“Well, all that exercise has left me ravenous!” I said to my wife as we left the Ghost Train and stepped out into the evening sun. “Why don’t we take it easy tonight and have a romantic meal to celebrate our anniversary?”

“Oh, what do you have in mind?” asked my wife expectantly.

“Fish and chips from the snack wagon over there!” I replied, and she punched me lightly in the side.

We collected our order and sat down at one of the picnic tables to eat our dinner and review our daughter’s surprise tour. Then we wandered around people-watching as others had fun on, and with, the attractions.

After another stop at the picnic tables for ice creams, we made our way to the circus tent. My daughter’s notoriety meant that the circus now had a full house every Saturday evening, and we lucky to bag a couple of seats in the middle of the fifth row.

The evening’s penultimate act was about to start and the ringmaster introduced it:

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it is my pleasure to welcome Sam Crawford to the ring to perform for you her incredibly daring Disappearing Act!”

A naked woman in her thirties walked out gingerly, struggling to carry a heavy metal ball which was chained to a ring around her neck.

“You will know Sam of course from the CCTV videos shown on the news of her stabbing poor Sanjay Patel, MP for Ashford, to death as he left his house. Sam, please step forward.”

The ringmaster lifted the ball with some difficulty and showed it to the crowd. “Note where the ball is padlocked to the chain,” he told them, pointing at the lock positioned near Sam’s navel. “She will have ten minutes to open the lock, and then she can disappear off home!”

“As you can see, she’s not hiding anything in that costume!” he continued, “All she will have is these lock picks.”

He handed Sam two small metal lock picks, and several people in the crowd booed.

“What?” said the ringmaster, in mock irritation, “Not perilous enough for you?”

“Let’s up the ante then!” he exclaimed, sweeping his arm dramatically across his body to point at the centre of the ring. At this cue, a red velvet curtain upstage dropped to the ground to reveal a gigantic cubic glass tank filled with water. “What if I told you that she will drown if she fails?”

“That’s more like it!” shouted someone in front of me.

Sam must have known that this was all part of the ringmaster’s spiel, since she looked up expectantly just as a steel cable with a leather harness attached descended from high up in the tent.

The ringmaster strapped the harness around Sam’s waist and chest, and she sailed into the air and over to the tank, coming to rest with her feet a few inches from the waterline.

“Are you ready Sam?” said the ringmaster. She gulped, and then nodded affirmatively.

The ringmaster produced a stopwatch from his pocket and started it. Countdown music started playing and Sam began being slowly lowered into the water.

Sam quickly dropped the ball into the water with a splash, and fumbled with the chain so she could see the padlock’s keyway and work on it with the lock picks.

There was silence from the crowd as we watched her carefully working and feeling for the clicks of the pins in the lock. She had obviously had some prior training and practise.

By now she had been lowered into the water up to her knees.

“Look!” said a woman to my right, and I followed her gaze. The water around Sam’s feet was slowly turning red, but she was still focused on picking the lock.

A minute later Sam couldn’t ignore the stinging sensation in her legs, and she looked down into the water. She was shocked and confused by what she saw, but composed herself and redoubled her efforts with the lock picks.

After five minutes the crowd was murmuring as they could no longer see Sam’s legs at all for all the red water, and Sam could no longer concentrate on the lock for all the pain she was in.

She looked down and screamed, dropping the lock picks into the water. She tried to pull herself up out of the tank by the cable, but found that she lacked the energy to lift the ball. Instead she lifted a leg out and everyone gasped as they saw what remained of her foot — just a stub of bone.

Sam panicked and attempted to thrash her legs, but most of her blood had emptied out into the tank as the acid dissolved her body. That’s when she passed out.

The ringmaster clicked his stopwatch. “She had three minutes to spare folks,” he said glumly, pausing for effect before adding brightly, “But I didn’t lie to you — she will indeed disappear as promised! Now, let’s get on with the show!”

I watched Sam’s shoulders disappear into the acid as the ringmaster left the ring to applause and the lights slowly faded to black.