with Matt whether she should have put on her trousers, but it was too late to worry about that now. Heâd said she looked very nice when she had stood waiting to go, and Lucy had managed to produce a small, tight smile for him by way of thanks. Mum said she should put on the coat she wore for school, but she said sheâd be all right with the dark blue fleece, which went better with her dress.
Matt held her hand tightly in his when they got to the common. When Lucy saw the number of people at the fair, she was suddenly glad of Matt. She didnât like crowds, especially crowds of grown-ups. The rides, which had looked so attractive when they were being built, seemed very noisy now, with people clinging on for dear life and other people shouting and laughing at them from the wooden paths at the sides. Everyone except Lucy seemed very much at home here. She held on to Mattâs hand and leaned against his leg, feeling a reassuring warmth through his trousers.
âWeâll be all right, wonât we, Lucy?â said Matt. Before she could answer, he bent down suddenly and hoisted her high in his arms, holding her against his shoulder so that she could see over the heads around her. She pulled her dress down as low as it would go over her legs, but there still seemed to be a lot of them bare. It was cold now. It wasnât quite dark yet, but the raw bright lights above the raucous noise of the fairground made it seem so here.
Matt took her on a ride called the Caterpillar. The carriages went up and down and round and round, and it wasnât really frightening, once you had got used to the noise. Then the canvas cover came up over the top of them and everyone screamed, and Matt put both arms round her and held her tight against him. She was glad he was there in the sudden darkness, which might have been very frightening with the cars still rattling forward on the bumpy track. But she wished he wouldnât hold her quite so hard, or pull her legs against him with his big rough hand. She wished it was her dad who was there in the noisy darkness, but she knew it would have been rude and ungrateful to say that to Matt. Her mum had warned her about being rude and ungrateful.
Matt wanted her to go on another of the rides, where motorbikes went up and down and round and round, but she was frightened of that. âI canât ride a bike yet,â said Lucy. âNot even an ordinary pedal bike.â
âTheyâre not real bikes, Lucy,â said Matt with one of his big, loud laughs. âTheyâre fastened to the floor and they just go round and round and up and down like the other things. Youâll be perfectly safe. Iâll come on with you and ride right behind you. Iâll make sure you donât fall off.â
The ride had stopped whilst he spoke and the people who had ridden were coming excitedly down the steps and shouting to each other. A big boy said there was ânothing to itâ, and Lucy moved hastily out of his way as he jumped the last two steps and flung his arms up into the air. She saw one of the girls in her class away to her right with her mother, but before she could make any contact they had disappeared into the noisy darkness.
And then, before she could speak or scream, Matt was swinging her high in the air and setting her down astride the motorbike. And then the ride was moving again, slowly at first, then much faster than Lucy wanted it to go. She clung hard to the handlebars in front of her, which were much too big for her small hands, and felt Mattâs body hard against her and his warm breath on the back of her neck. âYouâll be all right with me, little âun!â he shouted in her ear.
Lucy bent low over the smooth wooden frame of the bike and clung to it with her arms and her knees and her feet as the speed increased and she heard excited screams around them. The man taking the money swung athletically about and took money from people