The only movement came from the plants, metronoming in the breeze, and her heart, which began to sink, gradually by degrees, when she realised Frank wasn’t coming back outside.
She pulled her hat over her forehead and watched a ladybird zigzag its way across the shiny turquoise cover of her book.
At its edge it tumbled, spread its wings, and flew away into the hot, yellow air.
The train let out a low, mechanical rumble, quietened, rumbled again.
Ariel extended her foot under the table and patted the carriage floor, searching for her canvas bag with her toes. Henry’s slumbering body jerked and resettled, his eyes quivering beneath shuttered lids, his expression placid and immutable as stone.
Gently, she withdrew her foot. Across the aisle, Travis was scribbling something in the margin of his guidebook. He’d raised his feet and legs onto the empty seat opposite and looked so damn chilled; like he didn’t have a care in the world.
She tried to look away, but her eyes kept returning.
She wondered if he knew she was looking at him.
His head bobbed back and forth, as though a private soundtrack was playing inside his brain. God, she wanted to speak to him.
She decided to wait until he’d finished writing and then ask him where he’d been to, where he was headed. What it felt like to be free.
Travis flicked his eyes to the window. When he turned and glanced expectantly in her direction, Ariel opened her mouth to speak, but her words lost their foothold and slipped back inside her, free-falling, like coins into a dusky well.
‘Ariel!’ Frank came bursting back through the garden door. ‘Your mom’s agreed to bring you along to the show today, kiddo! I told her the fresh air’ll do her good, what with her expecting and all. We’ll be leaving here together at three.’
Ariel stared open-mouthed as Frank disappeared inside the house to get changed. ‘I’m going to a concert,’ she said slowly. ‘Mam’s agreed to take me. Frank didn’t let me down after all!’
They set off in a cloud of hairspray, chugging along in Estelle’s second-hand Fiesta up the hilly Newton Road. Ariel wrapped her fingers around the Olympus and cradled it next to a bottle of orange Fanta, already turning tepid in the heat.
‘Frank says we can stand right down the front, Mam, near the stage. He says we can have free Mr Whippys on the way in.’
She looked at Frank over her shoulder and grinned.
‘Hey, it’s the least we can do!’ He tapped Cynthia on the arm. ‘Right, Cyn? It’ll be nice to see a couple of familiar faces cheering us on.’
Cynthia smiled. ‘You bet, babe.’
Frank’s hair was shiny and sleek, the sequins on his jumpsuit shimmering in a wide belt of sunlight streaming in through the rear window. Cynthia looked stunning as ever in a fitted lace dress and towering heels. She was holding on to the back of Ariel’s seat, her body bent forwards at the waist so that her hair – backcombed into oblivion – wouldn’t chafe on the Fiesta’s roof.
‘It feels so good to be out,’ Estelle said into the rear-view mirror. ‘Such amazing weather! I bet there’ll be an enormous crowd.’
Ariel looked at her mother sitting serenely behind the wheel. She smelled of something darkly sweet – a heady mix of fresh mint, patchouli and honeydew melon. Ariel breathed it in and stared at Estelle’s blossoming silhouette. Her mother was swollen-bellied and glowing in a loose cotton top and harem pants. An orange tie-dyed headband held her shoulder-length hair from her face, and a golden amber pendant dangled like a rising sun at her throat. She wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel the silky warmth of the stone between her fingers, but she was afraid she’d distract her mother from the road.
‘What’s up, poppet?’ Estelle flicked her eyes to meet hers. ‘Do I look all right?’ She lifted a hand from the steering wheel and smoothed it over the sweet, round spill of her stomach. ‘I think they call this hippo chic.’
‘You don’t look like a hippo!’ Ariel protested. She leaned in and smiled. ‘You look like an undercover angel.’
The first half of the show went off like a dream. But then, as Frank neared the mid-point of his set, Ariel heard a series of wolf-whistles and garbled shouts directed at Cynthia, who was perched on a stool at the side of the stage.
‘Who is it, Mam? What are they saying? I can’t see.’
Estelle scanned her eyes over the back of the audience enclosure. ‘It’s nothing. Just some boys being stupid, that’s all. Ignore them, poppet. Keep your eyes on the stage.’
The pungent tang of hot dogs, seaweed, and suntan oil hung heavy in the air. Ariel felt a flare of heat from the press of families packed in behind her. There’ll be plenty of kids in the audience, Frank had told her. Vacationers – here for a good time. I thought it might be nice for you to hang out with some of them. And a day away from the store with your mom will be cool, no?
Frank was serenading a woman in a giant straw hat standing a few feet away. Cynthia was beating one hand against her side in time to the music. In the other, she held a glass of iced water which she sipped at intervals through a red and white striped straw. She looks incredible! Ariel thought. Untouchable…
‘Hey! I’ll give you something to suck on, darlin’!’
Furious, Ariel spun round. The shout, like the others that had preceded it, had come from somewhere in the back row.
‘Oi!’ a man’s voice bellowed. ‘Watch your language, will you? The place is full of kids, for fuck’s sake! Let’s just take it easy and enjoy the show!’
Ariel raised herself up onto her tiptoes, but she was too short to see over the tops of the adults’ heads. ‘Why can’t you be quiet?’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Whoever you are, please stop shouting or go away.’
As she turned back to face the stage, a plastic water bottle sailed over the barrier and hit Frank in the centre of his chest. He stared at it for a moment in confusion, then picked it up and tossed it to one side.
‘Why would anyone do that, Mam?’ she asked. ‘Frank hasn’t hurt anybody.’
Before Estelle could reply, the crowd surged and Ariel felt herself being shoved up against the metal barrier separating the audience and the front of the stage.
‘What the –?’ Estelle cried. She reached down and caught hold of Ariel’s hand. ‘Okay, that’s it. Time for us to go.’
Ariel dropped to her knees and fumbled on the ground for the Olympus. ‘I don’t want to go, Mam. We can’t leave. We need to stay and wait for Frank and Cynthia.’
She clambered back to her feet and managed to pull her hand free of Estelle’s grip, but her mother caught her by the arm and began to manoeuvre her towards the exit at the side of the stage.
By now a full-blown scuffle had broken out behind them, and the troublemakers – whose faces Ariel still couldn’t see – were starting to hurl other objects into the air. Empty food packaging. Leftover scraps of food. It was disgusting. She saw Cynthia hovering warily in the wings. Frank’s backing music was still playing, but Frank wasn’t singing; he was striding towards Cynthia, motioning to her to leave the stage.
‘Please let me go,’