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horses hanging up and jiggling about bythemselves. I want to go right up to them and see how they work.
    She doesn’t even hear and her hand’s feeling sweaty and slippery so I make mine stiff like a claw so it’ll be difficult to hold.
    ‘If you don’t hold my hand, we’ll have to go straight home.’ She’s sounding tired and cross and I’m really angry with her now for spoiling our lovely day. I try to nip the anger back in and explain.
    ‘It’s just that I want to look at books and I can’t because you won’t let me go.’
    ‘Well, we can stop holding hands when we get to a stall. How about that?’ She smiles a stiff little smile that’s not real.
    I say, ‘Oh, alright then.’ I still feel cross with her because it’s not fun any more now I know she’s not enjoying it.
    We come to a stall piled up high.
    ‘Let’s look at this one.’ I only say that because I want a rest from her.
    I look at the books and they’re so babyish – Where’s Spot? and things like that. I don’t want to go back to being yanked about so I look very slowly and carefully. Spot with his bone, Spot’s day out. And the baby books make me feel even crosser but I carry on looking anyway, picking each one up.
    ‘Why d’you want to look at those, Carmel? They’re for little kids.’
    ‘I want to look at those fairy stories over there.’ I go moving up the table.
    I turn over the pages of a fairy story book. The drawings aren’t that good but I look at each one anyway: the princesswith her pea; Cinderella in rags; the wolf looking silly in a frilly red cloak. I move up to look at something else. People press around me and I’m being whacked on the back of my head with someone’s handbag.
    I’m in such a bad mood now. It’s not often I feel like this and I don’t like it. It’s like everything’s wrong – especially me. Now I just want to be on my own. To go back to this morning in my room when the sky was blue and everything was lovely. Everyone has come into this tent now the storytelling has stopped for lunch and people want to buy something and get out of the rain. I’m getting so squashed I think the table is going to cut me in half.
    Then I have an idea – to scrunch myself right down and walk like I saw a toad walk once, till I’m under the table. So I do – the tablecloth only comes halfway down but it feels free and safe and secret under there. I decide to look out for Mum’s boots that she’s got her jeans tucked into and then I’ll come out.
    There’s a box of books and I take a peek into it and there’s piles of the book I used to read when I was little about a skeleton. I take one out and it’s not like when I was seeing Spot the dog. I don’t feel babyish, it’s like being back little again but I like the feeling it gives me this time. So I read Funnybones and look at the pictures. Sometimes I touch them too, I don’t know why.
    When I get to the end I realise I might have been ages. But I’m not sure. Sometimes things happen so it feels like I’m not really there at all. It’s like the time the headmaster was talking about when I was sitting on the bench – looking at a tree blowing about – somehow my brain got slipped and in the world there was only me and the tree.Then it slipped more and I was in a creepy dark tunnel where I’d been before but that day was the longest time it had happened for. Though I didn’t want to try and tell them about that.
    And just now the same thing happened with Funnybones and there was the book and me but I didn’t go as far as the tunnel. I went back to being five for all that time and it had felt nice.
    There’s less legs now so I crawl out. I’m a bit worried that I might have been a long time, I’m not sure. I look about and can’t see Mum.
    I carry on picking up books. I don’t know what else to do. I should look for her, I decide. Maybe I’ll find her waiting for me at the end of the table but I get to the end and she’s not there. I