daddy always takes her to after swimming: she gets two scoops if she has managed twenty lengths, and three scoops if she manages fifty. Prin never manages fifty, not after that one time when she did so much swimming, Daddy shouting from the sidelines, that she felt too sick to eat anything afterwards, but Daddy got her three scoops anyway, and made her finish it all.

She wonders whether she’ll be allowed three scoops today, even though she hasn’t been swimming. She skips a bit as they head from where Daddy has parked the car to the shiny glass doors of the restaurant. Inside, there are bright metal chairs and tables; Prin can see them through the tall windows. She heaves open the door, impatiently waiting for Mum and Daddy and her new cousin to catch up. She already knows what flavours she wants. Chocolate, caramel and cookie dough. She’s almost sure now that she’ll be allowed all three.

Her cousin looks a bit more cheerful now. Not so pale. After all, she likes ice cream too. She stands there in her dress, propping the door open. It’s boiling hot outside, but lovely inside, in the cool.

The man on the ice-cream counter recognizes Prin. ‘That’s a fancy dress,’ he says, and Prin does a turn for him. Normally he only sees her with wet hair after swimming, so she’s pleased he gets to see how nice she looks all dressed up.

‘And who’s this?’ he says, as Prin’s cousin comes up. Prin notices that her cousin is holding her mum’s hand, and she feels a strange stabbing sort of feeling go through her. She doesn’t like seeing it, though it’s hard to say why since, after all, she doesn’t much like holding Mum’s hand herself. She just doesn’t think anybody else should be allowed to.

Prin’s little cousin looks up at the man in his white paper cap, standing over all the ice cream on display.

‘I’m Jane,’ she says, in reply to his question.