The Girl, the Dog and the Writer in Rome

make their first journey ever into the sunshine and the wide-open spaces. Five days ago, Clementine had discovered their nest — a mossy bowl lined with tufts of fur, filled with five fluffy grey babes — behind a rock. ‘A basket of beauty,’ Clementine had said when describing her find to Freja that night. The fire in their cabin had made Clementine’s face glow to match her delight. ‘Fur fairies wrapped in moss. Fluffy seeds that will sprout and grow into robust, leaping hares.’ ‘A whispered promise,’ said Freja, ‘of lolloping legs and powder-puff tails.’ ‘Yes!’ agreed Clementine. ‘A whispered promise. Like all babies. Like all precious offspring.’ She smiled wistfully, her heart and mind seeming to drift to another place. Strange when she loved being in this one so much. They had sat for hours each day, waiting to see the whispered promises come to fullness, hoping to be there at the moment when they had grown enough to creep out into the big, wide world of the tundra. And now here they were. Crawling. Hiccuping. Jiggling. Bouncing. Then, finally, when they had practised and copied their mother enough, leaping and bounding in fits and bursts. All the while, Freja and Clementine sat silent and still. Watching. Rejoicing. Storing every tiny detail away in their minds. Further and further, the leverets strayed down the grassy slope. Closer and closer they came until one fluff- bundle, more playful and intrepid than the rest, hopped

3