Free The Burning Air by Erin Kelly Page A

not American. The term you’re looking for is
arsehole
.”
    The boys exploded into shocked, delighted laughter. Wasn’t that the first thing that had gone last time, her sense of humor? And hadn’t its return marked the beginning of her recovery?
    “Want to come on the carousel with me?” said Tara, taking Charlie by the hand and waving a fiver at the warring older brothers. She threw a stage wink over her shoulder at Sophie and Will. Rowan caught sight of someone he knew and wandered over to bellow a conversation over the furious dance music pumping from every ride. She could tell from the dip of Rowan’s head and the answering hand on his forearm that he was breaking the news about Lydia.
    Someone was trying to hold her hand. Automatically she looked down, then up again, to find the hand attached to Will.
    “May I have this dance?” he said.
    “What?” Sophie laughed. “It’s hardly ‘The Blue Danube,’ is it?”
    “Dance with me.”
    He dragged her over the bumpy ground in a clumsy waltz, both of them laughing. For the second time that weekend Sophie felt the butterflies of a teenager on a first date, but now with anticipation rather than dread. They trod on each other’s toes as they covered the ground between the dodgems and the ghost train. Frenetically remixed songs by Katy Perry and Lady Gaga battled for supremacy, but when he kissed her, it was as though someone had turned the volume down on the world.
    “You’re laughing,” said Will, pulling away.
    “I’m
smiling
. I feel about fifteen.”
    “You look it,” said Will, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s all going to be all right, isn’t it?”
    She answered him with a kiss. How incredible it was that a single night out with her husband—and, she could now admit to herself, away from Edie, whom she willingly let consume her—had done more to restore her sanity than any talking cure, any medication, ever could. It was so simple. Why hadn’t she done this months ago? It didn’t feel like an exaggeration to say that this evening had saved her life. She felt little eyes on her.
    “That. Is. Disgusting,” said Toby with a pantomime retch.
    “So gross,” confirmed Leo. “Can we have some more money?”
    •   •   •
    When the pocket money had twice been replenished and depleted, and Tara had pried Charlie from the carousel, the family made their way to the bonfire at the foot of the bridge. It was a twenty-foot conflagration of wood and crates, broken-up MDF wardrobes, and old bedframes. As they watched, someone threw a three-legged stool onto the teetering pyre.
    They were well back from the source of the heat, but something had tipped Charlie from nervous wonder into terror. As the sound of the crowd competed with the roar of the flames, he buried his face in Will’s shoulder. Then, like a man climbing from between window ledges on a skyscraper he edged his way from his father to his mother until he was clamped onto Sophie, his fists in his eyes. He was rigid with fear, more like a toddler than a four-year-old.
    “Ow, Charlie,” she said, feeling the pinch of his fingers through her coat. “No need for that.”
    “Please don’t do it, Mummy,” he said.
    “Charlie, stop it.” He tightened his grip. “Don’t do what?”
    “Don’t climb on the fire,
please
,” he said. Guilt rinsed through her.
    “Oh, that was just me being silly yesterday. I promise I won’t do it again. Look, this bonfire’s big, and there are men standing around it to make it nice and safe.”
    “No!” screamed Charlie. “I don’t like it! I want to go home! I hate it here!” He began to thrash. Will tried to pull Charlie’s little hands out of his eye sockets, but his fingertips became wet with his son’s tears.
    “Come to Grandpa, Charlie,” said Rowan. “No blubbing, there’s a big boy.”
    Charlie screamed, shriller than a firework. “I want to go home. I want to go
home
!”
    Sophie and Will exchanged