‘Clacton Pier,’ says Angela, pointing. The day is unusually bright, the sun an hour higher in the sky than yesterday.

Lisa cracks open Gawain and lies on her stomach to read.

Towards midday they get up and head for the main beach, which is busier with day trippers.

‘Let’s go on the Big Wheel now, before we have lunch,’ says Lisa.

They cross the road to Dreamland and stand in the queue. As the Wheel empties, it’s filled again with the waiting people, winched up pair by pair to let the next carriage drop to the ground. Each carriage is a pendent lantern. Angela and Lisa step into theirs and are shut in with a clank of cold metal. The floor moves under their feet as the lantern stirs on its wire. It all feels madly unsafe.

‘We should have got an ice cream,’ says Angela.

‘It’s October. We’re about to have our lunch.’

They watch the other passengers being loaded in, until they rise halfway up and can see over the fence and then right above the clock tower, whose bell begins to strike twelve as with a lurch they move up to the top.

Angela rattles the carriage. ‘This is very dangerous.’

Both girls giggle hysterically. It feels suddenly windy, much more exposed than on the ground, even with a tin roof over them. Angela’s hair streams, a flame in a hurricane lamp. As the clock’s chimes ring out they look down at the fairground and wave, and then down through the bars at the carriage below, and across the town with its Regency and Deco and its wretched tower blocks, and across the Sands. Lisa takes a photo from every direction. Then they drop down and the people who were below them are now above them, at the top, and their view is of girders and spokes.

The wheel revolves smoothly. It clanks and creaks, but the sound is monotonous and restful. Many of the gondolas are unoccupied: they look like empty birdcages.

When the ride ends they are at the top, where they remain while the first carriages are unloaded, the cage doors opening and clanging shut before the wheel shifts round, and again and again until they are ushered out.