She saw herself sitting on the playground wall, swinging her legs as if everything was fine. She saw Hattie, watched her run hand in hand with Lola Smythe.
She saw Daren Oates and his stupid mates, heard their jeering calls:
‘Hey, Adelaide Forgettable Jones!’
‘Where’s your mam this time, then?’
‘Oh, wait. Everyone knows where she’ll be . . .’
The front door clicked open, wrenched Addie from the memory. Boots stamped in the hallway.
Addie felt sick. Really sick. She chewed at her nails.
The door slammed shut again.
‘No sign yet,’ Sam shouted. ‘I’ll just get out of these clothes.’
Jude sighed. Addie glanced over at him. His head was tucked down low on his chest, his eyes fixed straight ahead. He was waiting too, hunched and huddled like the cold birds on the barn roof. Addie wished she could cheer him up. She didn’t know how.
Ruth was next to her, a large cardboard box under one arm.
‘You OK, there?’ she said. ‘Miles away, eh?’
Addie nodded.
‘Have a look through these,’ Ruth said. She opened the flaps of the box. ‘Come on, Jude. You too. Best keep busy while you both wait. And your turn for the laptop too, Addie, if you like. Sunni needs to work from her books for a bit.’
‘Typical,’ Sunni said. She picked up a book, pushed it away again.
Addie got up. ‘Thanks,’ she said. Anything to make the time go quicker. Anything to annoy Sunni. She crossed to the table.
The box was crammed with craft materials: cracked lumps of clay wrapped in film, pots of modelling dough – green, pink and blue, a ball of striped string, bundles of ribbon, buttons in a jar and rolls of rough grey paper. ‘Look, Jude,’ she said. ‘Clay and stuff. Come and see.’
Jude didn’t move. Perhaps he would come if she ignored him.
Addie spread the contents of the box on the table for him to see. She opened the laptop. She typed ‘Exmoor’ into the search bar. Maybe she could find out exactly where she was. How far she was from home.
She scrolled through pages of text, complicated maps and shots of moorland: summer green, with a wide blue sky that Addie could not imagine here; red and gold autumn scenes, a haze of purple heather across sloping fields. And, of course, the ice-white winter stillness that she already knew so well.
There were grainy black and white photographs of tall stones like the ones Addie had seen in a book about Stonehenge. Crumbling buildings, shepherds with long beards and thin pipes, dogs like Flo. And ponies. Herds of brown ponies with dark tangled manes and black almond-shaped eyes. A tiny foal feeding from its red-coated mother. A group of larger foals leaping on strong black legs. Their coats were sleek and smooth: nothing like the shaggy chaos that covered the foal in the barn. ‘Exmoor youngsters in their summer coats,’ Addie read, ‘having fun together under the watchful eyes of their mothers and their herd.’
Jude was beside her. She smiled at him.
‘Exmoor ponies, Jude. Look. Like the one Flo and Gabe found in the snow.’
Jude stared at the screen. He pointed at the small foal with its mother. His thin finger trembled. The images on the screen swam. Addie closed the page and pushed the laptop away.
‘How about we make one – a pony – out of clay?’ she said. ‘And a boy, like you, for its friend?’
Jude sat down. Next to Addie. He reached for a ball of clay and rolled it towards her.
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