I think we were always going to enter her. She seemed to love the fences and hopefully that will be the same in just over two weeks’ time.

Snow Foal by Susanna Bailey | Waterstones

Ruth smiled still more broadly. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Won’t be a mo.’ She moved a shiny copper pan from the bench on to the stove and began to stir it.

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I’m not hungry,’ Addie said. She watched as Penny took a sandwich, bit into it, chewed. A piece of tomato dropped on to her chest and rested on her multicoloured beads. Sue grew up in Northern England, close to purple moorland and long, silvery beaches. Books were her earliest friends. She learned the joy of ‘making things’ from her wonderfully creative mother, who was a great weaver of tales. She drew fabulous pictures to illustrate her ideas, and encouraged Sue to do the same. When small, Sue often made up stories and brought them to life, with paper people on cardboard theatre stages.

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The shopkeeper poked at them with a thin finger, pulled a piece of dark fluff from among them. ‘I’ve not seen your mam in a while,’ she said. ‘Under the weather again, is she?’Ruth didn’t look like a foster carer. Not like Dawn anyway. Dawn, with her pink hair and high heels, her endless phone calls, her high-pitched laugh. Dawn, who hardly spoke to Addie for the whole weekend she spent there in the summer. Dawn, who never smiled.