Cassie shrieked with fear and excitement. They bounced over the icy ruts and picked up speed as they reached the bottom. The cold and the sunlight burned Fran's face. She tugged on the left-hand rope to guide them into a soft snowdrift piled against the playground wall. Nothing, she thought, will compare with this. This is about as good as it gets.

For once they were early. Fran had remembered Cassie's library book, her packed lunch and a change of shoes. Fran took Cassie into the cloakroom, sat her on the bench and pulled off the wellingtons. Mrs Henry was in the classroom, sticking a series of numbers on to the wall. She was perched on her desk but still found it hard to reach.

She was wearing trousers of some man-made fibre, slightly shiny, puckered at the knees, and a cardigan, machine knitted, with a vaguely Norwegian pattern. Fran noticed clothes. She had worked as assistant fashion editor on a woman's magazine after leaving university. Mrs Henry was ripe for a makeover.

'Could I help you?' She felt ridiculously afraid of being rejected. She'd managed photographers who could make grown men cry, but Mrs Henry made her feel like a nervy six-year-old. Usually she arrived at school just before the bell. Mrs Henry was already surrounded by parents and seemed to be on personal terms with them all.

Mrs Henry turned round, seemed surprised to see her. 'Would you? That would be kind. Cassie, come and sit on the mat, find a book to look at and wait for the others!

Cassie, inexplicably, did just as she was told.

On the way back up the hill dragging the sledge behind her, Fran told herself it was pathetic to be so pleased. Was it such a big deal? She didn't even believe in learning by rote, for Christ's sake. If they'd stayed south she'd have considered Cassie for a Steiner school. Yet here she was, thrilled to bits because she'd stuck the two-times table on the classroom wall. And Margaret Henry had smiled at her and called her by her first name.