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Wonderland.
    ‘Chilli, I think,’ Ginger said as he took a sip.
    ‘No, paprika,’ Siv replied firmly. ‘I’m one quarter Hungarian. I know the flavour,’ she added to give weight to her assertion.
    ‘Love,’ Aurelia said dreamily. ‘It tastes like love.’ She touched her fingertips to her lips.
    ‘Have you lost it?’ asked Siv, staring at her. ‘Maybe we should get home . . .’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Shit! It’s nearly midnight.’
    The girls fled from the fair in such a rush that neither of them had a moment to remark upon the subtle changes that they each observed as they passed through the wide arches that marked the exit. Outside, the air was a little cooler, the light a little duller and the scent in the air a little sour, particularly in comparison with the heady aroma of cocoa and spices that had filled the employees’ bar.
    Siv squinted momentarily to find her bearings, looking for a sign that would point them in the direction of the Northern Line and Aurelia cursed gently under her breath when she realised that she had misplaced her gloves. Both of them disregarded the sudden tightness in their chests and the catch in their throats and the heaviness that had taken hold of their legs. It was as if they were pulling on invisible threads that still connected them to the centre of the fun fair and did not want to let them go.
    They ran down the platform hollering, ‘hold the doors!’ and leaped aboard the last train to Leigh-on-Sea no more than a moment before its departure from Liverpool Street station. Siv sat down with a thump of relief and promptly fell asleep, spending the rest of the journey snoring softly on Aurelia’s lap, whilst Aurelia ignored the drunk and rowdy late-night passengers who mumbled ‘All right, love’ at her as they stumbled through the narrow carriage, leaving a trail of burger wrappers and half-eaten chips in their wake.
    She stepped from the carriage and inhaled the sea air so deeply that the salt stung her nostrils. As the train rumbled off into the morning, Aurelia had the sense that in some inexplicable way her life had changed, and she would never be the same again.
    Much to their surprise, neither Aurelia’s godparents nor Siv’s parents had been as upset by their late arrival as the girls had feared.
    ‘You’re grown up now, I suppose,’ Siv’s dad said to them as they’d stumbled downstairs the morning after the fair. There was a note of sadness in his voice, though on later occasions he had cause to mutter under his breath at the fickleness of teenagers.
    After that, both Aurelia and Siv were given tacit permission to stay out late at night or even not come home at all, but neither of the girls was inclined to use it.
    The truth of it was that the fair had changed them both, in small but noticeable ways. Siv became more focused and almost studious, albeit in a physical rather than an academic sense, with all of her spare time and energy devoted to practising ‘tricks’. She continued to date the ticket collector who was now officially courting her in an old-fashioned manner, commuting down to the coast whenever he had free time. His name, as it turned out, was Harry, but the girls continued to call him Ginger, and he would still mostly refer to Siv as Short. Aurelia was always just Aurelia. She had never been the sort of girl who suited nicknames.
    Ginger had some skill with rigging, and Siv had convinced him to set up a practice trapeze in her parents’ garage, where she swung from beam to beam and rope to rope like a jungle creature. Accidents were inevitable and Ginger spent a good deal of his time patching her up and grumbling that her father would think him a wife beater if he continued to send her back into the house with bruises. But Siv gradually grew stronger and her once slight shoulders, though not bulky, became distinctly toned.
    The exercise suited Siv, and gave a focus to the bubbling pool of aggression that she carried inside so that