Odette crouched in a nest of leaves, her arms tucked tightly around her knees.

She had to be quiet. Very quiet, because the boys were letting her play their game for the first time. Well, she had told the boys she was going to play and she thought they were going to laugh and tell her to go away, but they didn’t. They said OK, told her she could play, and didn’t even mind when she told them she was going to be the hider instead of the seeker. Except it wasn’t hide-and-seek – hide-and-seek was for babies – it was a better game called sardines. One person hid and the others had to count to fifty without looking. Then they all had to come and find her, on their own, and the first one to find her hid in her hiding place too. They hid together, squeezed in tight like baby mice. And then the next and the next, until only one person was still looking and then that person was the loser. But if she could stay hidden until they all gave up, then she would be the winner.

The boys had told her to go into the woods to hide and then they would try to find her.

And she had such a good hiding place that she didn’t think they would find her even if they looked for an hour. Even if they looked until it got to bedtime. She was in a little dip, a hollowed-out bit of the ground in the woods where there was a big tree trunk that had fallen over. Because she was small – and quite bendy – she had been able to squeeze up inside a bit of the trunk where it was hollow in the middle and make a little nest for herself among the crunchy leaves and pine needles, like a hamster or something. It was hard to see out because there was a bush in the way, but she could just about make out the little path and the clearing where her mum said she wasn’t allowed to go.

She was good at hiding. She could hide all day. She would show them that she was big enough to play their games, that she could join in just like them and be a big girl. That she could even win their games if she wanted to.