As Daisy had spent the day at school, Laurel’s thoughts flew to the trouble she’d had with other girls. ‘A thing?’

‘Yeah. To do with Scarlett.’ Daisy frowned.

Damn. Gently, Laurel drew Daisy to a halt. ‘Has she been giving you a hard time again, sweetie?’ Inside her mittens, her hands clenched.

‘No.’ Daisy shook her head, her hair snaking out of her hood. They’d stopped close to a bare-branched tree in a garden, through which someone had threaded white lights, and their flickering reflected in Daisy’s large eyes. ‘She and Octavia have ignored me since they came back from being excluded a week and a half ago. They give me the evil eye, sometimes, that’s all.’ She shrugged, as if to indicate that she could live with that.

Relief made Laurel’s chest go all hot. ‘That’s good news,’ she said lightly. She made to pick up the pace again because even with boots and a hat she was beginning to shiver.

Daisy, however, hung back. ‘Scarlett’s got a deep scratch across her top lip.’

Unsure where this was going, Laurel waited, conscious of the wind finding a way through the knit of her mittens. Daisy was gazing down Port Road but she didn’t look as if she was seeing cottages with Christmassy window displays. Rather, she seemed to be wrestling with her thoughts.

Eventually, she went on. ‘Zuzanna sits with this girl in science who lives near Scarlett. She told Zuzanna that the scratch came from Scarlett’s mum’s fingernail because she, like, hit Scarlett for getting in trouble at school. Over me.’

‘Oh dear.’ Laurel’s heart thumped uncomfortably. Feelings of inadequacy loomed as she realised Daisy was looking to her to interpret the situation and probably offer appropriate words of wisdom.

‘Well …’ Daisy drew the sound out as, hands jammed in pockets and shoulders hunched, she switched her gaze to Laurel. ‘Do you think Scarlett bullies other people because her mum bullies her?’

Laurel tried to compartmentalise her emotional reaction on the subject of bullies in order to answer objectively. ‘That does happen,’ she said carefully. ‘But it’s not an excuse. We can’t accept people behaving badly because someone behaves badly to them.’ She paused. Then, because she could see another question in Daisy’s eyes, she added, ‘You’re not to blame for any trouble she’s having with her mum, OK?’

Daisy, although she echoed, ‘OK,’ looked far from convinced.