Stu-E Price had not seen a July like this for a while, the English kind. Where heat was gentled by cloud and light fell in soft, gold layers over the hills. He was used to American summers — Phoenix in June, Vegas in August. Sweat in the creases of his elbows, heat pushing through the soles of his trainers, the arena air dry as chalk. But here, north of Malton, where the trees were fat and wildflowers leaned out from hedgerows, it was different.

Laney was in the back seat, counting; one point for every sheep, five if she saw a cow, ten if it was lying down. She’d been talking for most of the hour and half drive, she was nearly eleven but looked smaller in the rear-view mirror, her forehead pressed to the window, hair lifting with the wind from the cracked-open gap. Her voice, when she said “Daddy, this is going to be awesome,” made his chest ache — a sharp, quiet kind of pain that didn’t come from a body slam or a fall off a ladder.

It had a been a while since he brought her home to safety, people may have thought it was for drama. But it was for her. Flamingo Land arrived like a trick of the light: bright colours bursting out from behind a veil of trees, a theme park and a zoo curled into each other, roaring and shrieking and chirping. Laney gasped when she saw the rollercoasters peeking over the scenery as her Dad simply smiled.

“I can’t wait to go on Sik!” she squealed, kicking her legs wildly in the back seat. “I’ve seen it on YouTube. It’s got like… SIX rolls! You go upside-down, Dad! SIX TIMES!”

He smiled without speaking, turned the black Toyota hire car into the gravel car park and followed the road round to the checkpoint, where their I.D was checked by security before being waved through. The caravan they were staying in was a small drive round, Laney was oblivious, looking at the rides. Laney’s fingers were already flicking her phone around the map on the Flamingo Land website before the car keys were out of the ignition.

“Come on, Laney, grab your bags.” Stu-E asks, Laney barely hearing him but slowly getting out of the car and walking round to the boot of the car, as he pressed the button to open it. As his daughter is pulling her bags out, he walks up to the front door of the large caravan and unlocks it.

**A Few Days Later**

By the third morning, Laney had made it her mission: Sik. She’d seen it from every angle, watching it zip past them repeatedly, until she knew every turn by heart.

But she hadn’t ridden it. Not yet. “Soon,” she said, voice teetering between bravado and fear. “Soon.”

They had ridden everything else first, flashes of them of riding Twistosaurus, Kumali, and Voodoo flash up on screen. You see Laney standing next to him in the queue lines, drawing imaginary rings with her sneaker toe in the concrete, then suddenly ask: “Did you ever jump off a ladder? Like, really high? Like this high?” She’d gesture wildly, forgetting that he’d been a wrestler, when that type of thing was common. He didn’t tell her about the pain. About the painkillers the next morning or the several beers the night before, he just said “Yeah. But I never flew as high as you will.”

The scene cuts the queue for Sik; long and hot with teenagers all around them, rucksacks slung low, voices loud. Laney held his hand. Hard. Her palms were damp. When the carriages came thundering into the station, she stiffened. Then, almost too softly: “Promise you won’t let go?”

He looked down at her, at the fierce light in her eyes, the edge of fear and thrill that reminded him too much of himself on debut nights under the arena lights. “I won’t let go.”

The scene fades to their turn to get on board, they climbed in, lucky to find themselves on the front seat, too! The restraints came down, her shoulders rose, her breath quick and fluttery as trance classics from 1999 blared out over the sound system.

Then it began — the climb. The click-click-click of the chain pulling them skyward. Stu-E glanced at Laney, her fear replaced with an excited smile. At the summit, she screamed. A scream of pure animal joy.

Twists, corkscrews, loops — their feet flung out toward clouds, the world flipping and flaring and shifting shape. He could hear her beside him the whole time: laughing now, unafraid, the scream softening into wonder. And when they pulled back into the station, and unhooked the safety equipment she punched the air, breathless, half-crying with the force of it.

“I DID IT!”

He didn’t say much. Just hugged her. Long. Tight. Let her smell his sweat and aftershave and every part of him that had once been broken. And in that moment, under the steel shadow of the ride, he knew she didn’t need saving. Not anymore. She needed space to grow. She had found it here — in the trees, the zoo, the six inversions of Sik.



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**The Last Night**

Laney was asleep, curled on the couch, arms wrapped around the plush flamingo she’d named Fury. Her cheeks were flushed with sun. There was a red mark on her wrist from where her wristband had been too tight, a scab on her knee from a fall on the gravel, and peace in her mouth — her lips parted just slightly, like she was tasting something sweet in a dream.

Stu-E stepped outside.

The sky above was bruised purple, the first stars pressing through like pinholes in velvet, highlighting his opened can of beer sitting on the table on the dark grey decking. He pulled out his phone.

A message already sat waiting from his agent, in amongst messages from Laney’s Mum and messages from Wisdom Parker. Knowing full well there’s a camera crew here recording his every move for a potential documentary he took the decision to sit back in his chair and shield his screen from the cameras.

Taking a swig from his beer, he reads the messages with a range of emotions; some receive a smile, some receive and eye roll and some… some make him contemplative. He looked up, then back through the caravan window at his sleeping daughter as the scene fades.

**The Morning After**

It was overcast when the call came, but still warm and muggy. The hire car was all packed up and ready to go, Stu-E was in the kitchen, halfway through making toast. The kettle clicked off. Laney was in the bathroom humming, half-singing something about volcanoes from school. The smell of warm bread and burnt crumbs filled the small space. And then the phone rang.

Unknown number.

For a split second he wasn’t going to answer it, since he walked away, he’d had his fair share of calls begging for a story, but something just told him he needed to answer this one.

“Stu?” The voice on the other end was quiet, flattened. Female. Familiar but cracked with hesitation.

“Yeah?” He asks, not entirely sure who is on the end of the phone.

“It’s Nicola. From Firth Moor.”

That made something in Stu-E still, she only ever called when it mattered. And this already felt like something that mattered. There was silence on the line.

“It’s Alan.” Stu-E felt it before he heard the rest, his face dropped.

“Something’s happened, he’s been found dead, yesterday morning in bed.” Stu-E didn’t speak, he just couldn’t, he’d been friends with Alan since he was 6 years old.

Nicola continued, filling the silence, “Went to bed same as always. Didn’t wake up. They think it was peaceful. Quick. He was only 44!”

Stu-E turned away from the stove. The toast had burned. It didn’t matter. Nothing did, for that moment. He lowered himself into the kitchen chair like his knees no longer knew how to hold him. He looked at the window but didn’t see the clouds anymore. Just static.

A montage plays of two six-year-old kids playing football and snooker in a hallway, laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. Trading wrestling stickers and sandwiches their Mam’s had made. The scene fades back to the caravan.

He didn’t realise he was crying until Laney appeared at the door, in her oversized Billie Eilish shirt, blinking at him with her head tilted.

“Dad?” He turned from her too fast. Wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Just got some bad news, Laney, I’ll be ok in a minute.”

She hesitated, then threw her arms around him, as he tells Nicola he has to go, and he’ll call her when he’s back in Darlington. When the call ended, he sat in silence as the scene fades out.