‘Something,’ he said and, winking at Georgina, he thrust a callused hand in mine. Signet rings chafed against my palm, scratching. I wished I still had my plastic ring, to somehow counter-attack. Closer, Shaun smelled of alcohol, pure nicotine and danger. He had a missing tooth, on the bottom. He pulled me – quite roughly – round the back of the Waltzer. I was giggling but I couldn’t see Georgina any more and wondered if she was going to go on the Hearts and Diamonds without me. A generator was chuntering and vibrating, issuing the smell of diesel or kerosene I knew would make me feel sick after a while. But I didn’t care. He liked me. He wanted to do something with me. Was he going to kiss me? I hoped so. My heart was pounding under my T-shirt. Something exciting was finally happening to me. Something, despite my face and my fears.

He was breathing into my face. My back was against the generator. It was warm and pitted with a meteor shower of rust. ‘You ever played chicken?’

‘Chicken Square?’ This was a game we had used to play in Clerkenwell, growing up, and still played, sometimes, by our school. A bunch of eight or so kids had to cycle around each other, in a square of tarmac, marked off by tar lines, staying within the square and fully mobile; if you put your foot down on the ground you were out. If you came to a wobbly, screechy stop because some little shit had cut you up and laughed at you when you fell off your bike, calling you an ugly witch, you were also out.

‘What the hell’s “Chicken Square”?’ He looked borderline-angry, mocking. Shaun didn’t look pleased with me now and I imagined it didn’t take much.

‘Oh, nothing.’ I needed to backtrack, keep the momentum going here; not put my bloody foot down.

He snarled at me, his deep voice a further three octaves lower. ‘Chicken is I touch you, as far down as you dare. Do you want to?’

Touch me? I didn’t know, I thought, because I didn’t know what that involved, and I was scared to ask. Why wasn’t he going to kiss me, like I wanted? Why did he have to touch me? Still, I was curious. I’d never had a boy so much as hold my hand. They were too busy staring at me; huddling in packs as I walked by – laughter escaping them like gas from one of the Bunsen burners in Chemistry; telling me with uncontained mirth that they would need to put a bag on my head to do what they didn’t want to do to me.