After a few minutes, she felt dizzy and sick. They sat out the next one and she waited for the vertigo to pass. She watched the other dancers, only vaguely recognising a few of them from the town. She didn’t mix with these people, they were people from Wells, not her sort. She thought they might know her but the dancing made her reckless and she didn’t care. If only they knew what she had done! A bubble of laughter almost escaped before she swallowed it back down. Jack was wearing his uniform and she felt a rush of silly pride that she was with an American officer, the man with the most life in him. It was vain but she thought how handsome they must look, the two of them, the brightness of his hair against her dark – his uniform and her purple dress. An image formed of herself on his arm, a couple. On a ship to America, his arm tight around her waist.

He pulled her up again although her head hurt. He had his hand at the base of her spine. ‘This is what flying feels like,’ he said.

‘Yes?’ She was only half listening. She was looking at the whiteness of his teeth and the golden flecks in his hair, catching fire in the bright lights, and she realised that he was entirely beautiful to her now. Every single freckle, blemish and line was fascinating.

‘I’d like to take you up in a plane. Take you away. Fly over the ocean and show you the mountains and the desert. The harshness of it, the brutality, not like here. Everything so damp. We could go riding together, you and me. You could teach me.’

She couldn’t look at him.

‘And I could take you to New York City and we could climb the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty and go to the Met to see those paintings you love.’

‘They’re in London too,’ she said in a low whisper, trying not to smile.

‘We’ll go to London then. We’ll go anywhere you want to go.’

‘Stop it,’ but she didn’t want it to stop. ‘I was supposed to go to university,’ she said in desperation.

‘I’m not stopping you doing anything,’ he said. They twirled around and he brought her in close and breathed into her ear, ‘How about it?’

‘How about what?’ she said, fighting the smile on her lips. ‘It’s just a dream you’re spinning, a fairy tale, a mirage, an illusion.’

‘It doesn’t have to be—’