Flight of a Starling

‘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.