‘How about this, then?’ Ted asked. He took hold of my wrists and in a single smooth movement he lifted me up above his head and dropped me on to his shoulders. The suddenness of it and the height took my breath away. Speechless, I knotted my fingers in the brilliantined crest of his hair and he gripped my ankles. My white socks emerged from the collars of his big fists and I knew I was safe.

‘Are you ready?’ he called back to me.

‘Yes, yes.’ I was ready for anything, up here, with a giant’seye view of the pier’s smooth decking pointing away to the horizon and the sun-flecked sea stretching on either side of us.

‘Then let’s go.’

He started to run. ‘Ted! Ted, be careful.’ My mother’s voice behind us, thin and anxious, was snatched away by the wind rushing past. I could feel the heat of my father’s shoulders directly under my thighs and calves, and the texture of his skin and the hard bone of his big skull beneath my fingers. The lemony, salty scent of him seemed right, then; it was only later that it was all wrong.

‘Giddy-up!’ I shouted and squeezed my knees against his neck. People were looking at us and I was amazed to tower so high above grown men. We ran along the pier, galloping like a horse and rider all the way to the railings at the end where fishermen were tethered to the water by curved lines. Ted was panting and sweat flattened his thick hair. At the far end he whinnied just like a horse, pawing with his feet and tossing his head before swinging me up into the air. His mouth was red and his teeth were so white by contrast, and his moustache prickled my cheek when he kissed me. Then he set me squarely down on the dull decking. Faye was a long way off, walking towards us with her skirt blowing round her calves.

Ted winked at me. ‘We could win the Derby, you and me, eh?’

‘Again,’ I begged, but I knew that it was a once-only joyride. And I also knew not to push my luck with further demands, not with Ted.