It was a beautiful day. Calvin wore a black suit, white shirt and bootlace tie. He looked spivvy, as if we were going to a mob funeral. I felt a lurch of lust. And, indeed, trepidation. I’d never flown in a helicopter. Ah, but it was thrilling, too.

‘Who’s been your favourite passenger?’ I asked.

‘A walnut cake. Every week I used to fly one from a bakery in Devon to Tesco head office in Welwyn Garden City.’

‘Heavens, why?’

‘For the Product Testing Panel. Not the most demanding passenger, a walnut sponge. No ego, know what I mean?’

He grinned at me and my heart jumped. I was alive, and the hedges frothy with hawthorn. We were having a jaunt, and I was very, very nearly in love with this brash, endearing cake-transporter. He’d brought silliness into my life, and I’d had precious little of that.

Let’s never be grown-up, I thought.

His office was in a pre-fab building in a corner of the airfield. Monster dragonflies rested nearby, ready to clatter up into the clouds. Calvin was in high spirits. A guy came out of the office. This was apparently Doug, who nowadays did most of the work.

He patted Calvin’s stomach. ‘You’re getting tubby, old bean.’

Calvin grinned. ‘Yeah, because whenever I fuck your wife she gives me a biscuit.’

They roared with laughter. I’d never heard this joke and burst out laughing, too. Wherever Calvin went, it was a party.

And then we were off. A headset was clamped around Calvin’s ears and he shouted into a mouthpiece. The noise was deafening. Strapped in my seat, I surrendered myself swooningly as he swung the helicopter around, round, the earth tilting beneath us, all those tiny houses, all those lives, the azure flash of a swimming pool. The glittering stream of cars on the motorway we hadn’t taken because traffic jams were for wimps.

‘We can’t just land anywhere, can we?’ I yelled.

‘That’s sorted!’ he yelled back.

I didn’t believe him, but who cared? This was a man who’d pushed a car off a cliff. We were daredevils, the two of us. And what a stir we’d make on our arrival!

The funeral was being held in a village next to the Thames. I could see the church and a cluster of cars as we circled, dizzyingly, our shadow scattering a herd of cows. Calvin pulled a lever and the helicopter descended with a bump onto the grass. When he switched off the engine I heard the church bell tolling.

We got out and ran, bent double under the still-spinning blades. The field was spattered with cow-pats, smashed into the flattened grass. A few people paused to stare at the helicopter but most of the mourners were already in the church.