At Winston Road car park, a man stuffs a tenner into my pocket before I can complete the ticket and jumps in his car. I should call after him and take a photograph but I pause to think about the bananas, oranges, strawberries, kiwi, even a mango and perhaps a pineapple I could buy with the tenner and he speeds off.
Seagulls are emptying the fairground bins, spreading chip papers. The wrinkled-woman-in-fur-boots winks. She has glitter on her fingernails and hearts on her earrings. She pirouettes, her scarf twirling round her body, her face beaming with the sheer fun of it. I turn round. No one else is here. I throw down my bag, camera and computer and, in my thick-soled black shoes, I jump, arms curved, fingers flexed, feet pointed, chin looking up at the crows in the pines, perhaps I can capture new stars. For an instant, I’m a sparkle of joy. When I land, something rustles in the bushes, a boy dashes towards the fair. My heart is pounding and my bag is gone.
‘I couldn’t stop him,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’
I wonder if they’ll pay me for the month or sack me today.
‘Have a free ticket,’ she says, giving me a golden envelope.
When I tell the boss, he moans about the computer and the camera. ‘If it happens again…’ he says and I stop listening. ‘It’s a responsible job… The right type of person…’ I hate him.
As I’m leaving a text dings.
You’re the only girl I’ll ever need. I love you so much.
I want to shriek. But more than that, I want him to hold me. Me too, I text, delete it and write, I love you too.
As I pass the fairground, the dog pulls the bag from the bushes. The computer and camera have gone.
Back home, Dai avoids my eyes. I ask him how the interview went.
‘He didn’t go,’ Lucy says.
‘What do you mean? Dai?’
‘He overslept.’
‘How could you?’ I want tears to flow but they won’t.
‘Sorry.’ He sounds so sad.
‘We’re going to lose everything.’
‘I didn’t set the alarm because the children were home and when I phoned, the job had gone.’
“Typical,” says Peter.
Dai walks quietly out the door.
“What do you mean?” I snap.
“All he does it sit there and do nothing.” Peter chucks his apple core in the bin.
“He’s looking for work.”
“Right.”
He’s ten, how can I explain? “Have you done your homework?”
“Why should I?” He slams the door