Not sure this is actually finished and it needs lots of work, but am interested in opinions, especially about the girl and whether she seems a bit all-over-the-place in terms of her age...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My feet slide inside my wellies as we squelch blindly across the field. My toes keep bumping against the ends. I can see the fair, its rainbow of lights fuzzing a halo through the mist. We get nearer and I can see the ground again. Blades of grass are squished flat onto the soil or buried under the mud. I keep close to Dad as he squeezes round a group of third-year boys sharing a cigarette. I fix my eyes on the glowing tip, and keep as far away as possible so that it can't burn my duvet coat. I wrinkle my nose at the smell and hold my breath as we pass.
Bags of candy floss hang from a stall built onto a wheelbarrow, just like the ones that sell hot dogs or ice creams in the town on Saturdays.
'Dad!' I call over the jingle of the Waltzer.
'Dad!' I call again over the brass band blare of the carousel.
My Dad turns round and I point at the candy floss stall with my eyes. A bored-looking man stirs the air with a long thin wooden stick. Pink fluff wraps the stick in sugary cobwebs. I look up at my Dad and he rolls his eyes. He looks over my head at Mum. She must nod because he reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out a fist of coins. He peers into his palm, then counts one pound twenty in silver. He hands over the coins and takes the candy floss from the man. It looks like a pink cloud, and I grasp it tightly, fearful it will float away. Dad nibbles at a wisp still stuck to his finger. I hold the stick at the very bottom, balancing its surprising weight between my thumb and first finger. Fuchsia spots the pale pink as the wet air sucks impatiently at my cumulonimbus of sugar.
The wheels on Toby's pushchair are sinking.
'Can Toby have some, Mum?'
'Just a little bit,' Mum says. I tear off a thin strip, using only the tips of my fingers so it won't melt.
'Candy floss,' I say slowly as I hand it over. I have to put my mouth right up to his face, because the music is so loud that it's hard to hear people speak. He squidges the piece in his chubby fist, then opens his fingers and inspects the pink lump on his palm. He gazes up at me.
'Mmmm,' I hum. I bite off some of my candyfloss, specks sticking to my cheeks, and make a face like yum it's delicious, which it is.
Toby looks down at his palm again and licks at the candy floss. He pushes a finger from the other hand up his nose and frowns. He licks the candy floss again, spreading goo all over his hand. I look away because he is making me itchy.
I follow Dad to the dodgems. Mum has to lean at a diagonal to push Toby through the mud. The dodgems careen across their slippery floor. I watch dodgem number 42, which is blue and yellow, and driven by two boys. The dodgems have their own headlights, and mist wafts through the beams, turning red, green and purple like a watery chameleon. Dodgem 42 skates inches away from number 12, which is orange and driven by two girls with sparkly sleeveless tops. The boys pull the steering wheel and it skids into a u-turn. It races across the rink and I will it to reach the other side, but the boys aren't very good drivers because halfway across, it collides head-on with number 23. My heart thwacks with the crash of the rubber bumpers. The wheels of dodgem 42 lift off the ground for a moment, and the boys' necks jerk backwards. Mum nudges me and nods at my candy floss. I've loosened my hold and it has toppled towards me, brushing gluey droplets onto the fur trim on my hood. I try to wipe off the blobs of sugar while I scan the rink again for number 42. The dodgems have all stopped higgledy-piggedly and people are clambering out of their seats. I can't see number 42 anywhere. I want to check the boys are all right. I dance from foot to foot, peering between the seething bodies, but before I can find the blue and yellow car, Dad pulls my elbow and leads us away.
I finish my candy floss and nibble around the stick to taste the final morsels. Dad stops and I almost walk into his legs. He turns round to me and Mum and Toby.
'Let's go in here,' he says. I can still hear the wavering tunes, but Dad doesn't need to shout any more. A hot, sweet smell drifts by and I look around. A man is roasting chestnuts at another stall and they make me feel Christmassy, even thought it's October.
'Sarah,' Dad says. I turn back to him. 'Look', he says.
I follow his gaze. In front of us is an archway, leading into a sort of huge portacabin, just like the one at school where we have art, but much bigger. Painted across the archway in wibbly letters are the words 'Hall of Mirrors'.
'What is it?' I ask Dad.
'It's a Hall of Mirrors,' he smiles.
I give him my look. 'I know that. What's a Hall of Mirrors?' I ask again.
'Let's go inside and see,' he says.
We all walk under the archway and up a ramp. There is a small kiosk inside and Dad buys tickets for him and me and Mum. Toby is too young so he gets in for free. It's dark inside, and I reach for Dad's hand. We get to a door and Dad pushes it open. Inside it's bright and my eyes hurt for a minute like when I come out of the cinema. I have to squint, but after a few seconds, I can see again.
People line the walls like an art gallery, but with more laughter. The walls are lined with silver. Dad tugs at my hand and I follow like a dog on a lead. Giggles wobble through a lady with a body like a stack of tyres. I peer round her width and I see that she is looking in a mirror. But not like the mirror I have in my bedroom, or the long thin mirror in our hallway. In this mirror, the fat lady is thin like a pencil. At first, I think it must all be pretend ' that someone must be standing on the other side wearing the same clothes to trick her ' but the next mirror makes a skinny boy look like a beachball, and the next swells a man's head to the size of a pumpkin.
Dad pulls me over to a mirror that's wavy like the sea. He plonks his hands on my shoulders and stands behind me.
'Look at you!' he says. I'm all bendy, and I look down at my feet to check I haven't changed. I stare at my reflection and I lift my arm up to the sky. It bends just like the rest of me. I wiggle my bum and laugh. I look at Dad in the mirror and he wiggles with me.
Next to us there's another Dad with his daughter. Their mirror has moved the middle of their bodies to the side, like the magic trick with the lady standing in a box. They're dancing just like us, their odd reflections copying them. They have the same hair: bright orange and wispy, like my candy floss. Freckles spatter their noses. They could look at each other and each think it was their own reflection in a magic mirror. I look back at my bendy body and my Dad's. We look nothing like each other. Toby looks like Mum, with his turned-up nose and wide mouth. When he was born, everyone who visited would say he looks like you, Janet, or he looks just like you, Dave. When my parents got me, I bet no one said that.
In this mirror, I stare at my black curls. The mist has made them frizz like a cartoon electric shock. I look at my arms, still toffee-coloured even though it's been six weeks since we came back from Greece. I wonder what it's like to look at your Mum and Dad and see a bit of yourself reflected back at you, sort of wobbly like these mirrors, but still there.
