Saturday, 7th July 1990, 1.41 pm

Bethany’s father has tears in his eyes and is applauding as the procession comes to an end. Over the PA, the assembled crowds are asked to give a big round of applause for the carnival queen. There are loud whistles and shouts. Bethany waves for the final time. ‘I now declare the tattoo open!’ the announcer says, and crowds surge forward through the gates and spill out onto the fields. There are two large spaces, busy clusters of local stands and booths in the first; in the second, military equipment and personnel, fighter planes to sit in, helicopters to queue for and a fun fair with dodgems and a waltzer. In both there are sellers of balloons and hot dogs and ice creams. There is little shade. A few lads kick around a football, a family searches for a spot to set down their picnic rugs and begin their lunch. A knot of teenagers smoke and laugh, drinking from an oversized bottle of cider. The change is seamless, and Bethany is almost forgotten, standing still on the float on the periphery, her crown slightly askew.

When she steps down from the platform, she is force-kissed by the footmen, who tell her how beautiful she looks. Marchers stream past, removing costumes if they can. A team wanders aimlessly towards the field, dressed as Egyptian slaves. ‘If we don’t win this year,’ one of the men says, ‘they can fucking forget it next time.’

Her father approaches along with Hannah. He is smiling; as is Hannah, but in a different way. Someone wolf-whistles and Bethany can’t help but colour. It is a strange nothing space she’s occupying: not quite queen, not quite commoner.

‘You were amazing, love. Just amazing. You look incredible,’ her father says.

‘I look a mess,’ Bethany says. ‘I’m melting in all this stuff.’ Her father hugs her tight and whispers, ‘Thank you,’ one more time. She holds him as tight as she can. She kisses him on the cheek and wishes she could tell him the truth. All he has ever said is that she will always be his baby. Always. He says it in a way that is at once proud, protective and resigned.

‘I have to say that you looked okay up there. But I kept thinking you were going to freak out or something, or shout something to the crowd,’ Hannah says. ‘I’m sort of disappointed.’

‘Can someone get me a drink,’ Bethany says. ‘A Diet Coke or something?’

Her father asks Hannah if she’d like something too. She asks for a Diet Coke and he sets off towards the queue for the ice-cream van.

‘You okay?’ Hannah says. ‘You look kinda odd.’

‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Just fucking knackered. You know how exhausting it is to look happy for that amount of time? Feels like my face is going to fall off.’

Somewhere a klaxon sounds and to their left some primary-school kids start country dancing, their parents surrounding the roped-off area, clapping along to the music.

‘I fucking hate the carnival,’ Bethany says.

‘Ah, but the carnival loves you,’ Hannah says. ‘You’re a celebrity now. You’re world famous in the North-West.’

Bethany kicks off her shoes and feels the grass through the mesh of her tights. The thought of Daniel in the crowd makes her scan the area, hoping that he hasn’t followed her, that no one will see them together before they are due to meet. She has no idea why this is important, but still she searches. The only person she recognizes is an old school teacher and the woman who sells the cigarettes at Gateway.

‘Is this what happens when you become famous,’ Hannah says, ‘you start to ignore your friends?’

‘What’s that?’ Bethany says.

Mike returns with the cans, freshly cold from the fridge, and they pull the tabs and Bethany drinks half of hers in one long pull. It freezes her head, makes her stomach feel immediately chilled and bloated.

‘Thanks, Dad,’ she says as Hannah throws her cigarette to the ground and crushes it out.

‘No,’ her father says. ‘Thank you. Thank you for everything.’

*

Bethany has two more queenly duties: the first a photocall with the soldiers and airmen in the second field. Waller is late and heavily sweating, his mind lost in the agenda he carries on a clipboard. His expression is fatigued, which suggests that he has not reached his stated target yet; but his voice is light enough to imply confidence that he will prevail. A young male assistant is with him, his ill-fitting suit looking peculiar in the heat. He carries a walkie-talkie, which only adds to the incongruity: it is big and cumbersome. It clicks and barks just like the old CB radio Hannah’s father used to own.

‘We’re a very little under forecast,’ Waller says as they pick their way past picnics and coconut shies, ‘but overall, with a bit of a push later on both here and in the pubs, we should be okay. We might even make it to thirty thousand, which I never thought was even possible.’

‘That would be quite an achievement, Mr Waller,’ the boy says.

‘Let’s not count chickens, Olly. No chicken-counting here. Anyway, Bethany, I do apologize for your having to do this photocall. I did say that it was inappropriate, but they were insistent. Something of a tradition, apparently.’

At the recruitment stand for the army and air force, they are greeted with a stiff salute from the commanding officer for the day. His name is Peters and he has a neat, greying moustache which makes him look both military and clonishly homosexual. Peters accepts Waller’s handshake in silence and turns his attentions to Bethany.

‘This is what the men look forward to the most,’ he says. ‘It’s the highlight of the carnival, these days.’

Waller rolls his eyes; a moment later, Olly does the same. The dealings with Peters over many months have been fraught. He had wanted there to be a bigger military presence than ever before, an assault course, a hand-to-hand-combat demonstration and a tug of war between the air force and the army. Waller had vetoed them all. At meeting after meeting, he had tried to impress upon Peters the changes in the world, the changes in the country at large.

Peters walks Bethany past a Harrier jump jet and then around a missile launcher. The men are lounging by a tank, waiting for them. They are dressed impeccably and the tank looks freshly cleaned, a shining olive green. Bethany wonders whether it has seen action, whether this is more for show than for real. In history, they’d studied the Great War and for a moment she is reminded of the paper tanks that had been used to fool the American public. The press photographer, the woman who took her picture earlier in the day, arrives just as Bethany is being introduced to the men. They are young, still coming to terms with their increased fitness and musculature. They shake her hand firmly and she tries not to wince. The one on the end of the line pauses before greeting her.

‘Bethany? I don’t know if you remember me. We were at school together. Graeme. Graeme Lee? I was a couple of years ahead of you.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she says, having no recollection of the boy this man had once been. ‘So you ended up in the army, then?’

He is still shaking her hand.

‘Chance to see the world. Learn a trade. Make a difference.’

‘Nice to see you again,’ she says. His smile never falters.

The airmen march across; there are a dozen of them, their serge uniforms smarter and more elegant than the fatigues of the soldiers. She shakes their hands too, the head airman introducing each man as though she is important. The photographer smells slightly of wine and tells the men where to stand. The head airman – Jeffers – suggests that they line up by the Harrier, but the photographer simply shakes her head. ‘The tank’s better,’ she says. ‘Besides, we did the Harrier last year.’

*

Her picture is taken with Graeme Lee’s arm around her waist. He smells of an aftershave that she recognizes from the pub; a pungent sportswear-ish scent. It is over in a matter of moments, the photographer checking her watch and saying that she needs to be back in the other field for the judging of the floats. Bethany feels Graeme’s hand on her and thinks of Daniel again. Graeme is smiling. He lets her go.

‘Are you busy later?’ he says. ‘Perhaps we could go and have a drink?’

He seems somehow confident that she will say yes; it is a curious kind of arrogance. She thinks she remembers him now as a shy but thuggish boy, a boy who sat quietly at the back of the class, but whom everyone knew to avoid angering. He was suspended, she remembers, for beating up a classmate. He had used a piece of wood.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m busy later. But it was nice to meet you.’

‘You too,’ he says. ‘Sometimes being in the army’s lonely, you know. It’s good to see a friendly face.’

‘I have to go,’ she says.

‘You look wonderful,’ he says. ‘Like a princess.’

‘I’m a queen,’ she says, laughing. ‘But thank you all the same.’