Ihad nothing better to do, so I walked with Mary to where the road made its final bend between Aberaeron and Haverth. Our village was on a slight hill, so from here we could see all the way to the next rise in the road.

And as we watched, a motor car appeared, breasted the hill and putt-putted its way towards us. Mary caught my elbow. “There they are!”

The open motor car contained two men – strangers – wearing overcoats and hats.

Behind them, in the luggage compartment, was a large leather box surrounded by metal canisters and rods, cables and lamps: clearly, the paraphernalia of film-making.

The car swept by us into the village and stopped outside The Lamb and Flag. Mary and I hurried to join the crowd which immediately gathered around it, in time to hear Mr Reynolds calling for everyone to stand back and to see one of the men shake his hand. “Afternoon, sir,” he said. “We spoke on the telephone. George Bunniford’s the name, and this is my camera operator, Mr Preston. Now, where is the best vantage point for viewing the parade?”

Mary and I ran, stumbling a little in our unaccustomed heels, to the corner of the street outside the baker’s. We knew the route the parade always followed. “Moll promised to keep me a place,” Mary told me breathlessly. “And I’m sure there’ll be room for you. You’re only slim, not like her.”

Mary’s older sister Margaret, known as Moll, worked in the baker’s, and took full advantage of the unsaleable cakes at the end of the day. She was actually a pretty girl, and evidently, considering the attention she received from boys, her curvaceous figure enhanced her beauty. Outside the baker’s shop, which was closed today, of course, was a horse trough, over which Moll had had the presence of mind to lay a plank of wood. If the three of us stood on this makeshift grandstand and it held our weight, we would have a good view of the parade as it rounded the corner.

There was only just room for Mary and me. “Now, Sarah,” she warned, “no jumping down there and trying to get in the picture, mind!”

“Couldn’t we do that?” I asked her eagerly.

“No, of course not!”

“Why not?”

“It would spoil the parade, some daft girl running in, wouldn’t it, Moll?”

Moll nodded gravely. “And if the parade is spoilt, they won’t take the pictures, and we’ll never see Haverth on the films. And it’ll be all your fault, Sarah Freebody.”

They were right; it was not our place to try to get into the picture on Florence’s big day. But Mary and Moll had not been surprised that I wanted to. They knew me well; they knew my dreams.

“Look, Sarah, it’s starting!”

I am ashamed to say I did not watch the parade. I missed Florence and the entire May Queen entourage; I missed the colliery band playing “Rhyfelgyrch Gwŷr Harlech” and the ponies with garlands round their necks and the Boy Scouts and the flag-waving and the cheering. I am sure it was all lovely, but to me it was not even there. I followed the movements of the camera operator, Mr Preston, and when I suspected the camera was turning towards me, I smiled at it. Mr Bunniford kept pointing out things he wanted Mr Preston to film, and I kept watching him. I so wanted to be in the newsreel! I wanted so very, very badly to be Lillian Hall Davis on a real screen, not just in my imagination!

Just as the May Queen passed, the sun came out. Seeing that the camera had turned straight to me, I waved. And it was on my face, not Florence’s, that a sudden shaft of brilliant sunshine fell.