I said quickly, “Ooooh, that would be nice, but I have to, erm, prepare myself for Dother Hall. Check my tights and so on.”

“Yes, yes, of course, you must follow your star. I understand. Do you like my hat? It’s made entirely from our foraging.”

I said, “Gosh, yes, it’s . . . spiffing. I’m just going to unpack. Toodle-pips for nowsies.”

Toodle-pips?

I had turned into Mary Poppins. I don’t know why the Dobbinses have that effect on me, but they do. I always feel like doing a little tap routine when I see them or getting a mouth organ out. I don’t know why.

They are nice, though, even if they are mad. It’s nice to have someone so glad to see you. When I phoned Mum to tell her I’d got here last night, she didn’t even know I’d gone back to college. I said, “But didn’t you think it was odd that I didn’t say anything? Or eat anything?”

She said, “Oh no, I just thought you were in one of your quiet moods.”

The Dobbinses were not going to be back until teatime because they were going to play table tennis in Pocklington after church.

I unpacked in my old familiar squirrel room, with its window looking out over the back woods. So many memories there. The last one of Cain leaving me a note with a knife pinning it to the old oak tree.

Huh.

Well, I will not be giving the Dark Rusty Black Crow of Heckmondwhite the oxygen of publicity. Note or no note.

He needn’t think that writing a bit of a poem makes up for all those other things that I will never, ever be thinking about.

The nose-licking incident and the rubbing-corker thing and the other terrible, terrible thing. That I will never, ever mention, even to myself.

I had all my “theatrical” stuff in my special theatrical bag. Leggings, black leotard, dance shoes. So I’m ready for whatever Blaise Fox or Monty or the other teachers have to throw at me theatrical wise.

I’ve stowed my private Darkly Demanding Damson Diary in a secret panel next to my squirrel bed. There are many things in it that I would prefer no one to see.

I had a hot chocolate and a mooch around downstairs. It looks like the lunatic twins have made a tortoise home for Micky and Dicky behind the sofa.

It can’t be made out of a cabbage, can it?

Yes, it is.

By eleven, the hail had eased off so I got togged up again to look around the village and see if I could find the owlets. Ruby’s curtains in the attic were still closed so she must have been having a little lie-in.

I walked down the back path to the barn. There were no signs of life in there, just the old nest where the owlets had been hatched. How sad. I shut the door and walked on.

The sheep shied away from me when I got to the back field. If I didn’t know for a fact that they are very, very stupid, I would think that they remember me singing “The hills are alive with the sound of music” to them last term.