When the drumming stops, Pete takes off his antlers. Slowly people begin to clap, and the Queen steps forward again and takes their hands in hers for a moment and then turns to the crowd with arms raised. Mel removes her veil and cloak, both smudged with ash.

Pete takes her arm. ‘I felt it,’ he says. ‘Did you?’

‘Must be the ley lines.’

Chris comes over to them, holding the headdress under his arm like a severed head. ‘Will you stay for the burning?’ he says.

‘Work tomorrow,’ says Pete.

A flicker of disappointment passes across the face of the horned god.

‘We’d better get going, actually,’ Pete says to Mel, glancing at the sky as Patti approaches and hands Chris a mead cup and he turns to her.

There is a small gathering by the Portaloos, standing well back as if by a cashpoint. Mel waits in line.

Already Venus is shining over the black trees, a tiny paring of a moon just visible in the still-bright day.

The bar is shut and the field deserted again, except for the mass of people round the fire. In the shadows by the empty tent she sees Lavender Boy with the red-headed girl. He clocks her and moves away.

The other queuers disappear into Portaloos and suddenly Mel is alone. The dew has fallen. She lies down and rolls in it, three times clockwise and three anticlockwise. She stands and meets the turquoise eyes of Turquoise Boy, who is sitting on the steps of his trailer.

‘Your time will come,’ she calls out over to him. Another Portaloo door swings open. She jams her crown on her head and exits into it.

Pete is outside waiting for her. He points to the woods. An effigy is being borne down towards the campfire, as the maypole was earlier borne. The cheering and drumming and whooping begin again, figures standing on the bales and falling off them.

They take their recycling to the bins, piled high above their heads to overflowing with crushed plastic cups and quart bottles.

They take a last look back at the effigy, then leave the field, walking down the mud track to the car. The sun is sinking now, and the hedgerows dark.

‘Should’ve brought a torch,’ says Pete.

A collection of cars lines the track and clumps at the foot of it. Theirs is almost boxed in. A girl in a hi-vis jacket gets up from a chair, waves at them and directs them out.

Mel looks over at the hills. In the light of the setting sun she can see the three brothers wandering on the edge of the cornfield, the younger ones hatless, their hair and their faces catching the last rays. She can almost forget that their costumes are polyester. When she looks again a minute later, they are gone.

Pylons bestride the fields like wicker men as the old gold lights the Downs.