by Polly Samson
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ Angus said, elbowing him back but not breaking his gaze.
Laura flipped upside down like a rubber band and hung by her feet, cascade of long blonde hair flying.
‘It is,’ Ivan insisted, prodding him a bit harder, but Angus told him to shut up and jabbed him, a proper shove so it actually hurt, and she went flying past, dancing her arms through the air like she was conducting a choir of trumpet-blowing angels.
He was on the edge of his seat. It was Laura. And her bum was bare! She stayed high above them for a while, waving her arms, and then swooped from her perch and out into thin air, so that everyone watching held their breath until she’d caught a second swing that a man in the wings had sent out. She grabbed it with both hands and performed another elastic flip that saw her fly, holding on to the trapeze while doing the splits, a heel and a pointed toe either side of her head, and the audience gasped at her good timing, though none as loudly as Ivan.
She jigged from foot to foot, pointing her toes and sticking out first one buttock and then the other, a bit like the pee pee dance, he thought. Bolts of white cloth descended from the ceiling and she wound them around herself, coiling into the centre of a cocoon, this way and that, with various somersaults and stuff, and then descended, twirling and jerking; unrolling from the white silk, falling at some speed head first to the floor, stopping just short of it. Ivan stood up from his seat, heart thumping, and Laura freed herself with a slow, muscular back flip, first one nutcracker leg followed by the other, to face the audience and take her bow, blue bra, teeth, eyes and spangly bits sparkling.
Angus was spluttering, laughing and pointing instead of clapping: ‘He thinks that’s Laura,’ he said to their mum, who leaned over to ruffle Ivan’s hair, and then annoyingly tucked it behind his ears. ‘He does so love Laura,’ said his dad, who was sitting next to him, and he began to laugh too, which started Ivan’s eyes stinging.
There was a clown who kept falling over his own feet, and white horses who galloped by, ostrich plumes streaming, a juggler who dropped one of his fire clubs and swore under his breath. All Ivan could think about was Laura up on that trapeze. Why would she keep it secret? When he was in the circus he’d tell everyone. Ivan intended to be the Strong Man. Angus always thought he couldn’t pick him up but he proved him wrong when he carried him right across the sitting room. He could probably lift up Laura if she’d let him. Angus was wrong about lots of things, but he acted all the time like he knew everything. Ivan nudged him in the ribs just because he felt like it.
‘Ouch, what?’
‘Stop, Ivan,’ said their mother, holding up a hand. ‘Let’s have a good time without squabbling.’
The finale was a tiny child dressed in a Spanish costume of red and black lace and six little palomino ponies with dainty feet who bowed down before her like fat blond courtiers, before the whole troupe marched by, waving, in a razzle of feathers and sequins and some rousing music that people clapped along to and Ivan was standing again, craning his neck. Her blonde hair was unmistakable, down past her shoulders, flowing out behind her with a long blue sparkly cape to match her blue bra. She looked right across at him as he waved.
He was the king of the road. No stabilisers now he was a big boy, and Laura seemed to have forgotten that he was supposed to wear a helmet so he could feel the breeze in his hair. Laura could barely keep up, he could pedal so fast; she had to jog, which made her cheeks pink and the lace on one of her trainers had come undone. She called out for him to stop and he wobbled, but only a little bit. He braked beside a once-white van. Someone had written in finger on the grime: If my wife was this dirty I’d stay at home. He could read! He could read anything he wanted.
‘Slow down a bit, Ivan.’ She was puffing as she bent down at the kerb to do up her trainer. ‘I can’t keep running.’ Some golden locks of hair had escaped from under her beanie hat and fell across her pink cheeks. Laura stood from tying her lace and pushed the escaped strands back beneath the blue beanie. ‘What does that mean?’ He pointed to the writing on the grubby van. She snorted, ‘I’m only the babysitter, it’s not part of the job …’ but she didn’t explain. ‘Mr Speedy,’ she called him.
He was fast as a rocket on his yellow bike. He could disappear in a cloud of dust. Hey presto. Everything coming at him like a set of new magic tricks. He could read, he could ride a bike, he could swim without armbands, soon he’d be able to fly. Nothing would ever surprise him again.
Angus got a new bike as soon as Ivan learned to ride. He never stopped going on about it. It had gears. Ivan was sick about the gears. But this old bike was yellow, his favourite colour, and it had a very loud bell.
‘Come on, Buster,’ she said, setting off again at a loping trot, so her small pink rucksack bounced up and down. ‘Race you,’ she called over her shoulder, speeding up as they headed into the village, uphill, along the Long Road.
She slowed to a walk and he kept pedalling to overtake her. She was puffing again. ‘I don’t think I can run all the way,’ she said. ‘Don’t let me have a doughnut.’ He wondered if Angus was having fun at his stupid friend Dominic’s Laser Quest party.
She made him get off to walk when they turned into the pedestrian street. It was really annoying having to push the bike and the pedal kept catching him on the back of his leg.
Angus got to go in Uncle Tim’s car. Lucky. ‘Ruffians,’ he called them. ‘Anything so your poor parents can grab a weekend away,’ he said when he came, a hand grabbing each of them by the scruff of the neck, pretending to bang their heads together so Laura laughed.
Ivan didn’t quite trust Uncle Tim not to bang their heads. Tim often tickled Ivan a little more than he liked. On the plus side he did contribute regularly and generously to the extensive arsenal upstairs. He gave them guns that screeched and pinged and flashed lights and some that sounded like an entire amusement arcade all on their own. Their mum always gave him the look. ‘Arms dealer,’ she said. Not friendly.
He wasn’t grey, which was odd because he and their dad were twins. Their dad never joined in with the bows and arrows and catapults, or the various water weapons and guns that shot foam discs, bits of potato, rubber bands, bendy darts, soft yellow pellets, stinging red ones, but Uncle Tim let them stalk him around the house. Sometimes they got a good long shot at him but more often than not he was too quick and charged them to the ground, wrestling the guns from their hands and shooting them back. Uncle Tim said his hair was still brown because he didn’t have children or a wife to shout at him. ‘It’s because you don’t have a conscience,’ their mum said. Uncle Tim always roared over the humpback bridge out of the village, thrilling them: ‘Hold on to your willies, boys!’
Ivan looked at Laura chewing the skin from the edge of her thumb. ‘Have you been in the circus this week?’
She didn’t even smile or break her stride or look at him. She just sighed: ‘What do you think?’
‘Is your trapeze still broken in bits?’
‘Oh, Ivan.’
‘Have the dancing budgies hatched their eggs?’
She grinned at him then and laughed, her earrings danced. ‘Ivan, you don’t forget a single detail,’ she said. He looked at her again, sideways from under his fringe, trying to see what was funny. She was still smirking; he could see her big gappy teeth. Doubt started to point a hot finger at his chest. ‘Oh, Ivan!’ she said again. As soon as they got home he planned to challenge her to a contest out on the monkey bars, then he’d know for sure.
She’d been a bit strange all afternoon, laughing all the time. Tim had brought Cadburys’ Flakes when he came for Angus, even one for her, but then he kept putting her off when she was about to take a bite by singing the advert under his breath: ‘Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate …’ and for some reason that was so funny that she couldn’t bite it for laughing and looking at him and bits of it flew down her front.
Laura liked sweets almost as much as Ivan did. Once, when she was reading him a story, she
had broken off bits of his Easter egg and eaten them, which was basically stealing. She liked milk chocolate, and Dime bars best, but for him and Angus she brought forbidden, brightly coloured sweets like the giant swirly E numbers on sticks, in return for them leaving her alone to get on with her Facebook.
‘Don’t tell your mum and dad,’ she said when she tore off the wrappers. He imagined she got them from the sweet stall at the circus. He wondered if she had to pay or if circus performers were allowed to have as many free sweets as they liked. Laura even smelled of sweets, her skin deliciously of warm candyfloss, which did nothing to quell his desire to burrow himself into the softest bits of her at every opportunity.
They turned left by Budgens and she said, ‘Just need to get some cig …’ She was too well brought-up to say the word in front of him. He’d never caught her smoking; perhaps she put them out in her pocket. The circus magician had probably taught her how. Probably everyone in the circus smoked. The juggler and the clowns and the ring-master. But not the señorita child with the blond ponies who Ivan now knew to be a forty-six-year-old midget called Bridget and not a child at all. She was Laura’s best friend in the circus.
‘Have they mended your trapeze yet?’
The newsagent was grumpy about the bike, but he couldn’t very well leave it outside. He looked up at her secreting the packet of cigarettes in her rucksack. Her sparkly fish earring had silver scales that shimmered as she shook her head, like it might be about to curl up its tiny tail and tell your fortune.
‘Oh, Ivan, not this again.’ She was still laughing and ignoring his question.
He shrugged. Angus was probably having much more fun than him. There would be hot dogs with squeezy red and yellow sauce bottles which they would squirt at each other.
‘Why do we have to go to the café?’ he grumbled. He kicked a stone and just missed her leg. This was the first time he’d ever got her all to himself. Angus always like a great big orange feather duster in his face, annoying him and making him look stupid. ‘Oooh, Laura, Ivan loves you! Ivan thinks you’re hot!’ so that he wished someone would come and adopt him. ‘Well?’
‘Why don’t we talk about something other than the circus,’ she said.
‘But I want to know because when your trapeze is mended you won’t have time to babysit and I won’t see you any more.’ Tears had sprung to his eyes.
‘Well,’ she said, giving in. ‘I will have to practise rather a lot … ’
The café was steamy with customers; they grabbed the table in the window as soon as it became free. She went to the counter to get them cakes and he thought of her on her trapeze all the time like him on the monkey bars, no time to spare. Another thing he can do that he didn’t used to be able to: he can hang upside down by his knees from the bars. And sit up and grab the bar with his hands, and do a roly-poly over it. Until last weekend, all impossible. Angus went round and round over the monkey bars all the time and Ivan had to pretend he didn’t even want to hang upside down. Now he couldn’t wait to show Laura his impression of a bat.
Laura brought cake and hot chocolate. Jennifer, that was the midget’s second name. Bridget Jennifer, she was called. He wondered if her little blond ponies had been returned to her yet.
Laura took a bite of cake, leaving chocolate crumbs on her chin. She said that Bridget Jennifer’s ponies had been taken hostage by a rival circus and dyed bright pink.
She smiled and nicked some of the cake he hadn’t been quick enough to eat. She was giving in, he could tell. He loved to see her dimples, loved to poke his fingers into them. ‘Bridget Jennifer is so distraught she is unable to play her maracas,’ she said, glancing out of the window, then pointing and whispering: ‘Look, Ivan, here comes someone.’
They had fun at the café. With Ivan as look-out, Laura had superglued a one-pound coin to the pavement outside. Laura’s eyes looked like the blue might overflow, she laughed so much. Ivan’s lemonade shot out of his nose when two bigger boys from his school, in football shirts, tried to kick the coin free, but later he felt a little sad when an old lady came along, checked that there was no one watching behind her, and hitched up her skirts in order to kneel on the pavement.
He asked Laura again about the state of her trapeze.
‘The chains are still in pieces; Health and Safety won’t hear of me going back, so they’ll have to make do with the tightrope walker for a while longer.’ She yawned, and then he wasn’t sure if she was laughing at him or at the old lady who was rearranging her skirts as she went on her way.
‘Is that the tightrope walker called Twinkle Periwinkle with the little pink dogs?’
‘Oh, Ivan,’ she said, giggling again as she picked cake crumbs from her plate with the end of her finger. ‘You are persistent. Yes, it’s Twinkle on the tightrope and you’ll never guess what …?’
‘What?’ Oh, he loved Laura.
‘Her little pink dog has just had little pink puppies!’ Laura was the best.
She was better than any of the babysitters that came later. There was Claudine, for a while, who ignored them, headphones clamped to her ears, lost in the teeming jungle of her iPhone, and now they had Lola who was damp and pale and about as interesting as washing. Lola looked like her stringy arms would snap if she ever hung from monkey bars.
He’d never got Laura out there. It’d started to rain on the way back from the café. ‘Too wet, we’ll slip,’ she said, shaking her bright hair free of the beanie. He never got another chance to test her.
His mum said: ‘Laura’s never available. I think I might as well stop asking. There’s always some excuse: piano practice, exams …’
He stared at a painting he and Laura had done, a life-size cut-out of himself, still Blu-Tacked, hanging like an old map on the back of the kitchen door. It gave him a feeling like homesickness whenever he stopped to look at it.
Ivan knows why Laura doesn’t come any more.
‘Perhaps she won the lottery and doesn’t need the money,’ their dad said.
She’d unrolled a sheet of old wallpaper from the cupboard under the stairs and got Ivan to lie down on it. He had to hold out his arms and legs and keep still while she drew around him with a crayon. It tickled where it touched him, and he felt something quite powerfully that he didn’t yet have a name for. Like butterflies. They painted blue for his jeans, green for his sweatshirt. She did the eyes and he did the mouth.
‘Or did the boys do something terrible to her? Ivan? Angus?’
He still got the butterflies a bit to think about the crayon touching the inside edges of his legs. Did his mum really think he and Angus would do something so bad that Laura Idlewild wouldn’t want to come back?
They’d fought, it was true, but she was used to that. Things had been thrown within minutes of Angus’s return from Laser Quest, him swaggering in with a piece of creamy cake in a box, a floating yellow balloon with a design of a Laser Quest gun on it, a man-sized Laser Quest T-shirt with POWER written in big letters. The T-shirt was as big as battledress and Angus wore it over his own clothes so he looked bulky. Ivan wanted to tell him about the coin they’d superglued to the pavement. Angus was too busy showing off. Uncle Tim all the time quizzing Laura about everything: what she likes to eat, what she drinks. ‘Vodka cranberry’ made him cackle. ‘Not a lightweight then?’ About friends, Facebook. ‘You kids, there’s no mystery. You know everything there is to know about each other already. What’s the point of going on a date?’ Angus goofing around with a stuffed gonky toy with toilet-brush hair as orange as his own. The toy also wearing a Laser Quest T-shirt. It was intolerable: Angus’s going-home presents were considerably more lavish than the proper present he’d taken for the birthday boy.
Tim said: ‘Strewth, Laura. Show a man some mercy. At least open a bottle of wine, I know Simon’s got something drinkable stashed somewhere. I’ve never seen so many savages. Angus has turned into a maniac.’
But he was the maniac. He came creeping up behind her when she was staring into
the fridge, half hanging off the door, in the way she did when she was snackish.
‘Hey Laura … What do you expect to find in there?’ She jumped because she didn’t know he was in the room. ‘Dreamboy isn’t about to come roaring through the butter dish on his Harley, you know!’
Ivan had been standing at the fruit bowl. He saw how Uncle Tim made her blush. He was so rude. She was uncomfortable, caught out like a shoplifter, but his mum had said she could help herself to anything she fancied. He shouted, ‘Catch!’ at Uncle Tim, and lobbed an orange at his head, just missing him.
The orange rolled away across the floor and Uncle Tim shoved the cat, Cato, off the table, something that would never have happened if his mother had been home. ‘Go on, you filthy thing,’ Tim said, sending him off, astonished, tail flicking.
Laura let them play Twister when they were in their pyjamas. This was after their fight with the creamy cake and once Uncle Tim had made Ivan clear up the mess because he was the one who’d thrown it. ‘I’m the future King, I’m the heir, you’re just the spare!’ Things had only got worse since Angus started learning history at school. Laura helped him clean up the splatted cake. She didn’t always take Angus’s side like everyone else.
Laura was in charge of spinning the dial. ‘Ivan, right arm on blue; Angus, left leg on yellow’, and they tangled around each other until somehow Angus’s bum was right in Ivan’s face and he farted and Ivan couldn’t move because he was being squashed by Uncle Tim who had joined in. He could barely breathe for the stink and Angus wouldn’t stop laughing.
Laura took him upstairs to cool down. She told him about the time that she put a marshmallow in her brother’s bum – ‘Right between the cheeks’ – to pay him back for being mean to her. ‘When Ed woke up in the morning he didn’t know what was going on! It was a pink marshmallow, I’d saved it specially.’ Ivan couldn’t stop himself laughing when she told him. ‘All melted so he thought he had a disease!’
Ivan had managed to make her come to his bedside twice more after that. Once with hot chocolate and then later, when he insisted that he couldn’t sleep, she had pulled his head on to her chest and stroked his hair and told him more about the pink puppies and Bridget Jennifer and about the palomino ponies with their muzzles as soft as velvet.