Eira had eaten toast soldiers with marmalade (her current obsession — not jam, not peanut butter, marmalade, and specifically the thick-cut kind with the peel in it, because she was four and had opinions). Tima had eaten half a banana, a handful of dry cereal, a piece of toast that she'd licked the butter off and then rejected, and something off the floor that Steph chose not to investigate.

"Shoes," Steph said, holding up Tima's boots.

Tima looked at the boots. She looked at Steph. She held up Hoppy.

"Oppy shoes?"

"Hoppy doesn't need shoes. Hoppy is a hippo."

"Oppy shoes," Tima repeated, more firmly.

Eira appeared in the hallway, already coated, hatted, and gloved, with the faintly martyred air of someone who had been ready for hours and was suffering greatly at the inefficiency of others. "We're going to be late," she said.

"Late for what? There's no appointment at a Christmas market."

"There IS. There's a puppet show at ten and if we miss it I will be devastated."

"Devastated."

"Completely."

Steph got Tima into her boots, her coat, her hat (which Tima immediately removed), her hat again (which Tima removed again), and eventually a compromise was reached in which the hat was allowed to exist on Tima's head but not to cover her ears, which meant it perched on the top of her skull like a small decorative tower and served no thermal purpose whatsoever.

They left the house. The pushchair. The bag. The snacks. The nappies. The spare outfit. The inhaler. Hoppy, who was wedged into the pushchair beside Tima and looked as though he was being taken somewhere against his will.

Ty Sign in December was the colour of pewter and breath. The terraced houses ran in rows up the hill, their front doors painted in colours that the cold had dimmed to pastels — blue, green, red — and the cars on the street wore frost like a second skin. Steph's breath came in small clouds. Eira walked beside the pushchair, one hand on the frame, one hand in her coat pocket, her chestnut curls spilling from under her hat. She was narrating.

"Christmas market," she said. "There'll be presents and lights and little houses and food and — Mummy, will there be reindeer?"

"There won't be reindeer."

"But maybe."

"There won't be reindeer."

"One very small reindeer?"

"Eira."

"Fine. But there better be hot chocolate."

Tima pointed from the pushchair. "Da," she said, pointing at a cat on a wall. "Da," pointing at a crow on a bin. "Da," pointing at a decoration in someone's window — a string of coloured lights that blinked on and off in a pattern that only the lights understood.

"She says dat to everything," Eira observed.

"She says da to everything because everything is worth pointing at."

"Even bins?"

"Especially bins. Bins are very interesting if you're twenty-two months old."

"I don't remember being twenty-two months old."

"Nobody does. That's the trick of it."