He smelled of dodgy rolled-up fags and generator diesel. His eyes were dark brown, almost black. I didn’t answer but I shrugged. I was a little frightened of him. He looked knowing, like he really knew everything. His eyes were wrinkled top and bottom, even when he wasn’t smiling. A flash of red neon glanced across his face and lingered there for a moment, making him look devilish. I felt a blush cast across my face and Shaun laughed. It was a deep and throaty laugh cracked with a thousand furiously sucked-on cigarettes.

‘Do you think she likes me?’ he asked Georgina.

‘She’d like anyone,’ laughed back Georgina, which I thought was a bit cheeky of her – my usual defender – but I needed her as my only friend so I didn’t pick her up on it. Instead, I slid my right hand from my back pocket and absently chewed the hangnail of my little finger. I had a silly silver plastic ring below the second knuckle, from one of last year’s Christmas crackers. Dad had found it in one of the drawers of the sideboard, before I left the flat – while he was tidying up – and, after pressing each of my fingers to work out which it would fit best, had put it on me, saying it might look pretty. It kept rotating and catching on the inside of my next finger. I flicked it off and let it fall to the grass. Dad wouldn’t know. He had threatened to come here tonight; said he used to love the fair and might come to wander round and soak up the atmosphere. I hoped he wouldn’t.

‘Let’s see,’ said Shaun, and I didn’t know what that meant, but without warning Georgina pushed me on to him, causing me to stumble against his concave chest. My hand thumped against hot skin, tight under ribbed cotton. My little finger, now free of its plastic collar, was millimetres away from a hard, jutting nipple. I could feel Shaun’s skinny heart beating. My other hand, startled out of its pocket, floated near a left bicep, which was smooth and almost painful looking; he had a tattoo there – an anchor – faded, with indistinct edges. I wished my birthmark was faded and indistinct. It was throbbing under the make-up and my flushed face, trying to push itself to the surface. I didn’t want to be exposed. ‘Fancy it?’ he asked.

‘Fancy what?’ I tried to sound cool. George Michael was singing about his careless whisper to the thudding beat of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Relax’. The air around us was hot and charged.