First published in Great Britain in 2017

by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2017 Lisa Heathfield

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First e-book edition 2017

ISBN 978 1 4052 8590 2

Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1779 3

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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To Frank, Arthur and Albert – for being my extraordinary.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

RITA

CHAPTER ONE: LO

RITA

LO

RITA

CHAPTER TWO: LO

RITA

CHAPTER THREE: LO

CHAPTER FOUR: LO

RITA

LO

RITA

CHAPTER FIVE: LO

RITA

CHAPTER SIX: LO

RITA

LO

CHAPTER SEVEN: LO

CHAPTER EIGHT: LO

RITA

CHAPTER NINE: LO

RITA

CHAPTER TEN: LO

RITA

LO

RITA

LO

CHAPTER ELEVEN: LO

CHAPTER TWELVE: LO

RITA

LO

RITA

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: RITA

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: RITA

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: RITA

Acknowledgements

Back series promotional page

Praise for Lisa Heathfield’s SEED

Praise for Lisa Heathfield’s PAPER BUTTERFLIES

RITA

The air in the alleyway sticks to my skin. The bricks sit too close, pushing grief deeper into me. I stop to touch the walls.

Were you here, Lo?

I listen for a reply. Listen hard for her laughter, but it’s not here. The silence grips so hard at my heart that I don’t know how I breathe.

Dean stands waiting at the end of the alley, framed by daylight. It’s only a few weeks since I’ve seen him, a few weeks since he was my sister’s whispered secret, but he looks so different. Lo loved his eyes, but they’re raw with a sadness I never knew could exist.

‘Are you ok?’ he asks, but he knows I’m not. Neither of us are.

‘She really liked you,’ I say, my words stumbling in the bricked-in air. But he just stares at me, this boy from a world I don’t know, a world that never moves on, unlike our circus.

‘It’s this way,’ is all he says.

A building stands in front of us and I know it’s the abandoned factory that he came to with Lo. But she said it was beautiful and it’s not. It’s grey and broken and I feel cheated.

‘Is this your ma’s old factory?’ I ask.

Dean looks surprised. ‘Lo told you?’

‘She wanted me to see it.’

I’m here now, Lo. But where are you?

The pain of missing her weighs on me, so heavy that I have to crouch down. I put my head into my hands, press so hard that my eyes hurt, dig my fingers deep into my skull until I can feel my hair pulling hard from my scalp.

I know Dean sits next to me. He moves my hands and puts them on the floor where Lo once walked. Then he stands up, this boy who burned so strong for her.

‘This way,’ he says.

He leads me down the side of the factory and we climb on to a rusting container and scramble through a hollow window. We’re in the room that Lo described, with its low ceiling and empty squares where glass should be. I remember her eyes lighting up when she told me about it, and I thought I’d find a place sprinkled with rainbow ends.

I follow Dean up some stairs. Through a door and there’s another with a lock on that he opens. It’s a small room and there’s a painting on the wall in front of us, two people sitting on a cliff, a blur of birds above them.

‘Did Lo come here?’ I ask. Did you leave your footprint?

‘She did this.’ He points to the wall next to us. There’s a long blue line and standing on the end of it is a stick girl with a too-pink face and a big red mouth. ‘She’s meant to be you.’

‘I’m smiling,’ I say.

A stick man has his arm round me. I know it’s my da. Lo must have stood here, concentrating, but still she painted a leg too long. I imagine her laughing, looking away at the wrong time.

‘Who’s that?’ I ask, pointing to a figure lying down on the line.

‘Your granddad. That’s him too.’ The next figure is sitting up and has wide, round eyes. ‘And that one, that’s your mum.’ The stick woman has been drawn in the same raggedy way, clumsy lines making her fall slightly from the wire. But her face is clear as daylight.

‘You painted her face?’

‘I just helped.’ Dean looks away.

‘Why?’

‘No reason.’ But there is. Lo has secrets hidden in this boy.

On the end, there’s a girl balancing tiptoe on the line.

‘Lo,’ I say quietly, but Dean doesn’t answer.

He’s painted her with open arms and she’s smiling. Leaves are weaved into her hair and birds are scattered around her hands. Feathered wings curve from her back and rise in an arc above her head.

‘She’s beautiful,’ I say.

Dean stands with his hands in his pockets. He has hurt and grief all folding in on themselves. Tears are on his cheeks, but I’m useless.

What should I do, Lo? How did you know him, when he’s a stranger to me?

Without asking, I go to the row of cans underneath the painting. I look through the colours until I find the one that I want. The lid is difficult to get off, but I pull until it’s free.

I want to paint it above Lo’s head, but she’s too tall, with her angel wings. So I hold the can next to her and spray it on to the wall, turning the drips into a clumsy red heart. In the middle I write ‘Lo’. It’s better than a footprint, I tell her. It won’t disappear.

With the can in my hand I look at Dean.

‘Where else did you go with her?’ I ask him.

He hesitates for long enough for me to know that he doesn’t want me walking in all their memories.

‘The beach,’ he says.

‘Let’s go there.’ But before we leave, I lean my hand on Lo’s wall. I want her angel wings to come alive and fold round me until I sleep and sleep and make it all go away. I need her to step out of the painting, her bare foot leaving the line and coming away from the bricks until she’s standing here next to me.

But she doesn’t, because she’s not alive. And all I can do is kiss her painted cheek and silently beg to go back to before.

CHAPTER ONE

LO

Rita, Sarah and I sprinkle sawdust over the waterlogged grass, making a path from our vans to the big top. Little chips that we scoop and throw and I know when we’re gone that they’ll slowly get trodden down and disappear, just as we do.

Baby Stan, who’s named after his da, sits in the middle of us, his hands spread happy on the wet earth. Rita works in front of me, focused completely as she digs the spade into the wood shavings in the wheelbarrow, balancing it and throwing it steady on to the ground. She’s always faster than me. I’m happy to hide behind the fact that she’s eleven months older and must be stronger.

‘You should slow down, Rites,’ I tell her.

‘And you should get more clothes on,’ she laughs, pointing to the little gold top I’m wearing.

Sarah slaps a piece of shredded wood from Baby Stan’s fingers.

‘Not in your mouth,’ she says. For a moment he looks at his big sister from where he’s sitting in the damp, deciding whether to cry, but she stares at him until he turns away. ‘Your hands are filthy,’ she tells him, even though she must know he hasn’t enough months under his belt to understand.

She reminds me so much of Ash when he was her age. The pale face with freckles that never disappear. Their ma, Carla, says she stewed their hair in a copper pot when they were born, but Ash shaves his head so close now that you can barely see the colour.

The rain is light, but the drops are still batting into my eyes.

‘Where’s Spider when you need him?’ I ask.

‘You reckon friends can change the weather?’ Rita asks.

‘You never know. If he can eat fire, I reckon he can stop the rain.’

‘I bet Ash couldn’t,’ Rita says.

‘Don’t you like him today?’

‘No,’ Rita says firmly, but I just laugh at her. Ever since we were children they’ve been in love, and we all know they’re meant to be together, even if sometimes their relationship rocks unsteady. ‘I wish he’d marry a flattie.’

Sarah looks shocked. ‘You don’t mean that. She knows we’re not allowed to be with people who don’t have circus blood.’

‘You should be careful what you wish for,’ I tell Rita, as I scoop up the last scraps of sawdust from the barrow, throwing them high into the air, before we watch them settle heavy and wet on the ground.

‘Come on,’ Rita says. ‘Rob’ll be waiting.’

‘Is he really going to put in the new motorbike trick?’ Sarah asks.

‘He says it’ll bring in more people,’ Rita says.

‘Will it be dangerous?’

‘It has to be.’

Sarah walks quickly to keep up, stopping with us as I balance the wheelbarrow against the props van.

‘Tricks’ll kill you if you leave that there,’ Rita tells me.

‘I’ll say it was you then.’ I laugh and link my arm through hers as we go into the big top.

‘What’s that?’ Sarah asks. A huge bowl takes up almost the entire space of the performance ring. Its walls are made from a giant metal spider’s web.

‘Rob hired it,’ Rita says. Ash looks over and smiles when he hears her voice. He’s standing next to Ernest, Spider’s da, and even though he’s taller than him he still looks like the boy we’ve grown up with. He’s handsome too and I wonder why Rita can even doubt him.

Da’s back is to us. ‘The risks are too high.’ He’s an angel’s breath shorter than Rob, but he’s determined.

‘It’s what they want to see, or we lose them,’ Rob says.

‘I think it looks exciting,’ Sarah says and Da turns to us.

‘Lo and I are OK with it,’ Rita says, going to stand next to Rob.

‘But I’m not sure I am,’ Da says.

‘It’s no bigger a risk than anything else we do,’ Rob says, his hand on the seat of the motorbike. ‘It might look it, but the consequences are all the same.’

‘He’s saying we could all die doing any one of our tricks,’ Ash laughs.

‘You’re not helping.’ Rob stares at him.

‘It’s not your daughters at risk, Rob,’ Da says.

‘But we’ve worked on it,’ Rob reassures him. ‘It won’t go wrong.

‘Won’t it?’

‘We’re ready for it,’ I tell Da. ‘We want to do it.’ I look at Rita and she nods.

‘Why are you so worried this time?’ Ma asks him.

‘Because we haven’t practised enough,’ Da answers. ‘This is the first time with the actual bowl and he wants us to perform it in a couple of days.’

‘You’ve got to trust me,’ Rob insists. ‘It’ll be worth it.’

Ernest looks at Da steadily. ‘It might be pushing it for us,’ he says, ‘but that doesn’t mean it’s not safe. It’s just new.’ His wiry hair is pulled back in a ponytail, but stray bits still crackle out from his forehead. The teasing that he can’t be Spider’s da, not looking so different, sometimes touches too much on true.

‘We’ll be OK, Da,’ Rita says, linking her arm through his. ‘You’re just getting nervous in your old age.’

‘Who are you calling old?’ The smile he has can’t cut out the worry, but it’s enough for us to know he’s backing down.

‘Nerves are our enemy,’ Ernest reminds him.

But they’re my friend too. They hold me before every jump. They’re by my side and never really let me go, sending sparks through me and making my smile real.

‘I think we should trust Rob,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ Sarah says. She’s desperate to impress, to be the centre of the performance.

‘Right then,’ Rob says quickly. ‘Let’s try it out.’

We follow him and Ernest as they push the motorbikes to the edge of the ring door curtains.

‘So,’ Rob says, ‘Lo, remember you’re not happy as the changeling, you want to get back to your world. That’s the feeling you’ve got to get across to the audience.’

I catch Rita’s eye and pull a face.

‘It’s not funny, Lo,’ Rob says seriously. ‘Just going through the motions isn’t enough. You’ve got to actually feel it, make the audience really believe.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘I’m not the boss.’

‘He certainly isn’t,’ Ernest says. ‘He’s just a young pretender.’ But there’s warmth in his voice. Most flatties who join us only stay for a few months, but Rob has been with us four years and he’s woven to our circus fabric now.

‘You ready, fairy queen?’ I ask Rita.

‘Of course,’ she smiles, before she puts on her helmet, clicking it firmly into place.

Rob and Ma sit on one motorbike. They pull down their black visors together, blocking themselves off from us. Da stands to the side with Sarah and Ash, watching as Rita and I climb on to the other bike behind Ernest. I have to crouch at the back and steady myself, before I pull my own helmet over my head.

Immediately, the sounds are numbed. Inside it, the world shrinks to just me.

Ernest turns to us. ‘Ready?’

‘Yes.’ I think the word stays trapped in the mask and so I nod.

‘Ten laps, then Rita, you jump on to Rob’s motorbike. Two more, then it’s you, Lo. They’re quick, so count. Don’t forget,’ he says. ‘OK?’ And I nod before he pulls down his visor.

We’ve been over and over it and it’s locked in my mind. Still, I run through it, the exact pressure from my feet, where my hands must be.

Rob and Ernest start the engines, filling the big top with the noise of the bikes. I hold Rita tight as we race and tip to the edge of the wall down into the bowl. From here, it’s beautiful, a perfect crater, a metal web for the future audience to see through.

We drop into it and the speed is instant. One lap. Ma and Rob rush past us, head on, the fronts of our bikes almost scraping. Two laps. If I reached out, I could touch them. Three. I count as the wheels leap up above the edge, a mirror to them, air beneath us. My blood has become fire. I count the rest of the laps, each one burning adrenaline deeper into me.

Rob comes close and Rita leaps on to their bike. I’m not meant to look, but I do. For long seconds the noise cradles her, before she’s caught by Ma and she’s safe.

One more lap.

‘Go!’ I hear Ernest shout.

I don’t have time to think, only jump in the way Rob’s taught me, enough to reach them.

In one breath, everything is washed silent, before the world is back and I land behind Rita.

But I’ve misjudged it. I know as soon as my foot hits the seat that it’s in the wrong place, the bike will unbalance. It tips too far to the side and Rita falls. Ma swings out an arm for her, but Rita crashes on to the metal and spins away from us.

I try to jump for her, but Ma grabs me. She holds me until the bike stops on the ledge and I see Rita, curled too far away. We run and when I get to her there’s blood on my sister, twisting in ribbons up her arm. I try to say her name, but my breathing swallows it.

Ash stands motionless as Ma kneels next to her and Da is taking the helmet gently from her head. Rita’s eyes are open. Her curls are smeared against her skin and shock is covering her face, but she’s breathing. The world starts ticking again as I take off my helmet.

‘Rita?’ I crouch down, scared to touch her.

‘It went a bit wrong,’ she smiles weakly, her words lopsided.

‘Does anything hurt apart from your arm?’ Da asks her. She shakes her head. ‘And can you move your legs?’

‘Yes,’ she replies. So he puts his arms under her, carefully lifts her and carries her quickly up the edge of the crater. Now I hold my sister’s hand. The skin from her shoulder to her elbow is grazed and packed with blood.

‘Your arm’s a mess,’ I tell her.

‘At least it’s not my face.’

‘Not the face,’ I say. And her laughter is enough.

We don’t light the barrel fire. It feels wrong to do it until Rita is back safe with us. Instead, we sit in Ernest and Helen’s van, waiting for more news.

‘Why haven’t they phoned again?’ Rob is pacing up and down through the centre of us all.

‘It doesn’t mean anything is wrong,’ Ernest says. ‘Just that they’ll be busy.’ I know he’s saying the words for me too, using ones that I need to hear. Spider and I were born within days of each other, so his parents treat me almost like their own.

‘And she’s not concussed,’ Helen says. ‘Ray said they just need to check that nothing’s broken.’

I imagine the camera looking through to my sister’s bones and in my mind I make them a smooth white, with no chips or cracks.

‘She’ll be OK, Lo,’ Spider tells me, squeezing my hand.

‘It’s not your fault, Rob,’ Ernest tells him. ‘Things go wrong.’

‘Rita could’ve died,’ Rob says.

‘But she didn’t,’ I remind him. He shouldn’t feel guilty about this. He only pushes us because he wants our circus to survive. ‘You made her wear the helmet. You made us all do that, so in a way you saved her.’

‘I’m not sure your da will see it like that,’ Ash says. He’s ripping little shreds of white paper and chewing them into balls. He spits them careless into his hand and drops them in the waste bin. I’m glad Stan and Carla have taken Sarah back to their van, so she won’t see him looking so worried.

‘Spider says she’s going to be OK, Ash,’ I tell him, but I’m speaking quickly, trying to wash away my own guilt. If I had landed properly, if I had got it right, then Rita would be safe with us now.

Ash looks up at Rob, lets his eyes follow his pacing. ‘The flatties don’t need so much danger when they come to see us.’

‘I think they do,’ Rob says.

‘So you’re still going to keep in the motorbikes?’ Ash asks. Rob looks so briefly at me that I doubt he sees me nod.

‘Yes,’ he says.

Spider’s ma takes a thick cloth from a hook and reaches into the oven. She pulls out two trays settled in steam and a sweet smell clings to the room. No one says a word as she picks out her thin china plates from the cupboard. Her spoon sinks deep and steady through the bread pudding.

‘Spider,’ she says, without looking up. ‘Pass it round.’ And he gets up.

I’ve never once seen him falter in his ma’s demands. Ernest and Helen wanted children enough to line the tent with, but were blessed only with Spider. Sometimes, I think their dreams for him are too heavy on his shoulders. Sometimes, I imagine lifting them off bit by bit and letting the real Spider roam free.

He passes me a plate. I don’t want to have it, not without Rita here, and I know I won’t feel like it until she walks through the door. But I’ve been given the food and so I must eat, the sugar tasteless on my tongue.

It’s gone ten o’clock when Ash and I see the lights of Da’s car swing into their place. We turn from looking through the window and run out of the door, jumping down the steps in one and getting to the car as it’s still ticking hot.

Rita’s face looks tired through the window, but she’s smiling. I open the door, but it’s Ash she’s looking at and it makes everything feel uneven.

‘Are you OK?’ he asks her, reaching in to hold her hand.

‘I’m fine,’ she says. She has Da’s jacket perched big on her shoulders, a white fabric bandage winding thick up her arm.

‘Let’s get you into Terini,’ Ma says, leading us across the grass towards mine and Rita’s van, stopped next to theirs.

‘You could’ve at least broken it,’ I say to Rita, prodding her better arm.

‘I wish I had,’ she says. ‘Instead I’m going to have a scar like a wrinkled old prune.’

‘It’ll match your face nice, then,’ Ash smiles and he kisses her quick on the lips before she can protest. It’s the first time he’s kissed her like that where Ma and Da can see and it makes the dark air prickle awkward.

‘They’ll be turning in early tonight,’ Da tells Ash, as we get to the steps of Terini.

‘Oh, OK.’ Ash doesn’t take his eyes from our Rita. ‘You sure you’re all right?’ he asks her.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Good,’ he says earnestly. ‘I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.’

‘I can’t feel a thing,’ she laughs. ‘Not with all the painkillers.’

‘If you’re sure then,’ Ash says. ‘I’ll say goodnight.’

‘Goodnight,’ Rita says and Ma is already pushing her fast through the door.

‘Night, Ash.’ I hug him tight and feel the last of his worry dissolve, before I climb the van’s steps and shut our door to the world.

Inside, Ma is pulling back the duvet on Rita’s top bunk. ‘Lo, promise me you’ll come and get me from our van if Rita needs me,’ she says.

‘I will. I promise.’

‘I’m not happy about leaving you for the night,’ Ma says.

‘I’m fine, Ma,’ Rita tells her. ‘I’m just going to sleep.’

‘You’re only next door, Ma,’ I remind her.

‘Don’t keep her chatting all night, Lo. She needs to rest.’ Even at her most stern, Ma’s face is still beautiful.

‘I’ll be quiet as a mouse,’ I laugh.

‘OK,’ she says, tucking Rita’s curl gentle behind her ear. ‘You sure?’

‘Night, Ma,’ Rita says, hugging her and pushing her out of the door, closing it so that it’s only us.

‘Ash was worried,’ I tell Rita, as she pulls her bandaged arm through the sleeve of her top.

‘Was he?’

‘Of course he was. He’s good through and through, your Ash,’ I say.

‘My Ash?’

‘You know he is, Rita.’

And she replies with only a smile.

RITA

We moved on yesterday, so my arm has had a day to recover, but Ma still brought my breakfast to Terini this morning. I don’t go to Mada until lunchtime and now they flit around me, making me sit at the table and not letting me help at all.

‘My arm’s not that bad,’ I say. ‘I’d like to do something at least.’ It doesn’t feel right sat here watching Ma and Lo do all the work.

‘Make the most of it,’ Ma smiles at me, as she puts a plate of Russian cutlets in front of me.

‘It makes a nice change to see you sitting down,’ Grands says. He’s in his armchair as he likes, his tray of scran balanced on his lap. It’s only been a year since Rita and I moved into our own van, to make space for Grands in here, but now I can’t imagine him anywhere else.

‘It’s a strange town, this one,’ I say.

‘Why?’ Ma asks, as she pours gravy from the pan into the jug.

‘It’s just got a funny feel to it,’ I say. Lo puts her plate next to Da and he moves up to make room.

‘We’ve only been here a day,’ Ma says. ‘You’ve hardly seen it.’ She wipes at the edge of her mouth with the napkin. A bit of her lipstick sticks to the material.

‘It’s just strange,’ I say. ‘And there’s not much of a view, either.’ Sometimes we’re next to fields and hills, but now the window by the sink looks on to the wall at the edge of the park.

‘Not like the pitch near Haworth,’ Da says. ‘Do you remember those sunsets across the moors, Liz?’

Ma screws up her face. ‘With those wild horses that stuck their noses through our windows?’ She’s already done her hair, even though it’s early, some dark curls trapped in a knot, the rest falling by her neck.

‘We should’ve kept one,’ I say.

‘They’re meant to be free,’ Lo says. She balances a pea on the side of her plate and flicks it at me. But I’m too quick and catch it in my fingers.

‘Too slow, Bozo,’ I laugh. She picks up two more, but Da clamps his hand over hers.

‘Don’t waste food, Lo.’

‘It’s only two peas, Da.’ But she’s laughing as she throws them into her mouth, smiling widely so that I can see them held squashed between her teeth.

‘Nice,’ I say.

‘Like your mangled arm,’ she says.

‘Lo.’ Ma’s not smiling any more.

‘It’s not mangled,’ I say. ‘Look, it moves and everything.’ I bend it crooked at the elbow, then stretch it out to wiggle my fingers.

‘I think that Rob is pushing you too far,’ Grands says, laying his knife and fork neatly on his plate.

‘He knows what he’s doing,’ I say.

‘Does he?’ Grands asks. Although it was before Rob’s time, memories of Gran Margaret whisper around us, her accident never far from Grands’ eyes.

‘Nothing bad will happen to us,’ I tell him. ‘Rob cares about us too much to put us in real danger.’ Lo told me how he paced up and down last night, his thoughts filled with me.

‘Are you definitely all right to perform?’ Lo asks, serious now. Blame isn’t a word we use in our circus, but deep inside her I can tell that guilt still flickers.

‘Course,’ I say. ‘Besides, it’s only set-up today.’

‘You’re not to do any heavy lifting,’ Da tells me.

‘I’d better look after her then,’ Lo tries, but Da just clips her gently round the head.

‘You, Miss Lolita, will have to work twice as hard.’

LO

With set-up finally finished, Rita and I go to find the barrel fire. Rob is already there in the darkness sitting on his stool, Spider on the carved log next to him. Sarah sits cross-legged on the grass, watching as Ash throws some wood in and pokes at the flames with a stick.

‘I’m just saying, he shouldn’t have done it,’ Rob says.

‘Who’s done what?’ I ask, unhooking Rita’s arm from mine. Rob moves up for us and we sit next to him on the stretch of log by the warm.

‘You don’t need to know,’ Spider says.

‘I don’t need to, but I want to,’ I say, yet his silence is the only answer I get.

The dark edges of the park sit behind us, watching the back of my jacket sewn with a dragon’s head, its fire-breath winding up my sleeve.

Tips of orange burn out of the barrel as Ash sits down.

‘When you going to be my bride, Rita?’ he asks as he does every time.

‘Never,’ she replies.

I laugh. ‘You will, Rites.’

Rob chuckles and spits at his feet.

‘Are you coming to see the town with us?’ Spider asks him.

‘I’ll leave you younger ones to enjoy it alone tonight,’ Rob says.

‘You’re not much older,’ Rita tells him, tipping her head slightly as she looks at him. When Rob joined us, I couldn’t tell his age. He slipped between us and our parents and I know he’s really settled somewhere in between.

‘Ready to go?’ Ash asks, his eyes only for Rita.

‘Maybe,’ she says, although she knows she will. We have to explore. If we didn’t, I tell her, our souls will shrivel up and die.

‘Should you go out with your arm still bad?’ Rob asks her.

‘It’s loads better already,’ she says, giving him a smile to wash away his guilt.

‘Can I come?’ Sarah asks, wide-eyed in the flame light.

‘You shouldn’t even still be awake.’ Ash ruffles his sister’s hair and she ducks away from him, making it neat again.

‘It won’t be long before you join us,’ I tell her.

‘And you’re not exactly missing much,’ Rita adds.

‘Don’t be late back,’ Rob says, leaning forwards with his elbows on his knees. The fire-shine catches on one cheek, the other in shadow. ‘It’ll be an early start.’ He picks up a leaf and starts slowly shredding it, dropping each section to the ground when he’s done.

‘We won’t be,’ Rita says.

I stretch my legs out in front of me, my arms straight to the solid black sky. The warm from the fire touches the line of my bare belly, between my top and my jeans.

‘It’s endless up there,’ I say, as my bracelets clink down on each other. They sound like stars falling.

‘We should get going then,’ Ash says. He stands up and puts his hands out towards Rita. She lets him pull her to her feet, but won’t keep her fire-warmed palm in his.

‘Sure you don’t want to come?’ Spider asks Rob.

‘I’m staying here,’ he says, still staring into the flames.

‘Suit yourself,’ I say, grabbing Spider’s hand to pull myself up. ‘See you later.’

We walk across the darkening grass, Rita linking her arm through mine. Two boys cut close nearby on bikes, caps low on their heads. They stare at us for too long and I wonder if our circus blood somehow sits on the outside of our skin. Spider starts to walk more quickly, so we stay with him and Ash until we’re by the road and we follow the way the few cars are headed as they thread through the night.

‘This place gives me the creeps,’ Rita says.

‘It’s OK,’ I say.

‘Nah. There’s something rotten in the air.’

‘You won’t think that when people pay to come and see you prancing around in your feathers,’ Ash says.

‘Fair enough.’

We cross the road at the traffic lights and the shops on either side are ones we’ve seen a thousand times before. It’s too late for them to be open, but there’re still people around.

‘I bet they’re all ghosts,’ I say.

‘I don’t care, as long as they’ve lots of lova to make us rich,’ Spider says.

‘We’ll never be rich, Spides,’ I say. Even with Rob’s new ideas, every year less people come to see us.

‘It’s definitely got grimy air,’ Rita says.

‘We won’t be stopping long,’ I remind her.

‘Lil said no good was coming. Maybe it’s here that it’s going to happen,’ Rita says.

‘Lil spouts baloney,’ Ash reminds her and I know he’s right. Lil, with her ancient van and cards she can’t really read.

‘No more than you,’ she says. Ash looks hurt. He must feel like a boat cut loose – one day Rita is kissing him, the next she doesn’t want to know.

The line of shops moves out, curving round a fountain stuck large in the concrete. It reaches high, its water tumbling in prickling lines.

‘There’s something nice,’ I say, pointing towards it.

‘The water, or the forbidden flattie boys?’ Rita asks. Sitting on the edge are three of them. They watch us as we get closer. They were talking, but now they’re quiet.

‘Evening,’ I say.

‘Evening,’ the boy nearest us says, a cap tight down over his eyes while the other two just nod.

‘Lost your tongues?’ I ask, but my words have no sharp edges to them.

‘Hi,’ the boy next to him says, his face cracked through with acne scars. I bet Lil’s cream could sort him out. The boy at the end with the stud through his ear stays silent.

I lean over the stone ledge and put the tips of my fingers into the bubbling water. Beneath the foam is a scatter of coins. If these boys weren’t here, I know what I would be doing now.

Spider and Ash look like they want to keep walking, but I sit down and catch my hand in the falling tracks of spray.

The nearest boy takes off his cap and there’s an instant pull inside me. Da always told me it’s best not to look at a flattie too long, but I’ve never seen one like this. He’s got cheekbones you could balance cups on. And Ma says curls on a boy mean he’s honest, so I reckon his blood is true through and through.

‘You’re not from round here?’ he asks. He has hair the same deep brown as Spider’s.

‘No,’ I say. ‘We’re with the circus.’

‘Serious?’ the middle boy asks. ‘The one in East Park?’

‘I don’t know if it’s east, but it’s a park,’ I say.

‘You must’ve seen the posters,’ the same boy says to the other two. ‘The one with the angel on it.’

‘It’s a changeling,’ Rita tells him.

‘A what?’

‘A fairy left in place of a stolen child,’ the nearest boy says.

‘How d’you know that?’ the boy on the end laughs.

‘But in our circus, it’s the changeling who wants to get back to her home,’ Rita says.

‘It looks like an angel on the poster,’ he says.

‘They’re the same thing,’ I tell him. ‘Didn’t you know?’

‘It’s not like a normal circus then?’ the nearest boy says. He’s looking right at me as he speaks.

‘It’s more frightening,’ I say, willing him to look away first, but he doesn’t.

‘Do you do all the normal stuff, though?’ the middle boy asks.

‘You’ll have to come and see,’ I reply.

‘We should get going,’ Ash says, stepping closer to Rita.

‘We’ve only just got here, Ash. You can go if you want,’ I tell him. ‘Rita and I won’t be long.’

‘You can’t stay on your own,’ Spider says. ‘Your ma would kill us.’

‘We’re not on our own,’ I say. But Ash and Spider don’t move.

‘Is there a clown then?’ the middle boy asks. I touch my finger to my eye as quick as I can and I know the others do it too. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks, uneasy.

‘Superstition.’ I regret it as soon as I say it. I don’t want them walking into our world.

‘I’m Dean,’ the boy nearest us says. He puts out his hand to shake mine, all formal. I have to take my fingers from the water and wipe the wet across my jeans.

Dean. I take his name and wrap it and unwrap it in my head.

‘Lo,’ I say.

‘Is that your real name?’ he asks.

‘No. Laura is.’ He doesn’t speak, but he nods his head and has a smile that says he likes it. ‘This is Rita,’ I say and he shakes her hand too, staring right into her eyes in a way that makes my stomach flip with jealousy.

‘I’m Will,’ the boy next to him says, leaning across to shake Rita’s hand and then mine.

‘Paul,’ the boy with the earring says, tipping his finger to his forehead in a mini salute.

‘What’s it like then, this town?’ I ask, as Spider shuffles his feet and Ash steps even closer to Rita’s side.

‘It’s all right,’ Will says. ‘What’s it like in the circus?’

‘It’s all right.’ I mimic his words.

‘It’s everything,’ Rita says.

Dean sort of squints at the pair of us.

‘Are you two sisters?’ he asks.

‘Rita’s the eldest,’ I say.

‘Only by eleven months,’ she reminds me.

‘And the sensibillist.’

‘Is that even a word, Lo?’ Rita laughs.

Dean wears a denim jacket that looks battered by too many years. Underneath it, his white T-shirt is clean. His fingernails are cut properly and clean too. Ma would approve, if he wasn’t a flattie.

‘Are you brothers?’ I smile at all of them.

‘Nah,’ Will says. ‘I’m too good-looking to be related to them.’

A group of girls walk past, their heels clicking on the concrete. I like their laughter. It almost swallows them whole.

‘What’s it really like?’ The look Dean gives me swoops down into my bones. ‘Travelling all the time?’

‘It’s what we know,’ I say. I won’t tell these strangers how sometimes I wonder if I want more. That maybe the circus isn’t always enough.

‘It’s home,’ Ash says.

‘But you’re always moving.’

‘The outside isn’t home. It’s the inside,’ Rita says. ‘Inside the vans and inside us.’

‘We like it,’ Ash says from next to her. He hovers like a crow.

‘I think you’re lucky,’ Paul says. He’s perched on the end, leaning far enough forwards so the conversation reaches him.

‘So do we,’ Rita says.

‘What’s it like staying in one place all the time?’ I ask.

‘Boring,’ chips in Will. ‘I wouldn’t mind coming with you.’ The way his eyes are on me makes me feel naked.

‘We don’t let just anybody in,’ Ash says.

‘Were you born into it then?’ Dean asks. I feel safer with him looking at me.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And our ma and da before us.’

‘They’re circus born and bred?’ Will asks.

‘And proud of it,’ Ash tells him.

‘Why wouldn’t they be?’ Dean looks up at him. ‘It sounds like a good way of life.’ Ash only pushes his hands back into his pockets and shrugs.

I put my hand palm-down into the water. I turn to kneel on the edge and then tip myself over. I splash into the cold wet, my feet the last to disappear.

Under here, I can’t see or hear anyone. In the blackness, I feel the grainy floor of the fountain, my fingers brushing past circles of coins. When I can no longer breathe, I go back, my head breaking through the bubbles on the surface.

‘I’ve got one,’ I say, holding my hand high in the air.

‘What are you doing?’ Paul sounds uncertain as he looks around. I wipe the water from my eyes.

‘I had to get a lucky coin,’ I say. I pull my slippery self back on to the ledge and squeeze more water from me, the dragon’s fiery tongue dripping icy wet from my sleeve.

The coin in my palm is a one pence piece.

‘It’ll protect you from this spooky town,’ Rita says, as I close my fingers round it, feeling my jeans cling cold to me now.

‘You think it’s a spooky town?’ Dean asks her, but he’s looking at me.

‘I like it here,’ I say.

‘You must be freezing, Lo,’ Rita says, ignoring him. She links her arm through mine and immediately I feel the fountain’s water sinking through my top.

‘Best get home,’ Spider says and as Rita gets up she pulls me with her.

‘It was nice to meet you,’ Dean says. He’s smiling at me.

‘And you,’ Rita says.

‘Will we see you again?’ he asks. The boys I know aren’t like him and I want to pull him with us and keep him close to me as the sky turns light.

‘Come to the show,’ I say before we walk away, the fountain’s water dripping from me, my lucky coin curled into my palm.

RITA

‘Your hair is still wet,’ I tell Lo. ‘Ma would kill you if she saw you going to bed like that.’

‘Then it’s a bit of luck we’ve got our own van,’ she says, squeezing her fringe tight in her hand. ‘Look, no drips. I’ll be fine.’

She puts her clothes in our tiny bathroom, hanging crooked over the toilet seat.

‘Are you cold?’ I ask.

‘You’re fussing,’ Lo says, jumping into her bed and running her legs quick under her duvet. ‘I’m toasty as toast.’

‘What imaginative words you have,’ I laugh, pulling myself over the bottom rungs of our ladder to get into the bunk above her.

‘All the better to eat you with.’

‘Words don’t eat, Lo.’

‘The knife and fork ones do.’ Her laughter fills our bedroom. There’s something different about her since we went out and met those boys, something fizzing under her skin.

‘Which one was it then?’ I ask.

‘Which what?’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. Which boy did you like?’

‘Which boy where?’

‘Lo.’

She pauses. I hear her scratch the slats of my bed as she always does before she tells me a secret.

‘Dean,’ she says.

‘The one with the cap?’

‘Mm.’

‘Just mm?’

‘Mm mm.’

‘I see.’

In the silence, I can hear the water from Lo’s clothes dripping on to the toilet seat. They’ll be hanging there, dark from the wet, and I know they’ll never be dry by morning.

‘What did it feel like?’ I ask. ‘When you first saw him?’ I want to know if burning hearts are true.

‘It felt like the air stopped.’

I don’t want to be jealous, but I am.

‘But he’s a flattie.’

‘I know.’

I click off the lamp that Da fixed to the edge of my bed, the lead hanging down all the way past Lo.

‘I want to see him again, Rita.’

‘You know Da won’t approve.’

‘I won’t tell him.’

I hear her turn over in her bed. She’s stopped kicking her legs, so I hope the cold has left her.

‘Does it feel different? To you and Spider?’

‘Yes, completely,’ she says. ‘More like you and Ash.’

‘I’ve told you, I don’t like him right now.’

‘But why not? Anyone can see you’re meant to be together. You’re lucky.’

‘Am I?’

‘Of course you are,’ she says, yet the happy parts have gone from her voice. ‘At least you can be with Ash if you want to be.’

‘Don’t be sad, Lo.’

‘I’m not.’ But I hear her breath weighed heavy in the dark.

CHAPTER TWO

LO

‘Your breakfast is getting cold. Hurry up, the pair of you.’ Ma throws my jeans on to the bed. ‘Or Da will start eating it,’ she says over her shoulder as she goes out of our bedroom and closes the front door behind her.

‘We should take her key away,’ I say.

‘What, ban her from Terini?’ Rita asks.

‘It’s our space. What’s the point of moving out of Mada if they can just come in when they want?’ I poke my hands into the wooden slats of her bed above me.

‘You try telling Ma that,’ Rita says. Her mattress huffs and I imagine her pulling the duvet tight around her.

‘Maybe not.’

I bring my legs round the bottom of the ladder, touching it three times with my thumb to keep the witch in there sleeping. She walked straight out of a storybook Ma read us one day and now she sits too often waiting to scratch our ankles.

‘Those boys last night,’ I say, standing on tiptoes and reaching to the ceiling.

‘Are you still thinking about him?’

‘Girls!’ Da shouts from the steps of their van.

‘Keep your hair on,’ Rita muffles into her pillow. But there’ll be bacon frying and that’s enough to make me dress quick and take me out of Terini and into Mada’s kitchen.

‘Morning, Grands,’ I say. He’s always the first person we go to, sitting deep in his armchair. He puts down his book to give me a kiss.

‘Morning, love.’

‘What was the town like?’ Ma asks. She’s washing up hurriedly in the sink.

‘Quiet,’ I say.

‘Just quiet?’

‘Everything was shut. We just walked around.’

‘Just you and Rita?’ She stops to look over her shoulder at me.

‘And Spides and Ash. We met a couple of locals. And I went swimming in the fountain.’

Ma doesn’t react. I wonder if she’s even heard, as she scrubs the sponge so hard round the mug that I’m surprised she doesn’t wear the china away.

Dean is in my mind now. I taste the toast I pick up, but I’m with him, back on the ledge. He’s looking at me as I look at him. Rita always said we’d know. The instant our souls met, that that would be it.

‘Rita!’ Ma shouts from the steps, enough to jolt Grands’ hand and make his book fall from his lap loud on to the floor.

The rain pounds on the roof of our empty big top, its noise echoing heavy inside, filling up even the tiniest spaces.

‘It better have stopped by later,’ Rita says. ‘Or the music will get swallowed.’

‘By a rain beast?’ I ask, raising my eyebrow at her.

‘Exactly,’ she says.

Between us, her costume sits on the ground, the snagged material needing to be tucked under and sewn. I’m unpicking a feather stuck in the way of the thread and don’t notice Rob before he’s standing next to us.

‘That doesn’t exactly need two of you,’ he says.

‘It’s because of her arm,’ I tell him, smiling up at him. ‘She can’t possibly do this on her own.’ He knows it’s not true. Lil insisted on curing Rita with one of her creams and the skin is healing quick.

‘Join us if you like?’ Rita asks, though he wouldn’t be much help.

‘No time,’ he says. ‘Tricks is making me double-check the bike engine.’

‘I could help you when we’ve finished this,’ Rita says, but she’s talking to the back of his coat, as he’s already walking away from us and through the ring door curtains.

I hold the needle careful in my fingers, wet the end of the thread with my mouth before looping it through. The rain still beats down above us.

‘Do you really think we’re lucky?’ I ask Rita. ‘That we live like this.’

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Why would you ask that?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking, that’s all.’

‘Then don’t,’ she says, sounding just like Ma. ‘Because we don’t fit anywhere else.’

I twist the thread into a knot and don’t say any more.

My make-up is so heavy I can barely open my eyes, gold glitter dancing across my cheekbones. I’ve threaded the feathers into my hair and stepped into the sequinned suit of my changeling skin.

For this part, I put the thin white dress over the top, its sleeves dipped in beads, and I loop my arms into the elastic of my purple wings so that they stretch out across my back.

I never look in the mirror in my costume – I once told Rita that the reflection of the fallen angel would step out and stick to her forever and I made myself believe it too.

I run across the muddy ground and up the wooden steps of Lil’s van. Inside, it’s almost dark. She’s sitting behind her table in her little wicker chair, the end of her cigarette glowing a pinprick of colour.

‘Lucky I wasn’t Tricks,’ I say. ‘Finding you smoking when customers are about to come in.’

‘What customers?’ The smoke twists and bends into the deep lines of her skin.

‘He’d sooner set you alight than see you smoking in front of them,’ I say.

She flicks ash into the bowl of water before her, her laugh collapsing into a cough that gets stuck in her closed mouth. When she opens her lips, it’s to spit phlegm into her handkerchief, which she tucks into her sleeve.

‘You wouldn’t tell though, would you, little Laura?’

‘What’s it worth?’ I laugh and she swats at me with a hand spotted with rings. I click the lamp on by her feet and a small light shivers up towards her face, leaving her eyes as hollow holes.

‘Get the customers in, girl. Let’s get the lova rolling and grow rich enough to live like queens.’

Outside, the sky is thick with clouds, but my eyes sting slightly in the daylight. We’re next to the entrance of the big top and I beckon to strangers with my long fingernails dipped in colour. There are droplets of fear in their eyes, before they look away and I want to tell them that I’m nothing like this really, that if they looked carefully, they’d see just me.

I’m spreading my wings high above me in an arc, watching the feathers mingling with the beads, when I hear people speaking.

‘It is one of them,’ a voice says. I turn and it’s two of the boys from the fountain. Dean and Will. They come right up close.

‘You look different,’ Dean says to me, making my heart quick.

‘You don’t,’ I say and I smile back at him, even though our angels are meant to keep a face blank of everything.

‘What’s this then?’ Will points his thumb to the closed van behind us.

‘It’s your destiny,’ I say and they both laugh.

‘A fortune teller?’ Will asks.

‘More than that.’ I look steady into Dean’s eyes.

‘What do we have to do then?’ he asks.

‘You’re not going in?’ Will pokes his arm.

‘Why not?’ Dean says. ‘It’s always good to know what the future has in store.’

‘It’ll be a load of nonsense.’

Dean ignores him. ‘How much is it?’

‘Three of your finest gold coins.’

‘Three pounds!’ Will says.

‘I’ll meet you here,’ Dean tells him.

Within my angel costume, I can watch as he puts his hands into his jeans and pulls out some money.

‘Suit yourself,’ Will says. ‘I’ll just be a no-mates, while you waste your money.’

I lead Dean up the steps, open the door and we go inside.

Lil sits motionless.

‘Is there anyone there?’ she asks. Dean looks at me, a half smile on his lips. I have to look away.

‘She’s blind,’ I tell him, but for the first time ever I don’t like the lie. ‘She feels the future with her soul.’ I’ve said the words a hundred times before.

‘Right,’ Dean says.

‘A boy,’ Lil says, her voice lower than before, a whisper in her lamplight.

She holds out her hands, palms up. Dean only looks at me.

‘I can’t touch your money,’ I tell him. ‘You need to give it to her.’ He steps forwards hesitantly and I hear the sound of his coins settling on to her skin and dropping into a pocket lost in her skirt.

He’s awkward as she holds his hand. In her other, she takes mine. I look away from Dean again. He’s made everything feel different and now we’re linked, almost touching.

‘Your angel will choose a number,’ Lil says.

‘Six,’ I reply.

Lil stares deep at him with her cave-like eyes and counts out the cards on to the table. As always, it’s the picture of an angel’s wing. Dean studies it so earnestly that I want to tell him that none of this is true.

‘There are obstacles in your path, but you have hidden wings that will help you,’ she says, as Dean nods solemnly. ‘But worry is weighing you down.’ Lil looks at nothing. ‘Am I right?’

‘Um. Kind of,’ Dean says.

‘I feel there is light, though,’ Lil says, her voice hazy. ‘Yes, there is light.’

Dean looks at me. ‘Three pounds,’ he mouths, but he doesn’t seem angry.

I take his hand before Lil can stop me. She’s meant to be blind, so she can’t pretend she can suddenly see. There is a painted door at the back of her van and I lead him through. Inside, it’s no bigger than a cupboard and it’s completely dark. Any outside sounds are muffled into almost silence.

‘What are we doing here?’ Dean asks. He has the remnants of a laugh in his voice, but it’s unsteady.

‘Are you scared?’ I ask, the angel dropping from me.

‘No.’ His voice is so close to me, sitting just on my skin as he speaks.

‘I want to know what frightens you.’

The air has never felt like this. If I move, I think it might burn me.

‘What frightens me?’

‘Yes,’ I whisper.

‘Is this in the old woman’s script?’

I wonder if he hears my heart beating.

‘Name three things.’

‘OK,’ he says. ‘Cotton wool.’

‘Cotton wool?’

‘I don’t like the way it sounds when I touch it.’ I can tell he’s smiling, his words tipping up.

‘Lo?’ It’s Lil’s voice, drifting urgent through the door.

‘A bigger fear than that,’ I tell him.

There’s a pause, where the darkness swells tight between us.

‘I’m frightened that something will happen to my mum.’

I struggle to find an answer.

‘Nothing will happen to her,’ I say, as if I know, as if I really can read Lil’s cards.

‘How are you so sure?’ he asks.

‘I just am. She won’t die before her time.’

I move slightly and I think the feathers of my wings brush against him.

‘Lo.’ Lil sounds angry now. ‘His time is up.’

‘The third thing you’re scared of ?’ I ask quickly.

I can feel him pause.

‘You,’ he says.

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

The door opens and dim light scuttles in, bringing Lil with it.

‘Enough,’ she says, her eyes clearly seeing into the room.

Dean looks awkward, unsure what to do. I know he watches me as I walk past him and he follows me to the van’s front door. Outside, Will is leaning against the steps.

‘Did you get your money’s worth?’ he asks, smiling wide at Dean.

‘Of course,’ I say, before Dean can reply and I leave them and go back in.

Lil is sitting in her chair in the silence, laying her cards of angel wings face down on the table. When she looks up, her eyes cloud with the future.

‘Be careful, Lo,’ she says.

The audience don’t know that Rita and I are here, crouched like lions way above their heads. The curtained ledge we’re hiding on barely fits us both, tucked high into the roof of our big top.

‘I think you should just marry Ash,’ I whisper, even though the music filling the tent will easily cover my words. ‘Say you will, or I’ll dive from here.’ I pull back the curtain until a small slice of light streaks steady across Rita’s face. ‘Say you will.’ I shuffle closer to the edge, her red fairy wings brushing like water against my arm.

‘Don’t be daft, Lo.’ There’s no fear in her eyes. She knows I’ll never jump.

‘Ma was eighteen when she married Da. You’ve only a few months left to match that.’

‘I don’t want to match it.’

‘You do,’ I insist. She looks older here, dressed as the fairy queen, her make-up thick and deep on her skin, purple feathers weaved tight into her hair. ‘Don’t you love him?’

‘Of course I love him. But maybe like a brother.’ She looks at me so seriously, leading our words to a different place. ‘And I don’t know if that’s enough.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask, as the music runs circles round the bright lights just beyond us.

‘Maybe he’s too young.’

‘He’s the same age as you.’

‘Sometimes I think I’d like someone a bit older.’

‘Who?’ I ask.

But the crack of false thunder spears the inside of the big top and spins everything into darkness. Instantly there’s the feeling I have at the beginning of every performance, as adrenaline makes my blood beat. My heart ticks quietly under the sequins clinging close to my skin.

‘Good luck, sister,’ Rita whispers. I reply by kissing my finger and touching her nose, managing it first time. With me, she misses and her nail skims close to my eye. I’m laughing when I shouldn’t be and I hear her trying to hush me.

Through the gap in the curtain flashes of lightning show an empty hoop high above the audience’s heads. I wonder if Dean is among them, looking up, waiting.

‘Go,’ Rita says and I move to the edge, careful not to knock against her healing arm. I push back the heavy material and, as the fairy child, I jump.

In the air, I reach out and grab on to the hanging hoop. It jolts my arms, but I don’t let them know. Darkness again and I swing up my body, curl balanced in the floating circle. With each crash of white, I change position. One second they see me with my wings spread wide, the next my body bent almost in two.

A drumbeat of music shows Rita jumping high through the air, a wash of dark feathers. I cower, trapped, as she twists up next to me.

‘Fancy meeting you here,’ I whisper, my lips unmoving. She widens her eyes to tell me to be quiet, before she lets her body fall back, contorting herself over the circle like melted wax. And then my gentle older sister pulls herself up and pushes me from the hoop.

Even with the music, I hear the audience’s gasp snatch sharp around us. They didn’t see me hook the rope so that I spin safely down, the fairy child forced to earth.

I let go and step lightly on to the floor, where Sarah sits in front of me. She looks much younger than her eleven years, her golden-red hair tied back, her clothes matching the rag doll on her lap. She doesn’t look up as the music builds, doesn’t notice the angels creeping around her, Ernest and Helen with their faces covered in silver gauze, arms stuck tight with feathers. They’re fairies waiting to steal the human child, juggling rings of fire in the air as they move. Sarah doesn’t see the net they throw over her until it’s too late.

Her screams fill the big top, as Da lowers Rita’s hoop quick to the floor and the fairy queen steals the human child, taking her spinning to the roof. The rag doll falls by my feet. Faceless angels step towards me, ready to cut me from myself.

Does Dean watch as they rip my wings, strip feathers violent from my arms? Is he here? Slowly, I disappear, forced to become a changeling.

With no music, no audience left, we can hear the rain fall heavy on the roof of the costume tent.

‘Would you listen to that?’ Stan says, wiping cotton wool rough across his cheeks. When he stretches the greasepaint from his eyes he looks as old as my da again, the age-lines not hidden any more.

‘Shame for the people walking home through it.’ Helen unhooks the sleeves from her costume, the sequinned skin shredded into her palm.

‘I like the sound of it, though,’ I say, as Ma squeezes in beside me, making too many of us in the small space.

‘Don’t go thinking you can go out in it,’ she laughs.

‘I won’t be long,’ I say, turning from her and running back down the tunnel.

‘Lo,’ she says, but she doesn’t try to stop me. Through the gap to the outside, the sky is clogged heavy with clouds. The rain batters the ground and even though I’m still dressed as a changeling, I run into it. Already the grass has caught puddles.

‘Rita!’ I call out, although I know she’s not close by. But I wish she were here with me, holding hands as children again, when there was nothing more important than the rain hitting our arms and our eyelashes and spreading under our feet.

I glance around, wanting to see Dean, this boy I barely know, a stranger whose life stays still. I want him to look at me in that way again. Even though I shouldn’t, as we’ve always been told that flatties only bring trouble.

‘Lo! Get inside!’ The voice is muffled through the stamping water, but I know it’s Tricks.

I spin one more time, close my eyes to the dripped-down sky, before I run into the dry. ‘What the hell are you doing? There could be punters still around.’ His clown face has gone and a scowl is in its place.

‘I was dancing in the rain.’ My fringe clings to my forehead as I smile at him, but I know charm won’t work when he’s this angry.

‘Your clothes are soaked through.’

‘But they’ll dry.’

Ma appears at the end of the tunnel and she runs to us.

‘You’ll catch your death,’ she says, holding out a towel, which she curls round my shoulders.

‘I’d best get warm then,’ I laugh.

‘Sorry, Tricks,’ I hear her say as I dart back towards the costume tent.

Carla has Baby Stan balanced on her lap as she scrubs her face clean.

‘What are we going to do with you, Lo?’ she says, watching me through her little mirror.

‘We should’ve done the whole performance out in the rain,’ I say, as I peel back my changeling feathers, careful not to snap them. The white ponytail unclips easy from the back of my head, leaving me shorter-haired again.

‘Don’t hang your stuff there,’ Carla says. ‘You’ll have to dry it in Terini.’

Baby Stan holds out the hairbrush for me, with his smile that could stop a river.

‘Look,’ I say, as I gently knock the brush against a bottle on the table. ‘Fairy music.’

‘Don’t be filling his head with your nonsense,’ she smiles.

‘You hear it, don’t you?’ I whisper close to him and his laugh floats in wings from him.

RITA

Lo sweeps quickly between the seats, collecting piles of dropped popcorn and ripped tickets. I follow behind her, tipping it all into rubbish bags to tie and throw away. I wonder how many sticky fingers leave their prints on it all. How their skin dust leaves them and becomes a part of us.

‘Do you think he watched it?’ Lo asks quietly.

‘Dean?’ I shouldn’t even say his name with Ma so close by.

‘Who else?’ she smiles.

‘I’m sure he did.’

‘Maybe he didn’t like it’ Lo says. ‘He didn’t stick around.’ She stops and looks at me. ‘We could go and find him,’ she whispers. ‘It’s stopped raining. We can go after this clear-up.’

‘Just us?’

‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘We’re old enough. Just us.’

I feel torn, because I know we shouldn’t, but part of me wants to see her heart shine bright. ‘OK,’ I say, before I think any more.

‘You will? Even after Newport?’ She smiles slightly.

‘You won’t do that again.’ In just one night Lo kissed two flattie boys whose names she barely knew. She was sick from the drink when she got home and woke up with her head filled with lightning and regret. Then one came knocking on Terini’s door and she hid in the bathroom while I said I didn’t know her.

The fountain boy seems different, though. And something about Lo is different too. Something on the edge of her skin lights up when she talks about him.

We’ve barely finished cleaning up when we walk off, the candy stripe of our big top growing smaller behind us. Lo’s bottle-white hair shines messy in the night’s darkness. She’ll be cold without a coat, but there’s no point me saying. I’ve told her that Lil knows more rain is coming, but she might as well not have heard.

‘Will Spides and Ash mind that they’re not with us?’ she asks, linking her arm through mine.

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘But I think they’ll mind even more that we’re looking for a flattie, so I’m not going to tell them.’

There are three figures ahead of us, on the edge of our site, lit by one of the street lights.

‘He’s there,’ Lo says, without looking at me.

‘Are you sure?’

They’re standing, all with their hands in their pockets. Two have got their hoods up, almost covering their faces, but the other one turns to us, as though he senses that we’re near. It’s Lo’s boy from the fountain.

‘Do we just walk by them?’ I ask.

‘No. We stop and talk,’ Lo says.

‘What if they’re waiting for someone else?’

She looks at me. ‘He’s waiting for me,’ she says. It’s there, in her eyes, and it makes me feel I’ve made a mistake. We shouldn’t have come.

The fountain boy raises his hand and waves at us, at Lo.

‘I think maybe Ash and Spider should be here,’ I say, slowing down so much that I’m barely moving. Lo doesn’t stop; she unhooks her arm from mine and just looks back at me and smiles.

‘They’re fine, Rita,’ she says. ‘They’re good ones.’

‘How do you know?’ I’m walking to catch up with her, because she can’t go on her own.

‘I just do.’

‘Hey,’ Dean says as we get close.

‘Hey back,’ Lo smiles. A strange silence sits in the middle of us all. The boys in hoods look at us as though we’re from a different land. Maybe we are. Maybe they are.

‘We watched your show,’ Dean tells Lo.

‘What did you think?’ She’s all jutting elbows, hands resting on hips.

‘It was good.’

‘Just good?’ she smiles.

‘Better than good.’

One of the boys pulls back his hood, even though Lil’s rain is starting to spit. He’s the one with his skin scalded from too many spots and he looks straight at me.

‘Don’t you get jealous that your sister is the star of the show?’

‘I’m not.’ Lo has anger in her voice. ‘We’re all equal.’

The boy puts his palms up, as though stopping her.

‘No offence meant.’ And I think he means it. ‘Anyway, I thought the motorbike bit was the best,’ he says.

‘Typical flattie,’ Lo mumbles.

‘What’s a flattie?’ the boy asks.

‘One of you. Not one of us. Do you know that Rita nearly died when we practised that?’ Lo exaggerates.

‘I’m not surprised,’ he says casually, but he looks impressed. Strange that the closer we come to death, the more they like it.

‘What happened?’ Dean asks.

‘I misjudged my jump,’ Lo says.

‘It could easily have been my mistake,’ I say. I don’t like the guilt that still sits in her.

‘Does it really come down to that?’ Dean asks. ‘Just a split-second mistake between you and death?’

‘It’s the same for us all,’ Lo says. ‘Every day you walk the line between dying and surviving too. It’s not just us.’

The boy with the hood still covering his face nods, his hands still in his pockets, staring hard at the ground.

‘You’re pretty bendy,’ the boy with the crumpled skin says.

‘Will.’ Dean sounds annoyed.

‘What? They are.’

‘Do you get scared?’ Dean looks at both of us, but I know he’s asking Lo. ‘When you’re up high? That you’re going to fall?’

‘No. Never,’ Lo says. And I know it’s the truth, because it’s the same as I feel. ‘But I have nerves. That’s different.’

‘How?’ Dean asks.

‘Being nervous keeps you aware,’ Lo says. ‘It brightens everything around you, so that you notice it all. Being scared just burns everything, so nothing is clear.’

‘Burns everything?’ Will asks.

‘Fries the edges of everything,’ Lo says. ‘So you can’t see clearly any more.’

‘Sounds a bit nuts to me,’ the boy in the hood says.

‘No,’ Dean interrupts him. ‘I get it.’

‘You would.’ The boy in the hood half laughs. I recognise him now – he was at the fountain too.

The rain is getting heavier, enough to wet our faces and make our hair cold.

‘I like the sound of it,’ Will says. ‘Frying edges.’ And he walks to the middle of the road and sits down.

‘What are you doing?’ Dean asks, looking around.

‘Getting scared,’ Will shouts, lying his whole body flat on the ground.

‘You’re being an idiot,’ Dean says.

‘I want to see things burning.’ Will stares up at the black sky, blinking hard into the raindrops.

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Lo says. She’s confused and it makes her shoot anger at the boy.

‘He knows that,’ I tell her. He’s just acting up because he’s a flattie who can.

‘A car’s coming,’ the boy in the hood says. He’s taken his hands from his pockets as he stares deep down the road.

We can all hear it now, the drumming of wheels on tarmac, getting bigger and wider. It sounds more than a car.

‘Get up,’ Dean says, but Will just lies there.

‘I’m getting hotter,’ he laughs.

‘You’re not,’ I tell him. He’s a fool, tapping into the wrong side of danger.

It’s a van, on the opposite side of the road to us, but with no space to go past Will.

‘Get up,’ Dean says loudly.

The van must see the figure lying down, but it doesn’t slow. Instead its horn is pressed and blares towards us. It seems to speed up as it comes and Will lies flat. None of us move. We watch the van swerve, missing Will by just inches. It crashes its wheels up across the pavement, fumes filling the air. The driver screams at us from behind the glass, before the van thuds back on to the road, all noise and lights and anger until it disappears and leaves us all staring at this boy in the road.

He jumps up in one movement and hollers like some sort of wolf.

‘Burn baby burn,’ he shouts, walking back towards us.

‘You’re an idiot,’ Dean says, turning away from him and looking straight at Lo. ‘Sorry about him.’

‘We’re going,’ I say, pulling on Lo’s arm. But even now she’s hesitating and I know she wants to split herself in two so she can come with me away from Will, but also stay talking to her fountain boy in the rain.

‘Can I see you again?’ Dean asks and Will smirks and thumps him light on his arm.

Lo looks up at Dean, shielding her eyes from the streaks falling from the wet sky.

‘You will,’ she says. And I know I have to get her away from here, before her heart gets too entangled with his.

‘We’re going,’ I say and I pull her with me, giving her no choice. I make her run from him, heading towards our circle of vans sitting tight against the rain.

The light in Mada is on, so we go up the steps, push open the door and stamp our wet feet on the mat.

‘You’re not coming in like that,’ Ma says, getting up.

Ernest and Spider are sitting with Da at the table, each holding a fan of cards.

‘We’re fine, Ma,’ Lo says, but we wait as she gets a towel and makes us rub through our hair and wipe dry our hands.

‘Where did you go?’ Spider asks, as Lo and I take off our shoes and put them neatly in the small shoe rack. ‘Ash and I were looking for you.’

‘We just went for a walk,’ I say, saving Lo from a lie she won’t want to tell.

‘Where’s Grands?’ Lo asks, squeezing in beside Spider.

‘In bed already trying to sleep, so no party noise from you,’ Da tells her. He puts his arm round Ma as she sits back next to him.

‘I’m tired in any case,’ Lo says.

‘Not tired enough to disrupt a card game I see,’ Ma smiles at her.

‘Did you meet anyone?’ Ernest asks.

‘No one interesting,’ I say. I glance quickly at Lo so she doesn’t say more. ‘Why’s Rob not playing?’

‘He chose an early night,’ Da says, his fingers flicking quick through his cards. ‘It’s your turn.’ He nods at Ernest.

‘I’d get rid of that ace of clubs when it’s your go, Spider,’ Lo says laughing. Spider opens his mouth like a goldfish and holds his cards away from her.

‘Don’t spoil it, Lo,’ Ma tells her.

‘I’m here to help,’ she says.

‘You’re here to be a pest,’ Da says, but his frown is lined with a smile.

‘Do you want one of these?’ Ma asks, passing the plate of bread twists to me. The stringy dough we plaited together this afternoon is solid and cracked brown where we painted it with egg yolk.

‘Needs cheese, I’m thinking,’ Spider says, grabbing another when he’s barely finished chewing his own.

‘You can keep your thinkings,’ Lo says, even though she didn’t help us make them.

‘I’m out,’ Da says, laying his fan of cards flat on the table. ‘Three sixes and a run of hearts.’ He’s so proud, just for winning, his Da smile wide.

‘That’s not fair,’ Ernest says. ‘I was so close.’

‘It’s all fair,’ Da chuckles. Fair is a word that was invented for him. The cards look small in his hands as he sweeps them all up, packs them neat and shuffles them. ‘Who’s in?’

‘I’m going to bed,’ Lo says, yawning and putting her arms up high as though she needs to prove it to us.

‘I could do with an early night too,’ I say.

‘Bed already?’ Ma asks.

‘I reckon so,’ Lo says and we get up together, like twins from the womb. I lean over to kiss Da. My ma sweeps her fingers over her forehead before touching my own, passing her good dreams to me.

‘Sweet dreams,’ she says as she does the same to Lo.

My shoes feel cold as I put them on, Lo holding my arm to stop herself from toppling.

‘Night all,’ she says, before we close the door on them.

I’d forgotten about the rain. It’s not too strong, but it’s reminding us it’s there. Lo runs to Terini, jumps up the steps and unlocks our door. She holds it open to me, with one arm behind her.

‘I won’t be long,’ I say. I know she’s confused. ‘I just need to see someone.’ I’m walking away, so that she can’t ask too many questions and I won’t have to lie.

‘Ash?’ she asks.

I wave my hand at her. ‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ And I run quickly round the edge of the big top so that she can no longer see me.

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