‘Large.’ I was chewing gum, too. I didn’t really like it but it seemed required, for the copycat pals. I took it out of my mouth and flicked it off my finger on to the grass. We took our candyfloss and tramped off, in the pursuit of good times. Cone heels on damp grass; floss sizzled between eager tongue and scrubbed teeth. I was hoping things might change that night, just temporarily, in all the distraction of the neon and the pop and the fun of the fair. Perhaps, for one night, I could forget who I was.

‘Oh my.’ Georgina had stopped. Her mouth was hanging open; a melting cloud of floss was threatening to fall to the ground. ‘Shaun’s working!’

I stopped, too. ‘Who’s Shaun?’

‘Shaun on the Waltzer. He’s fit.’

The Waltzer was coming to a stop. Grinning teenagers shouted, ‘Oh my God!’ to each other and scampered from their bucket-like carriages under flashing lavender and emerald-green lights. A tanned, skinny man in tight black jeans and an even tighter black vest was riding one of the slowing Waltzer tubs like a Roman chariot racer, one black Monkey Boot up on the silver rim so it looked like a purple lightning bolt was casually coming out of his foot. Shaun was typical of the type who work the Waltzers. A bit sexy. A bit scary. The sort of bloke who would usually have sneered at my face then turned away in disgust, but my Hide-the-Blemish/Maybelline combo was cement-thick that evening and sometimes miracles do happen.

‘Oh Lord, he’s coming over!’

Georgina wedged a shaft of hair behind one ear. I chucked my candyfloss on the ground and slotted my hands into the back pockets of my jeans as though I was not excited. Shaun loped over, a scraggy cigarette of man.

‘All right, Georgie?’ he said, but he was looking at me. My instinct was to raise a hand to my cheek, like I always did, but both were frozen like clams in the back pockets of my jeans. I scratched a bright pink, shell-hard nail against the smooth card of the tube ticket we had bought at Chalk Farm.

‘Yeah.’

‘Who’s this, then?’

Shaun had a tiny mole beneath his left eye. It was cute, unlike my affliction. I prayed he couldn’t see my birthmark; he was dissecting my face with laser-like precision and I was afraid I hadn’t covered my heart-shaped monstrosity enough. He was looking at my winged eyeliner, wasn’t he? My glitter eyeshadow? I also prayed I wouldn’t blush, as then my birthmark would have shown itself with the efficiency of nuclear-reactive radium.

‘Roo,’ I said.

‘Roo. What sort of a name is that?’