Then he had us running backwards and dancing on the spot until our faces were flushed and we were all panting. Dandy’s careful coronet came down and she twisted it carelessly into a bun on the nape of her neck. But the three of us were as fit as working ponies. Jack and I had been training hard every night on the bareback act and were as quick and as supple as greyhounds. And for all that Dandy would sneak off to doze in the sun at every opportunity, she had been raised as a travelling child and to walk twenty or thirty miles in a day was no hardship to her – and to swim races at the end of it.

‘You’ll do,’ David himself was puffing as we dropped to the wood shavings for our first rest. ‘I was afraid that you would all be plump and lazy, but you are all well muscled and you’ve got plenty of wind.’

‘When do we go up?’ Dandy demanded.

‘Any time you like,’ he said carelessly. ‘I’ll check the rigging while you go to your breakfast and then you can go up and down whenever you wish. I’ll show you how to drop into the net, and once you know that you can come to no harm.’

‘I don’t know I can,’ I said. I was keeping my voice steady but the flutter of fear in my belly kept snatching my breath away.

David smiled at me, his enormous moustaches still curly on his sweaty cheeks.

‘I know you are afraid,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I understand that. I have been afraid too. You will work at the speed you wish. You’ve the build for it, and the body, I should think. But this is something you can only do if your heart is in it. I’d not be party to forcing anyone up a ladder.’

‘How did you come into it?’ Jack asked.