‘Then I’ll interrupt your thoughts with some work,’ he said briskly and raised his voice so that the other two could hear: ‘Come on you two! A race back to the barn to warm you up. One, two, three, and away!’

That day’s training was the pattern for the following days of that week, and for the week after. Every day we worked, running, exercising, heaving ourselves up on the bar, pushing ourselves up from the floor using just our hands. Every day we grew stronger, able to run further, to do more of the exercises. Every day we ached a little less. I had learned the knack of swinging on the practice trapeze: I could build the swing higher and higher until it felt like flying. As the swing grew the swooping frightened feeling inside me grew, but I learned to almost enjoy that sudden down-rush with the air in my face and my muscles working to keep the swing moving, to build the speed and the momentum. Every day, though for some days I truly did not notice, David had raised the rigging on the trapeze so that it hung higher and higher from the floor until the only way to mount it was to go up the ladder at the side of the barn and swoop down with it.

Then one day, in the third week, while Dandy and Jack were practising swinging on the high trapeze in the roof of the barn, David called me off the practice trapeze.

I dropped to the ground and waited. I was scarcely out of breath at all now.

‘I want you to try going up the ladder today,’ he said gently. ‘Not to swing if you don’t want to, Meridon. I promised you I’d never force you, and I mean it. But for you to see if you have your nerve for heights now you are so confident on the practice trapeze. Besides, when you hang straight from the flying trapeze you are about the height from the catch-net as you are now from the floor. It’s just as safe, Meridon. There’s nothing to fear.’

I looked from his persuasive blue eyes up to the pedestal rigged at the roof of the barn, and at Dandy’s casual confident swing on the trapeze. She and Jack were practising doing tricks into the net. As I watched, uncertain if I could face the ladder up to the rocking pedestal, Dandy launched herself off the pedestal on the trapeze and flung herself off it in a ball. She somersaulted once and fell into the net on to her back, and bounced up smiling.

‘I’ll try,’ I said drawing a deep breath. ‘I’ll go up there at least.’