The noise gets louder as they move through the precinct, going a different way to the one they came. More people. The whirring of machinery. No music as yet, though. He’s forgotten, hasn’t he? About the fair? Too late, they turn the corner at the side of Johnson’s hardware store, and there it is in all its coloured glory. Oh Christ, he says; why didn’t she say something if she knew, he says, and she knows why. It’s the first time she’s clapped eyes on the fair in, oh, probably ten years, maybe more. She doesn’t notice the noise, as he calls it. The paintwork invites her – the multifarious reds and golds, the greens and the sky blue, the swirls and the teacups and the Waltzer and the ladybirds and they all go round and round and round and the colours blur into a perfect haze of delicious ha
