Hugo sprang up and protested when Rosie got close. ‘You peeked!’

‘So what?’ Rosie teased. ‘What are you gonna do about it, titch?’

‘You’re ugly!’ Hugo shouted, before scrambling up the side of the ditch. ‘And you smell like horse bum.’

Rosie growled dramatically. ‘Oh, you’re gonna get it now.’

Hugo shrieked with delight as he pushed through a hedge and began running up a dirt track. When Rosie got through the hedge – a task far more difficult for a burly thirteen year old than for a boy of six – she was alarmed to see Hugo’s little legs running at full pelt up a steep path covered with rocks.

‘You be careful,’ Rosie said. ‘Come back and play on the grass.’

‘Can’t get me,’ was Hugo’s response.

Rosie didn’t fancy bashing her knee on a rock, so she kept her pace down to a brisk walk. Hugo stopped running and looked back with his hands on his hips.

‘Come on, Rosie, you’re not playing properly.’

Hugo cut off the path and dived behind a clump of bushes. A second later he screamed out, ‘OWWWWW!’

Rosie envisaged grazed skin and streaks of blood and ran desperately towards Hugo. But by the time she’d made ten metres she heard Hugo say, ‘What are you hiding up here for?’ in a voice that showed no sign of distress.

Rosie rounded the bushes and saw that Hugo had turned the corner and tripped over her brother’s outstretched legs. Paul was sitting against the trunk of a small tree, with his sketchbook and the wooden case containing his drawing pens and inks on the grass at his side.

‘Are you OK?’ Rosie asked brightly, when she saw her brother. ‘What are you doing?’

Paul wiggled his sketchpad. ‘Flower arranging,’ he tutted.

Rosie wouldn’t usually have stood any lip from her brother, but he’d taken their father’s death hard and had been even quieter than usual in the week since.

‘What are you drawing?’ Hugo asked.

‘Nothing,’ Paul said.

Hugo stepped closer to Paul. ‘Please show me,’ he begged.

Paul clutched the pad close to his chest, but Hugo made a grab and Paul shoved him away angrily. ‘It’s private.’

Hugo tumbled back three steps before falling hard on his bum.

‘Careful, moron,’ Rosie yelled. ‘He’s only six.’

Hugo stood up with his bottom lip rolled out like he was going to cry.

‘I didn’t ask you to come barging over here,’ Paul said indignantly. ‘I just want to be on my own.’

‘I just asked to see your picture,’ Hugo said.