But now Jane is crying and making a noise, and Prin knows Daddy will be annoyed all over again if he has to come in. Daddy can’t bear crying, it makes him so angry. He once smacked Prin when she went wailing on and on, unable to stop crying when the school gerbil died. Daddy feels best when everything is fine, and that’s why it’s always best to be fine, if you can.

Prin pushes back her covers and slips out of bed and goes over to her cousin. She puts her hands on Jane’s shoulders and gives her a shake.

‘Wake up!’ she says. ‘Are you having a nightmare?’

But Jane isn’t asleep, she realizes. She is awake, and still crying.

Prin lets go of her. ‘What’s the matter?’ she says. ‘What is it?’

But Jane just crunches herself up tighter in the bed and goes on letting out big teary noises.

‘You shouldn’t cry like that,’ Prin says. ‘Crying is what makes it hurt, don’t you see?’ She climbs onto the bed beside her. It’s a tiny bed really, there’s hardly any room. ‘Daddy says, if it didn’t hurt, you wouldn’t cry. So if you don’t cry, then it won’t hurt!’

But now Jane is saying something. Prin has to lean right in to her to make it out. When she does, she remembers with a jolt the time she was invited over for a sleepover, and in the beginning she was having such fun with the pizza and the films and the games they played, but then it was an hour, two hours after Prin’s bedtime and she didn’t know the house or the adults in it and she found herself getting panicked, hysterical, crying out what Jane is crying out now.

‘I want my mummy! I want to go home!’

Prin feels very bad for her cousin then. Very sorry and sad for her. Prin wants to help, she really does.

She goes to the desk, where they left the zoetrope the other day, and switches on the desk lamp so that they can see properly. She removes the cylinder of card with the running horse on it and finds another one, one she knows that Jane will like, the one with the couple dancing. She fits it inside, lining up the slits. She carries it back over to Jane in the bed.

Jane is sitting up now, her thin body jolting with tearful hiccups. Prin tells her to shove over, so she can get in beside her properly. She sits next to her cousin, leaning back against the pillows, and rests the zoetrope on her bent knees. They can see in the light from the desk. Inside the zoetrope, there is a couple dancing

‘Look,’ Prin says. ‘Can you see them in there?’