Flight of a Starling. Lisa Heathfield

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