‘It’s fine,’ he assures me. ‘She’s not like the toys.’ Another disdainful look towards the man with the stunt helicopter. ‘He has to follow a precise start-up procedure. There’s an electric motor which spins the turbine up until it’s going fast enough for the second stage. Then it switches over to lighter fuel and continues spinning up until it gets to nineteen thousand revs, when he can switch it over to jet fuel. Only then is she ready to fly.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Audrey retorts. ‘Starting a real jet is less complicated than that.’

‘It’s a similar principle though, isn’t it?’ Bernard replies smugly. ‘You have to use the APU to spool the engines up before you can add the fuel.’

It’s clear that Bernard is eager to get into a detailed discussion with Audrey about the mechanics of jet engines and I’m mentally preparing myself to switch off, but she seems to have picked up on this and just smiles at him. Thankfully, before he can say anything more, we’re distracted by a whine coming from the helicopter.

‘Here we go,’ Bernard enthuses as the rotor blades accelerate up to a blur and Jonathan steps back. We all watch in silence as the helicopter twitches a couple of times before leaving the ground, and then a ripple of applause echoes round the field.

‘He’ll hover her while he checks everything’s OK, and then we’ll see how a helicopter should be flown,’ Bernard tells us.

Sure enough, after rising and falling a couple of times, and performing a full rotation in each direction, the helicopter suddenly shoots off down the field at a speed that catches me by surprise. At the end, it banks sharply to the left before climbing higher, crossing over us as it heads for the car park.

‘I told him it would be like riding a bike,’ Bernard remarks. ‘He was so anxious but look at the way he’s handling her. It’s like poetry. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, stunt boys.’

I may not know anything about it, but Jonathan does seem to be increasing in confidence as the helicopter swoops repeatedly over the field before turning sharply and heading off in different directions.

‘If that was real life, I think the pilots and passengers would all have vomited by now,’ Audrey observes as her namesake shoots over our heads once more. ‘A mate of mine is a stunt pilot and it was bad enough when he took me up.’

‘I don’t imagine your ex would approve of stunt flying either,’ I tell her, trying to find an opening now that Jonathan is out of earshot. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t take it up.’

She laughs. ‘That’s certainly true. I’ll think about it.’