Mistress of Night and Dawn (4 page)

Siv laughed, and slipped her fingers through her short hair, something she always instinctively did when she was flirting, Aurelia knew.

‘And do you have a problem with girls who cause trouble?’ she baited him, standing with her slim legs apart, in a defiant stance, holding herself straight at full height, her modest chest jutting towards him.

Confused by Siv’s odd mix of flirtatious aggression, he glanced at Aurelia, but recognising the indifference in her eyes, quickly turned his attention back to Siv.

‘Come on, Siv, let’s go,’ Aurelia suggested. She was beginning to feel sorry for the ticket collector who seemed sweet enough beneath the shadow of his monster mask, unlike the boys from the dodgems who were all run-of-the-mill teenagers, fuelled with testosterone and otherwise entirely dull to everyone besides Siv, who seemed to be interested in them all.

But her friend refused to back down.

‘I just meant to say you shouldn’t have walked into the tent on foot. Something could have happened and I always get the blame for everything,’ he sighed.

‘You’re not the boss?’ Siv asked.

‘Do I look like I own the place?’ Ginger said. ‘It’s just a job. Not a very fun one at that. And I only came out here to make sure you got out okay, not to fight with you.’

He took a step back, waiting for them to leave.

Siv continued to stand and stare at him, but quickly realised that her efforts to provoke him had failed, and switched to another tactic. Aurelia stood quietly beside her. She’d seen her friend in this mood enough times before to know that trying to talk her out of it was a pointless exercise.

Eventually, Siv’s expression softened.

‘Listen,’ she suddenly said, ‘we’re sorry, okay? We were just having a bit of fun.’ She looked down at the ground and scratched her boot along the dirt. A bright bolt of red swept over her cheeks. Siv was unaccustomed to apologising. Aurelia could barely believe her ears.

The boy looked up and grinned. His features transformed when he smiled, becoming infinitely more handsome, a fact that was not lost on Siv.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘No harm done.’

‘Can we make it up to you? Buy you a drink or something?’ she continued gruffly.

‘Yes. Thanks. That would be good.’

He didn’t talk like any other boy Aurelia had known. She looked at him curiously, but his attention was now politely fixed on Siv, who had extended the invitation.

‘I have to get back to the till. But I get off in half an hour.’

Siv looked up at Aurelia, a grin spreading across her face, silently seeking approval.

‘Fine by me,’ she said. She could use a nicer drink to wash away the taste of Siv’s gin.

‘Great,’ the ticket collector replied. ‘See over there, the large tent with the red canvas roof. That’s where the main bar is. Thirty minutes, okay?’

‘It’s a deal, Ginger,’ Siv said.

‘I have a name,’ he protested. ‘It’s—’

‘Shhhh . . .’ Siv interrupted him quickly. ‘I don’t want to know. To me you’re Ginger. And get rid of the monster mask. I never kiss men wearing masks . . .’

She took hold of Aurelia’s hand and they walked away towards the heart of the fair.

The wind had fallen.

‘Could we try the fortune-teller now?’ Aurelia suggested.

‘No way. Didn’t think you believed in all that mumbo-jumbo hippy magic. I want to fire a gun. Let’s go to the target range.’

Aurelia agreed, but made a mental note to seek out the fortune-teller another time. She’d go alone, if Siv wouldn’t accompany her. All of a sudden, she had felt a strong compulsion to know what the future held for her, although, like Siv, she ordinarily had no truck for the irrational and its gaudy trappings.

Siv was a good shot and ended up just a mere target away from the giant teddy bear grand prize, but was lumbered instead with a yellow and orange plastic duck, which she brought along to their assignation, flushed with pride.

They had briefly debated whether to go, and Siv had first made certain that Aurelia had no personal interest in the ghost train attendant.

‘I’m sure that, given a choice, he would prefer you, you know . . .’

‘Not my type.’

‘You’ll still be a virgin by the time you’re twenty-five at this rate,’ Siv said.

‘I don’t care.’ Aurelia shrugged. She didn’t disapprove of Siv’s behaviour for any moral reason, but neither did she feel any kind of obligation to strike up a flirtation with someone she didn’t really fancy just for the sake of it.

Siv nodded.

‘Well, I like him, and I’m not too proud to give him a try even if he did fancy you first. They all do, anyway.’ It was merely a statement of fact, not a complaint. Aurelia was the prettier of the two and always the one that men radiated to first, even if they soon learned that it was Siv who was inevitably the interested party.

They entered the bar tent and began to pick their way through a sea of dropped plastic cups to the front where a line of customers, three bodies deep, were queuing for pints of cheap beer.

They spotted Ginger, who was trying to hold a place for them near the front. There were rips in his jeans but he had ditched the rubber mask and even combed his hair into some semblance of tidiness. When he saw the two young women approaching at the appointed time, he smiled broadly, as if relieved they had come, not having believed until this moment they would actually do so.

‘Hi, Ginger.’

‘Hey, you made it.’ He offered them a flirtatious sideways smile. ‘I thought you might bail.’

‘We’re women of our words,’ Siv shot back.

‘So what are your names?’

‘She’s Tall and I’m Short. Will that do? No need to complicate things, surely?’ Siv said.

A long trestle table with a red and white checked tablecloth had been set up against the far wall and they walked over, holding their plastic cups. Aurelia and Siv had chosen cider and Ginger ordered lemonade. ‘I have to drive home later,’ he explained, as Siv stared pointedly at his nonalcoholic drink.

On closer inspection Aurelia reckoned the artfully dishevelled fair worker must be in his mid-twenties. Despite the difference in age, it was quite obvious the diminutive Siv was in charge.

One hour later, on the pretext of getting some fresh air, Siv had lured Ginger to a patch of unlit grass under the shadow of a tall oak tree on the outskirts of the fun fair. Aurelia, bored to death, had left them to it and wandered off. But she had stopped ten yards away, enjoying the cool of the night air after the heat and noise of the bar tent.

She glanced across and saw the couple by the tree were now frantically kissing, Ginger bending down to reach Siv’s lips, their hands manically exploring each other under the layers of clothes. Aurelia couldn’t help but be fascinated as she observed their animated fumblings, half shocked and half envious, knowing from the yearning look she had seen in his eyes that he would have much preferred if Aurelia had been willing to go with him instead.

She wondered what he was thinking as his hand briefly delved under Siv’s shorts before she peremptorily nudged him away without breaking off their embrace.

Aurelia felt as if she should look away, but her curiosity was getting the better of her. The reflections of the strings of multicoloured bulbs on the line of poles illuminating the nearby fun fair trickled through the tree branches when the now quietened breeze abated, offering her a clearer view before the darkness washed over the couple again. For a rapid moment, she glimpsed a flash of white skin. Surely Siv hadn’t lowered her shorts, as she had done in the ghost train tent? Not here, in almost full public view.

There was a faint sound to her left and, alerted, Aurelia swung round. Some distance away, someone was urinating against the back of one of the long trailers. Her heart jumped as she recognised the familiar sound. Then the shadow moved away in the opposite direction, unaware of her presence or that of Siv and Ginger.

She turned her attention back to her friend. The light shifted and she caught a clearer view of the couple. It wasn’t Siv’s white buttocks on view but Ginger’s. His jeans were bunched around his ankles. His arse was firm and muscular. Evidently he did not spend all of his time stuck behind a desk at the fun fair. And Siv was on her knees in front of him, her small hands resting gently on his thighs and her head moving up and down in perpetual motion.

Aurelia held her breath.

But also held her gaze.

It was one thing listening to Siv’s lurid stories about the shape and taste of the men she had been with, but another thing altogether watching her in action, the slow, deliberate way she moved her lips up and down his shaft and the way that he clenched his fists in an obvious attempt to maintain his control. Aurelia’s throat tightened.

A cloud slid across the half-full moon and for a second or so the couple were caught in a natural spotlight. At the same moment, Ginger turned his head slightly in Aurelia’s direction and his eyes met hers. Aurelia blushed as he saw her watching them. ‘I wish it were you,’ she felt he might be trying to say to her. Then new clouds wrapped themselves across the moon and her view was once again obscured. She looked down to the ground, her heart beating like a drum inside her.

From the corner of her eye she saw Siv rise to her feet and move towards her, Ginger following, fastening his belt as he walked.

‘There you are,’ Siv called to Aurelia.

Ginger cleared his throat, searching for some way to change the subject and alleviate his embarrassment.

‘I can take you to another place,’ he said. ‘Strictly speaking it’s just for the workers. But no one will complain about you two, especially as you’re with me.’

Siv’s attention was immediately roused at the mention of another location that they weren’t allowed into.

‘Shouldn’t we be going?’ asked Aurelia. ‘What about your parents?’

‘We can tell them there was a hold-up on the Tube, or something. Just a little longer,’ she pleaded.

They agreed and Ginger set off, his red hair glinting in the moonlight, with Siv at his side and Aurelia following behind.

Aurelia observed the two of them together. Ginger was quite tall and seemed particularly so in contrast with Siv. They made an odd couple. Although, she realised, so did she and Siv in the eyes of others.

The tent that Ginger took them to was much smaller than the main bar, which had been set up for the punters. The interior was completely decked 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.

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 Wonderland.