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Randolph had replaced the cork-guns with proper pellet-firing rifles, using circular targets attached to silhouette human figures. But then Randolph had succumbed to alcohol and the charms of a woman who hated the fair, so his son Keith - the present Barnaby - had taken over. Nowadays the Gun Stall boasted serious entertainment in the form of an automatic-firing airgun rigged up to a compression pump. This machine gun could fire one hundred large-bore pellets every minute. You just had to keep your finger on the trigger. The young men paid their money gladly, just to feel the sheer exhilaration of that minute’s lethal action. Afterwards, the target would be brought forward. Keith still used cardboard circles marked off from the outer to the small black bullseye, and attached to the heart of a human silhouette. The thing about the automatic was, it couldn’t be said to be accurate. If enough pellets hit the target, the cardboard was reduced to tatters. But more often than not the kids missed, dazed by the recoil and the noise and the speed.
    The more dazed they were, the more likely they were to come back for more. It was a living. And yet in other ways the fair was very much an old-fashioned place. It had its ghost train and its waltzers, though this evening the ghost train was closed. There were smells of spun sugar and diesel, and the scratchy sounds of the next-to-latest pop records. Onions, the roar of machinery, and three-balls-for-fifty-pee at the kiddie stalls.
    Gypsy Rose Pellengro’s small caravan was still attached to its Volvo estate car, as though she was thinking of heading off. On a board outside the caravan door were letters of thanks from grateful clients. These letters were looking rather frail, and none of them seemed to include the date on which it had been written. Beside them was a scrawled note announcing ‘Gypsy Rose back in an hour’.
    The two windows of the caravan were tightly closed, and covered with thick net curtains. Inside, it was much like any holiday caravan. The small sink still held two unwashed plates, and on the table sat not a crystal ball but a portable black and white television, hooked up to the battery of the Volvo estate. The interior was lit by calor gas, the wall-mounted lamps roaring away. A woman was watching TV.
    There was a knock at the door.
    ‘Come in, sir, please,’ she called, rising to switch off the set. The door was pulled open and a man climbed into the caravan. He was so tall that he had to stoop to avoid the ceiling. He was quite young, very thin, and dark-skinned.
    ‘How did you know it was a man?’ he asked, taking in the scene around him.
    ‘I saw you peering in through the window.’
    The man smiled at this, and Gypsy Rose Pellengro laughed, showing the four gold teeth in her mouth. ‘What can I do for you, sir? Didn’t you see the notice outside?’
    ‘Yes. But I really would like my fortune told.’ He paused, stroking a thick black moustache, before adding meaningfully: ‘I think I have a lucky future ahead of me.’
    Gypsy Rose nodded, not that she’d been in any doubt. ‘Then you’ve come to the right place,’ she said. ‘I’m in the futures market myself. Would you like to sit down?’
    ‘No, thank you. I’ll just leave this ...’ He reached inside his jacket and brought out a large brown envelope. As he made to place it on the table in front of the woman, she snatched at his wrist and turned his hand palm upwards.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, releasing it after a moment. ‘I can see you’ve been disappointed in love, but don’t worry. The right woman isn’t so very far away.’
    He seemed scandalised that she had dared to touch him. He rubbed at his wrist, standing over her, his black pupils shadowed by his eyebrows. For a moment, violence was very close. But the woman just sat there with her old, stubborn look. Weary, too. There was nothing he could do to her that hadn’t already been done. So instead he turned and, muttering foreign