Page 16 of Role Model

Winter Wonderland is in Hyde Park. A huge fairground of rides and games and fun. I stare at it from our secret VIP entrance. The whole park has been transformed into a funfair and I feel lit up like all of the lights on the rollercoasters.

“I know you miss the Christmas markets back in Scotland,” Fizz tells me as we look up at the brightness. “So I thought…”

“It’s enormous,” I say, looking at how far and wide the fairground goes.

“Yes. Is it too much? Too overstimulating.”

I turn to her. “Can we go on the flying chairs?”

The chairoplane promises to take me high into the cold December air and make me feel like I’m flying.

Fizz pays for both of us to go on and I scream in delight as the ride climbs higher and higher into the sky.

131 When it starts to rotate, I close my eyes.

The wind against my face at last. It feels incredible.

I imagine I’m a bird. I’m far away from everyone below, none of them can touch me.

It’s over too quickly. As we’re lowered to the ground once more, I turn to Fizz and she laughs at whatever it is she sees in my face.

“We can go again,” she assures me.

We go seven more times. Once I’m finally ready to at least take a break, we walk among the food stalls for a while.

“You lied about it being a study group, didn’t you?” Fizz asks me gently.

“Yeah,” I reply. “But Sable did promise it would only be a small, quiet gathering.”

Fizz nods at that. “I’m sure. So all of that stuff about elephants…?”

I look down, feeling ashamed. “It’s just something I’m interested in.”

“A special interest?”

“Yes.”

When she doesn’t say anything else, I fill the silence. “Did you know that elephants mourn their loved ones? They return to the place that they died to touch the bones. Even when the bones are gone. 132 They remember. They come back to the same spot and touch the dirt where the bones once were.”

“I didn’t know that,” Fizz says and she sounds interested. Sometimes people try to humour me when I talk about something I’m passionate about, but Fizz doesn’t. She sounds truly engaged.

“Historically, they’ve been hunted for their tusks and even used as instruments of war,” I go on. “But the thing that kills me the most is the circus.”

“The circus?”

“They were used in the circus. As objects of attraction. The ringmaster would make them perform for crowds.”

“That’s so sad.”

“It is,” I say and I don’t know why I’m so overwhelmed.

“Because they’re so smart . They’re so smart, Fizz, I promise!

Some people don’t think so but they are and they’re wise and they’re kind.

They’re these amazingly smart, emotional animals and yet we put them in a circus.

Whipped them if they didn’t do what they were told.

I was looking at old pictures of elephants in a circus and I don’t know why on earth anyone would ever want to see that.

And I also didn’t understand why the elephant was letting it happen.

Letting this man in a red coat and 133 black hat threaten it with a riding crop.

Don’t they know they’re strong enough to break free?

Don’t they know that they don’t have to accept that?

And I could cry. Thinking about this great, big, beautiful animal, an animal so smart and so emotional, being hurt and told that it’s not supposed to be free.

Did they trust us when we put the chain around their foot?

Did they think we were doing it to help them?

It would never occur to them to put us or their own kind in a circus. ”

I’m crying again. Trembling and overcome. It’s been such a big night, a bigger night than I ever wanted or asked for.

“They trusted us and we put them in the circus,” I repeat between sobs.

Fizz is staring at me but it’s like she can see me. See what it is that I’m feeling. She moves to wrap an arm around me, but I flinch away. I’m still weird around her, we still feel like two acquaintances rather than sisters, but I instantly regret the flinch.

We walk. We talk about other things. She wins me a stuffed blue elephant by knocking all of the cans off a barrel. I carry the elephant as we walk home.

As Downing Street is so close to Hyde Park.