‘You can’t be mum to everyone here, you know,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘Come on. We’re here now. We might as well look around.’
We weave through the thickening crowd and, as we near the stage, the music is so loud my ears might bleed. Every third girl is Liv’s doppelgänger.
The next field is full of circus tents. It takes an hour to go through them all and it’s exhausting, more-so because it’s so futile. Right now, she could be entering the tent we left ten minutes ago.
I sink to the ground by a totem pole and drain the last of my warm shandy. Scott sits down beside me. The sky is a riot of pink and lilac. The crowd in the next field erupts into applause. If the circumstances were different, this would be a magical moment. There’s a buzz in the air. Scott is pulling little tufts out of the grass. He lifts his eyes to mine. It’s as though he’s trying to tell me something with those dark, doleful eyes. Then the moment is gone.
‘There’s Nathan!’ he says.
‘Where?’
‘There.’ He points to a tall, blond boy being swallowed by the crowd. We jump to our feet.
‘If we get separated,’ says Scott, ‘meet back here at the totem pole.’
He has such a tight hold of my hand, I doubt that will happen.
He drags me through the crowd back to the field with the main stage. It’s more tightly packed with people now.
‘He’s with Liv!’ he calls over his shoulder.
Our hands get pulled apart, and he comes back for me twice.
As we reach the edge of the field, Scott says, ‘Shit, I lost them.’
I scour the row of food stalls and spot Nathan’s blond head in the distance. ‘There!’
We bob and weave through people carrying trays of food and drink and leave the field under another decorated archway. The hillside before us is an ocean of multicoloured domes. We follow the most obvious path through the tents, swivelling our heads left and right. In the distance, Nathan and Liv make their way up the hill, then turn off the path to the left. As we reach the turning point, they dip down and out of sight.
‘They disappeared by that Italian flag,’ says Scott.
I follow him as he picks his way over guy ropes, leaning over each dome to listen.
He stops beside a blue tent. There’s movement inside and noises.
Scott recognises the sound at the same time as me and dives at the zip.
Within seconds, he’s pulling Nathan’s gangly, wriggling form out by the waistband.
‘What the fuck?’ says Nathan, holding onto his unzipped shorts as he rises to his full height. He recognises Scott and has the sense to shut his mouth.
Liv is fastening her bikini top as she pokes her head out of the tent, her hair hanging in her face. As she straightens up, she tucks it behind her ears.
And that’s when I see – she’s not Liv.
‘Where’s Olivia?’ Scott grabs Nathan by the front of his t-shirt, but I pull him back.
Nathan shrugs. ‘How should I know?’
I let Scott go, and he dives at Nathan, grabbing two fistfuls this time. Despite being an inch taller, Nathan is suitably terrified.
‘You’d better start talking,’ Scott warns.
‘I haven’t seen her all day!’