They looked at each other, glowing with excitement. Helen felt that her hair was tangled and her mouth burning, and that she couldn’t have cared less.

‘I think so,’ Tom said.

‘Yes,’ Helen told him. ‘Ready this time.’

The bar swung up and they stepped shakily out into the world once again. Tom’s hand clasped hers and he began to draw her away. Helen followed him, willing, light-headed.

Then a voice called after them.

‘Having a nice time?’

They stopped dead, still hand in hand, and turned slowly around. Gerry Pole was standing at the steps up to the hobby horses, and beside him was Oliver.

‘Up until now,’ Tom said curtly. He had sized up the intrusion at once, and made to turn Helen away again. But she was frozen to the spot. The sight of Gerry and Oliver brought back reality with an icy, threatening blast. She saw that Gerry was drunk, and Oliver drunker still. But they were here in front of them, and she saw how she must look. She was guiltily trapped with her hand in Tom’s and her face burning with his kisses. Gerry’s face was alive with prurient curiosity.

Oliver swayed forward. ‘My darling Helen,’ he said very carefully. ‘I’ve been so remiss. I should have come at once to see you and offer my condolences on the prospect of becoming a Mortimore. Are you quite sure? Not too late yet, you know. Sure Darcy would understand.’ His glazed eyes travelled away to Tom, and she saw clearly the confused connection of his thoughts.

‘Hello, Oliver,’ Helen said in a small, flat voice. ‘Of course I’m sure. Darcy and I are very happy.’

Oh God, her inner voice whispered, how have I got everything so badly wrong?

‘How lovely,’ Oliver said, vague now. ‘Darcy’s a lucky man. I’m an unlucky man, on the other hand. As I’ve been telling old Gerry here.’ He put his arm round Gerry’s shoulder and they staggered a little, laughing. As she had been once before, Helen was struck by their physical likeness. Oliver’s face was tanned from his ski-ing holiday, but it was thinner, and marked by the beginnings of the same creases that split Gerry’s. The gold of his hair seemed to have faded, so that in the garish fairground lights it was closer to Gerry’s lifeless grey.

‘Don’t start all that again,’ Gerry said. ‘Now that we’re all here, why don’t we go somewhere for a nightcap? You’ll come, won’t you love?’ He grinned at Helen.

‘No thanks,’ Tom said coolly. ‘Helen and I are on our way home.’

Oliver frowned in belated surprise.

‘It is you, Hart. Thank God for someone civilised. I’ve had enough of Gerry. But what are you doing with my brother’s fiancée?’ He squared up to Tom in a parody of gentlemanly offence.