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confidence?’ Tamlyn goaded me from his perch so high on the roof. ‘This is a chance to see the world like one of your father’s hawks.’
    â€˜Go on, Silvermay. I would, if I was a little stronger,’ said Nerigold.
    Outnumbered! Even Lucien was eyeing me with a look that said coward !
    I raised one foot onto the first rung and started to climb. ‘This is crazy,’ I said, but was stifling giggles all the same. Those giggles quickly died away when I reached the top of the ladder and dared to look down. Then it was more a scream I had to kill in my throat.
    â€˜Here, take my hand,’ said Tamlyn, who was waiting for me.
    I was glad of his steadying grip for that last step onto the roof, and then he was guiding me to a second ladder laid directly onto the thatch, which would take us all the way to the top. He sent me up ahead of him, saying, ‘Don’t worry. If you slip, I’ll catch you. This is high enough. Now, turn slowly and sit down between the rungs.’
    Turn , sit . Easy words to say.
    He offered his hands again for me to brace against and finally I found myself perched near the ridge of the roof, looking over his head at the view.
    â€˜Oh,’ I gasped. For a few moments, that was allI could say. Then, ‘It’s amazing. Everything looks so different. Look, there’s my house and the inn. And I can just make out the roofs of Cricklethorn,’ I cried, pointing. ‘It’s like being on top of the world.’
    The fields stretching out to the edge of the wood were what delighted me the most. Side by side, the crops nearing harvest formed a patchwork of green and gold as though a great blanket had been thrown over the ground.
    â€˜You know why birds like to fly now,’ Tamlyn said. ‘Would you like to be one, Silvermay?’
    â€˜If I could be a hawk or a falcon, yes; but I’ve seen what they do to pigeons. Don’t think I want to be one of those.’
    â€˜Very sensible,’ he replied, mocking me, and I didn’t need to see his face to know he was grinning.
    The fear had left me, replaced by an exhilaration I’d rarely known. The first time a hawk returned to my arm had brought the same feeling. And once, when I was six or seven, I’d watched all afternoon for my father to appear on the road after one of his trips to Vonne. He’d been so pleased to find me waiting and had swept me up into his arms. I was his special one. That’s how I felt on the roof with Tamlyn that day: singled out and special. It was me alone that he’d enticed up the ladders to share these sights with him.
    I’d felt close to him before, when we’d spoken of families outside my house, but this was in broad daylight and he seemed even closer. I only had to reach out my hand to touch his shoulder. I didn’t, of course. It would have been very wrong and I knew it. Besides, Nerigold was watching happily from below, with little Lucien in her arms and no idea what treachery lay in my heart. And if that wasn’t enough, Mrs Nettlefield had joined her to stare up at me. In fact, many eyes were watching me from all over the village by now, and, even halfway to the clouds as I was, I could pick out the elders with their arms folded and backbones stiff as broom handles. It would be all over Haywode by suppertime that Silvermay Hawker had climbed the Hollyoaks’ roof like a man, showing off her legs again to anyone who cared to look.
    I wanted to poke my tongue out at them all. I’d defy the elders every day if it made me feel like this, but it was time to climb down into a life that would seem rather dull after today.
    Hespa was waiting at the bottom of the ladder. ‘Birdie’s calling for you and, if I were you, I’d wipe that look off my face before she asks what put it there.’
    Â 
    â€˜You’re in love with him,’ said Hespa when I met her after supper on that same wonderful day.
    We used to