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right; it was. Eden Court was a tall, grey, forbidding place with turrets and battlements that made it seem like a castle. It sat two miles west of our village, where its jagged roofline was just visible from the road. A very rich, slightly mad family had once lived there. Nowadays it stood empty. The driveway was choked with weeds and the gates were always locked.
    ‘Can’t think why anyone would want to live there,’ I said. ‘It gives me the shivers.’
    ‘Well, he’s hired servants to make it nice again. They’ve been scrubbing floors like mad and airing out all the rooms, ready for when he arrives,’ Mercy said, then added, ‘So I’ve heard,’ which meant her mam had told her, so it was bound to be true.
    I caught sight of my own mam, then. She stood nearer the fire than us. It was easy to pick her out in the crowd. No other grown-up had hair like hers – a mass of pale blonde curls that stood out from her head. Peg’s hair was the same. And in the glow of the bonfire, it blazed with light.
    Like a comet’s tail.
    The thought unnerved me: it didn’t seem right to link Mam with that ominous-looking thing in the sky. So I was glad when Mercy talked of prettiness instead. For that’s what Mam was – pretty – though that description didn’t quite fit either.
    ‘Your mam’s proper handsome, in’t she?’ Mercy sighed. ‘She in’t plain-faced like all the other mams. She’s got a real magic about her.’
    ‘Don’t let her hear you saying that,’ I said, though I was a little bit pleased.
    It was what you did that mattered, Mam always claimed. She didn’t hold much stock with magic and superstitions. While Da was in his workshop making chairs and cabinets, Mam tended the house and our animals. Peg and me had to help out too, so did Da when the need arose. But it was Mam who worked hardest and fastest. It was a job to even try to keep up.
    Tonight, she’d woven white winter roses into her and Peg’s hair. She tried to do mine but they wouldn’t stay, my hair being too straight and slippery. Reaching out, I pushed a stray flower back into Peg’s curls.
    ‘Are the other ones all right?’ said Peg, letting go of my hand to pat her head.
    I did a quick check. ‘They’re fine.’
    It was then I happened to glance down at her frock, and saw something wriggling inside her pocket.
    ‘Oh Peg,’ I groaned. ‘What’ve you got in there this time?’
    Last week, she’d brought home a shrew. Before that she had a slowworm. And before that, a hedgehog which escaped and hid under the log pile. These pets of hers were becoming a habit.
    ‘It’s a little field mouse. I’ve called him Acorn. They were moving that hayrick in the top field and I saved him from getting stamped on,’ Peg said.
    Now I knew for a fact they moved the hayrick back in September, so this was one of Peg’s little white lies. Not a big, bad lie, just a not-quite-truth, spoken in such a sweet way that folks didn’t think to doubt her.
    ‘Look at him, Lizzie, he’s such a dear,’ Peg said.
    A tiny fawn head popped out of her pocket. Mercy screwed her nose up in disgust. ‘Ugh! And in the same pocket as the liquorice too!’
    I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Well, it isn’t coming into our bed this time. Not after that shrew got inside my pillowcase.’
    ‘Acorn’s going to live outside,’ Peg said. ‘Honestly he is.’
    One look at her huge brown eyes and I doubted it,somehow, not in this weather. It was toe-numbingly cold. And there was no better way to warm up than a spot of dancing, I decided. By now I’d had enough of big-sistering Peg.
    ‘Come on, let’s find Da,’ I said to her. ‘It’s time he took you home, anyhow.’
    We found him at the cider stall in the midst of a rowdy crowd. On seeing us, Da put an arm round Peg’s shoulders and smiled glassily: he’d had more to drink than usual. It didn’t make him louder, though; if anything he looked more gentle, more dreamy-faced.
    ‘Time for bed, poppet?’ he