Soon enough it was Beatrice’s turn to board the carousel. She sat down on the benches provided to swap her skates for riding boots made of ivory leather, and then climbed up onto the platform. Guests hurried towards their horses, jostling each other in their eagerness to claim their preferred steed. Beatrice quickly picked her own horse and climbed onto its back. Up close, it was even more impressive, and so very lifelike that she expected to feel it shift beneath her or let out its breath in a snort, as a real horse would.

The music began to play and the carousel slowly started to revolve. Beatrice gripped the white leather reins tightly through her gloves. She had not settled on a particular moment that she wished to relive and so had surrendered herself to the horse choosing one for her. She saw the frost fair spin and twirl around her: the guests in their fur-coated finery, the crackle and spit of the roasted-chestnut stand, the dazzle and sparkle of the clockwork pets, the jingle of frozen bells on sleighs pulled by clockwork reindeer. The carousel seemed to go much faster than it had looked from the ground. All the fire and light of the fair merged into one golden swirl. For a moment Beatrice thought it wasn’t going to work, that it was just an ordinary carousel after all. Relief and dismay battled for first place inside her chest.

But then the fair melted away, and so did the horse, and the snow, and the ice and stars. It was gloriously warm and the air smelled of flowers and summer. Beatrice wore her favourite blue dress and held her mother’s hand as she peered down into the depths of the wishing well.

‘What did you wish for, Beatrice?’

She looked up at her mother, impossibly lovely and alive beside her. It was all just as it had been – every blade of grass underfoot, the moss on the crooked wishing well’s weathered stones, the lazy drone of a passing bumblebee. And yet … without the patina of nostalgia, the real-life moment was different from the soft memory. The colours were brighter; the edges were sharper. There was a splinter wedged beneath Beatrice’s nail that she had forgotten about. It was too hot to be comfortable, and sweat prickled her skin and made her dress stick to her. She felt that frustrated sense of restlessness that came with stifling summers. As an adult she had remembered only the idyllic parts, but the imperfections were somehow pleasant to her now too. They filled in the gaps of the picture and made this time real once again.