Dandy floated towards him with a sigh, but then she suddenly saw the dirt on his hands and stepped back, fending him off. ‘Don’t touch me, you’re filthy!’ she exclaimed. ‘Anyway, there’s no time! Robert says I’m to help you dress, Meridon, and wash your hair. Go to the pump and I’ll bring the comb and a towel. Jack, you get washed too. You’re hands are black and they’re already waiting outside in the lane. Your da’s on the gate already.’

I ran to do her bidding, but out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a brief resentful look which went across Jack’s face. He did not like taking orders from Dandy. He had not liked it on the trapeze swings, he liked it even less on the ground. And least of all did he like it when he had just, for the first time ever, held open his arms to her, openly, in broad daylight. He turned away, as sulky as a spoilt child, and went to his wagon. I watched the slouch of his back and thought how that little gesture of desire from him was curdling to resentment. I don’t think Dandy noticed him at all.

The water from the pump was icy and it made me cold all through. I shivered in my wet shift as Dandy combed my hair and pulled roughly at the tangles.

‘If you combed it every day it wouldn’t tangle like this!’ she said crossly as I flinched and complained. ‘Now I’m going to plait it like mine!’

‘Oh leave be, do, Dandy!’ I begged. ‘It will take you ages, and I hate being fussed about.’

‘Robert wanted all us girls with the same hair,’ she said. ‘Katie’s wearing blue and gold ribbons in her plaits, me with green and gold, and you’ll have red. Now kneel down,’ she said inexorably. ‘It will only take longer if you fidget, Merry!’

I knelt. The grass under my knees around the pump was soaked and made me cold. My wet hair hanging down my back dripped chilly droplets down my spine. The sun had lost its heat and I was shivering from the cold by the time Dandy had finished.

‘What were you going to tell me when we came into the field?’ I asked her. ‘What were you going to tell me about Jack?’

The odd secretive look came over her face again. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you after the show, when we’re not in such a rush.’

‘All right,’ I said, unwilling to wait. ‘But it’s nothing bad is it, Dandy?’

She smiled at me, the warm complacent smile of a woman who knows she has everything. ‘Nothing bad,’ she said. ‘And if this man likes the flying act then that makes it better and better.’