As they rounded the bank near Hillhead, the sun was rising, throwing long shadows across the snow, and Fran stopped to look at the view. She could see across the water to the headland beyond. It had been right to come back, she thought. This was the best place to bring up a child. Until that moment she hadn't realized how unsure she had been about the decision. She was so good at playing the part of aggressive single mother that she'd almost come to believe it.

Cassie was five and as assertive as her mother. Fran had taught her to read before she started school and Mrs Henry had disapproved of that too. The child could be loud and opinionated and there were times when even Fran wondered, despising herself for the dreadful suspicion, if she had created a precocious monster.

'It would be nice; Mrs Henry said frostily at the first parents' evening, 'if occasionally Cassie did as she was told first time. Without needing a detailed explanation of why I'd asked her to do it: Fran, expecting to be told that her daughter was a genius, a delight to teach, had been mortified. She had hidden her disappointment with a spirited defence of her philosophy of child rearing. Children should have the confidence to make their own choices, to challenge authority, she'd said. The last thing she wanted was a child who was a meek conformer.

Mrs Henry had listened.

'It must be hard: she had said when Fran ran out of steam, 'to bring up a child on your own!

Now Cassie, perched on the sledge like a Russian princess, was beginning to get restive.

'What is it?' she demanded. 'Why have you stopped?'

Fran's attention had been caught by contrasting colours, the possibility for a painting, but she pulled the rope and continued. She, like the teacher, was at the whim of Cassie's imperious demands. At the top of the bank she stopped and climbed on to the back of the sledge. She wrapped her legs around her daughter's body and held a loop of rope firmly in each hand. Then she dug her heels into the snow and launched the sledge down the hill.