Lisa Heathfield - Flight of a Starling

‘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.