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out with fairy lights that some creative individual had set up to resemble a solar system, so the ceiling appeared to be much higher than it was. Each time Aurelia looked up, she felt as though she was under the night sky somewhere outside London and closer to her home by the coast where the stars were visible and not blanked out by pollution and city lights.
    In the middle of the tent, a make-shift bar had been set up out of large wooden barrels. The smells emanating from this area were unlike any that Aurelia had noticed in a bar before. She sniffed the air and her mouth began to water.
    ‘Chocolate,’ said Ginger, watching her response and smiling. ‘It’s hot chocolate. The best you’ve ever tasted. The tarot-reader makes it. Says she took the recipe from a customer’s head and it would be immoral to share his secrets with anyone, so we don’t know what she puts in it. She makes a fortune selling the stuff . . . wait, and I’ll get some.’
    He joined the queue at the counter and Siv set off after him to help carry the drinks back, leaving Aurelia standing alone in a corner, the subject of more than a few curious glances.
    She stood silently waiting, avoiding the temptation to kill time by playing with her phone, knowing that it would soon be full of missed calls and messages from either Siv’s parents or her godparents when they did not arrive home at midnight.
    With nothing but the make-believe stars to keep her company, Aurelia became aware of the thoughts that flitted through her mind and each small sensation passing through her body. A new and unusual feeling had wrapped itself around her chest. She felt for a moment that time had stood still, and everything in the tent seemed all at once louder, brighter, more vivid. The chatter of the tent’s patrons fell away and she noticed the song playing in the background. ‘Missing’ by Everything But the Girl. The music made her lonesome, as if the lyrics were a premonition.
    Another scent assailed her senses, joining the blend of ginger and cinnamon that flavoured the tarot-reader’s hot chocolate. She turned her head and concentrated, but could not identify its source.
    It became stronger, and suddenly she was aware of the body of a man at her side.
    Aurelia started. She hadn’t noticed him approach. The room seemed somehow to grow darker, and she couldn’t make out his features, just the bulk of his presence and an overwhelming sense that she was safe, no longer alone in the company of strangers.
    ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, as if she had known him all along. The words had slipped through her lips of their own accord.
    ‘Yes,’ replied the man, his voice deep and full of humour. ‘It’s me.’
    Her whole body reacted in a curious fashion, as if his breath, his words, had surrounded her with an invisible cocoon, a shield of tenderness and unsaid safety.
    The feeling that she was alone here, just her and this man, this stranger whose presence every nerve in her body could sense but whose face she couldn’t see properly.
    He lifted his hand and brushed it through her hair. His palm was cool against her face. She remembered how she had felt soothed by the gusts of wind by the ghost train, and she leaned against him and relaxed.
    He bent his head down to hers and kissed her. The feeling of his lips against hers blanked out every other thought in her mind and every sense in her body. There was no tent, no Siv, no Ginger, no stars and no fun fair. There was only her mouth and his, and nothing else in the world mattered but that.

2
Great Expectations
    And in the next moment he was gone.
    Ginger and Siv returned and before Aurelia could speak, or even grab hold of the man’s hand, he had vanished. The lingering taste of his mouth on hers was replaced by the sweet and slightly smoky flavour of the tarot-reader’s hot chocolate as Siv handed her a delicate white china teacup with a matching saucer, like something that Alice would drink from in