A chubby four, pushing five, she wore a short polka-dot dress covered with a clean apron bright with little animals and nursery-land people. Her tow-coloured hair was gathered into plaits and tied with shining yellow ribbon. Her little bare feet were thrust into rabbit slippers, pink and floppy eared, with gleaming button-eyes and gentle smiling mouths. She sat, frowning a little, as she carefully poured milk into several cups of cheerful red plastic and broke a fairy cake into six unequal portions. Cat stretched in the sun, watching her with his smoky yellow eyes, and flexing his needle-sharp claws. He sniffed at the cake, then lapped at his milk with a long pink tongue, twitching his whiskers a little as they touched the sides of the cup. Teddy Bear wasn’t hungry and Dolly was being naughty. Gnome and Fairy as usual were greedy and wanted more. Caroline knew that Gnome and Fairy weren’t really there, that they were only pretend people, but she knew all about them from her story books, the ones Mummy read to her at bedtime, and to her they were very real.
