I remember. Mayor Anderson gathered up all our old folk that winter, and anyone with babies. She put them up in the town hall and kept a fire going the whole time, even at night. Got the Parker brothers to make everyone a hot meal every day, and porridge in the mornings. Grandad Cruise loved it. Cuddling babies and singing songs all day – what more could you want? he said.

Must’ve been hard to be a wanderer that winter.

“What was he like, your grandad?” I said.

“He was the best grandad ever.” Una grinned. “Taught me how to ear-wiggle. And he used to make us poached eggs with wood garlic whenever we could get our hands on eggs. And when Dad went night-hunting he used to stay with me the whole time playing card games – twenty-one or gin rummy. I used to get so tired the cards all dropped out of my hands.”

My heart squeezed in my chest. For Una. For her grandad. But most of all it squeezed for Grandad Cruise. He survived that winter, but he died all the same a few months after.

“My grandad died too,” I said. “Last year.”

“He did?”

“Yeah.”

“Of the cold?”

I shook my head. “His heart. It got worse and worse and worse till he wasn’t really properly Grandad Cruise any more. He used to take us fishing, before he got sick. Made us nets with old curtains and sticks. But that all stopped when he got ill, and then he died, and there was no more Grandad Cruise at all.”

Una stuck her hands in her pocket. Fiddled with the bottle.

“They’re still here in a way, though, aren’t they? In our minds.” She patted the top of her head. “In our memories. If we remember them, they’re not completely gone. That’s what I think.”

She was right. Grandad Cruise wasn’t completely gone. Not while I still remembered him.

“Have you practised your ear wiggling?” she said.

“A bit.” I tried a wiggle. “Still can’t do it, though.”

Una looked back, past the hawthorn, towards the forest.

“D’you mind,” she said, “if we save your second lesson for another day? It’s my dad. He’s so bad. I don’t want to leave him for long.”

“Course,” I said. “You should go, take him the antibiotics.”

“Will you come again? Tomorrow maybe?”

I nodded. “Tomorrow. After school. I’ll bring more food, if I can.”

Food?

The tea-towel bundle.

I had a whole load of scones with me – right now.

I held them out. “You can have these too,” I said. “Scones. I nearly forgot.”

“Are you sure?”

“Course.”

I didn’t need them.

Una scooped up the bundle in both arms. “You really are our guardian angel, Maggie.”

She slipped through the hedge, out of Fennis Wick. I peered after her, through the thorny, berried branches. She walked across the grass and merged into the forest.