Connor watches them come around again, tall, laconic, patient. Soon the music stops, the lights go off, and the horses flatten like an ocean in a storm’s eye. Connor takes his son down and holds him as tight as any father has or maybe ever will.

‘Can we go again?’ Will asks.

Connor looks at his wife. Nicola points to her watch and shakes her head. Knowing she is right, that it’s late. ‘You’ve had a good go at it,’ Connor says. He ruffles Will’s hair, looks at his wife again. Nicola frowns and turns away.

Will rubs his eyes and gives his father a small, secret smile.

‘It’ll be here next year, darling,’ Nicola says.

‘Will my white horse be here?’

‘I think there’s every chance.’ Connor picks up his son in a single, smooth movement so that Will looks over his father’s shoulder. Connor asks his wife if she has Will’s show bags.

‘Dean, when do I not have what he needs?’

Nicola is already on the move, pale eyes focused, brow rumpled, body sprung. She clutches the show bags with thin, strong hands. Connor watches her like someone in a crowd, unknown to the other, unknowable. He watches her mark what she seeks, glancing back at them like a bride to bridesmaids. He follows her because of her strong sense of things, of how life should play out, is better than his and because time has proven her right.

But Will watches something else. Little paper animals arrayed over green felt. A small card table set in from the other stalls and sideshows. A man sits there. He picks one of the figurines up, a dinosaur, by its paper tail and holds it up with a blank smile and blank eyes that never shift from the boy even as he recedes into the night.

copyright: James Williamson