He led her insistently from stall to stall and they shot, rolled balls and flung hoops. They were almost the only customers and Helen half imagined that Tom had laid on the fair for her alone, as a whimsical after-dinner amusement. ‘I don’t think we need any more coconuts,’ he said at last. ‘Time for the rides, now.’

At the heart of the fair were the hobby horses. The huge Victorian merry-go-round sparkled with lights, mosaics of mirror and engraved glass and swags of painted flowers. The horses themselves, galloping hooves and gold-painted manes and staring eyes, flew round on their barley-sugar twisted poles to thundering organ music.

Tom and Helen stood at the steps lost in admiration. At last the machine slowed and the music wheezed away into a murmur.

‘Which one?’ Tom asked and Helen ran to one of the outer horses, cream and gold with ‘Prancer’ painted around its neck in a garland of painted flowers. Tom handed her up into the high saddle and she gathered the reins into her fingers. When he came up behind her, he steadied them with an arm around her waist.

Slowly the horses began to move again, up and then down, and in a slowly blurring circle of white and gold. Helen felt Tom at her back, and then his mouth against her ear.

‘Not quite riding out with the Montcalm foxhounds. But more fun, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ she flung back at him.

Helen let the rise and fall of the wooden horses and the wild blare of the music carry her away on the wings of exhilaration. The rest of the world beyond this painted horse and its cocoon of light was, for a precious few minutes, no more than a meaningless blur.

Once she turned around and caught the white flash of Tom’s smile answering her own. His hands tightened on her waist as she leaned back against him. There was nothing else that mattered at all.

Yet, all too soon, the carved ripples of Prancer’s mane rose and fell slower and slower and the lights beyond the merry-go-round steadied and swung to a standstill. Tom was lifting her back to the trodden grass again and she stumbled, dizzy, and almost fell against him. He hugged her, laughing, as he supported her.

‘I think it’s got to be the Ferris wheel to finish with, don’t you?’ The big wheel was at a standstill, waiting for riders. In a moment they were in the little car, and the attendant bolted the safety bar in front of them. The wheel turned and they were swept backwards swinging, and on up into the darkness.

Helen gasped and her fingers tightened on the bar.

At the highest point the wheel stopped and they hung, rocking, high up in empty space. Far below another couple were climbing into a car to balance their own.

‘Scared?’