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Terrifying or not, it was an awesome act.
And Allie … Mischka … was stunning. She was gorgeous.
He wasn’t the only one who thought so. Matt had fallen in love with the circus when he was six years old. Now he was watching other children, other six-year-olds, falling in love in exactly the same way.
He was foreclosing. He was declaring these people bankrupt. He was putting Mischka out of a job and he was making this circus disappear.
It’s business, he told himself harshly. What has to be done, has to be done.
Right after the show.
Now.
For the circus was over. Clowns, acrobats, all the circus crew, were tumbling out to form a circle in the ring, holding hands, bowing.
Allie took his hand and dragged him into line with the rest of them. She was bowing and forcing him to do the same. She was smiling and smiling as the kids went wild and Mathew smiled with her—and for a weird, complex moment he felt as if he’d run away with the circus and he was part of it.
Part of them.
But then the performers backed out of the ring with practised ease. The curtain fell into place and Allie turned to face him, and all the pretence of the circus was stripped away. She looked raw, frightened—and very, very angry.
The other performers were clapping him on the back, saying ‘Well done’, grinning at him as if he was a lifesaver.
He wasn’t.
The team dispersed and he was left with Allie.
‘I suppose I should say thank you,’ she said in a tone that said thank you was the furthest thing from her mind.
‘You don’t need to.’
‘I don’t, do I?’ She was no longer Mischka. She’d reverted to someone else entirely. Even the brilliant make-up couldn’t stop her looking frightened. ‘But how can I? The rest of the team think Grandpa’s sick and you stepped in to save us. They’re grateful. Grateful! Ha. To threaten him with bankruptcy…. Of all the stupid … If Grandpa dies …’
She stopped on an angry sob.
‘The paramedics said it was only a faint.’
‘So they did,’ she managed. ‘So why should I worry? But I’m worrying, Mr Bond, and not just about Grandpa’s heart. How dare you threaten our circus? Give me one good reason.’
There was no easy way to do this. By rights, this was between Bond’s Bank and Henry, but Henry was in hospital and this girl had proved conclusively that she was fundamental to the running of Sparkles Circus. More, she was Henry’s granddaughter.
She had a right to know.
He had the file in his car, but he hadn’t brought it in with him. He’d thought he’d come quietly and put the facts to Henry, facts Henry must already know. But he had a summary.
He reached into his back pocket and tugged out a neatly folded slip of paper, unfolded it and handed it over.
‘This is your grandfather’s financial position with Bond’s Bank,’ he told her. ‘The balances for the last ten years are on the right. We’ve been as patient as we can, but no capital’s been paid off for three years, and six months ago even the interest payments stopped. The circus’s major creditor is winding up his business and is calling in what he’s owed. We can’t and won’t lend any more, and I’m sorry but the bank has no choice but to foreclose.’
She read it.
It made not one whit of sense.
She’d done financial training. One thing Henry and Bella had insisted on was that she get herself professional qualifications, so that she had a fallback position. ‘In case you ever want to leave the circus. In case you want to stay in one place and settle.’
They’d said it almost as a joke, as if staying in the same place was something bred out of the Miski family generations ago, but they’d still insisted, so in the quiet times of the circus, during the winter lay-off and the nights where there weren’t performances, she’d studied accountancy online.
It’ll be useful, she’d told herself, and already she thought it was. Henry left most of the bookkeeping to her. She therefore knew the circus’s financial position from the inside out. She didn’t need this piece of paper.
And it didn’t correlate.
She stared at the figures and they jumbled before her. The bottom line. The great bold bottom line that had her thinking she might just join Henry in his ambulance.
It didn’t help that Mathew was watching her, impassive, a banker, a judge and jury all in one, and maybe he’d already decided on the verdict.
Enough.
‘Look, I need to contact the hospital,’ she told him, thrusting the sheet back at him, then hauling the tie from her hair to let loose a mass of chestnut curls around her shoulders. She had a stabbing pain behind her eyes. The shock of seeing Grandpa collapse was still before her. These figures … She couldn’t focus on these figures that made no sense at all.
‘Of course,’ Mathew said quietly. ‘Would you like me to come back tomorrow?’
‘No.’ She stared blindly ahead. ‘No, I need to sort this. It’s stupid. Go back to Grandpa’s van. It’s not locked. I’ll ring the hospital, then come and find you—as long as everything’s okay.’
Mathew dealt with corporate high-flyers and usually they came to him. His office was the biggest in the Bond Bank tower. It had a view of the Sydney Opera House, of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, of the whole of Sydney Harbour.
Allie was expecting him to sit in a shabby caravan among mounds of sequins and calmly wait?
But Allie’s face was bleached under her make-up. With her hair let down, she suddenly seemed even less under control. The pink and silver sparkle, the kohl, the crazy lashes seemed nothing but a façade, no disguise for a very frightened woman.
Her grandpa was ill. Her world was about to come crashing down—as his had crashed all those years ago?
Not as bad, he thought, but still bad.
So … the least he could do was take off this crazy outer jacket, fetch the file from the car, turn back into a banker but give her time to do what she must.
‘Take as long as you need,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait.’
‘Thank you very much,’ she said bitterly. ‘I don’t think.’
‘The doctor says he’s sure he’ll be okay.’
Allie’s grandmother, Bella, sounded tremulous on the other end of the phone, but she didn’t sound terrified, and Allie let out breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. ‘Did the circus go on?’ Bella asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Without Henry?’
‘We used the banker.’
There was a moment’s silence and then, astoundingly, a chuckle. ‘Oh, Allie, you could talk anyone round your little finger. See if you can talk him into lending us more money, will you, love?’
Allie was silent at that. She thought of the figures. She thought … what? Why did they need to borrow?
‘Gran …’
‘I have to go, dear,’ Bella said hurriedly. ‘The nurse is bringing us both a cup of tea. The doctor says your grandpa should stay here for a few days, though. He says he’s run down. He hasn’t been eating. I wonder if that’s because he knew the banker was coming?’
‘Gran …’
‘I gotta go, love. Just get an extension to the loan. It can’t be too hard. Banks have trillions. They can’t begrudge us a few thousand or so, surely. Bat your eyelids, Allie love, and twist him into helping us.’
And she was gone—and Allie was left staring at her phone thinking … thinking …
Mathew Bond was waiting for her in Grandpa’s caravan.
Twist him how?
Twist him why?
CHAPTER TWO
SHE CHANGED BEFORE she went to meet him. For some reason it seemed important to get rid of the spangles and lashes and make-up. She thought for a weird moment of putting on the neat grey suit she kept for solemn occasions, but in fact there’d only ever been one ‘solemn’ occasion. When Valentino’s mother died, Valentino—or Greg—had asked them all to come to the funeral in ‘nice, sober colours’ as a mark of respect.
Allie looked at the suit now. She lifted it from her tiny wardrobe—but then she put it back.
She could never compete with that cashmere coat. If she couldn’t meet him on his terms, she’d meet him on her own.
She tugged on old jeans and an oversized water proof jacket, scrubbed her face clean, tied her hair back with a scrap of red sparkle—okay, she could never completely escape sparkle, and nor would she want to—and headed off to face him.
He was sitting at her grandparents’ table. He’d made two mugs of tea.
He looked … incongruous. At home. Gorgeous?
He’d taken off his ringmaster coat but he hadn’t put his own coat back on. Her grandparents’ van was always overheated and he’d worked hard for the last three hours. He had the top couple of buttons of his shirt undone and his sleeves rolled up. He looked dark and smooth and … breathtaking?
A girl could almost be excused for turning tail and running, she thought. This guy was threatening her livelihood. Dangerous didn’t begin to describe the warning signs flashing in her head right now.
But she couldn’t turn and run.
Pull up those big girl panties and forget about breathtaking, she told herself firmly, and she swung open the screen door with a bang, as if she meant business.
‘Milk?’ he said, as if she was an expected guest. ‘Sugar?’
She glared at him and swiped the milk and poured her own. She took a bit longer than she needed, putting the milk back in the fridge while she got her face in order.
She would be businesslike.
She slid onto the seat opposite him, pushed away a pile of purple sequins, cradled her tea—how did he guess how much she needed it?—and finally she faced him.
‘Show me the figures,’ she said, and he pushed the file across the table to her, then went back to drinking tea. He was watching the guys packing up through the screen doors. The camels—Caesar and Cleopatra—were being led back to the camel enclosure. He appeared to find them fascinating.
Like the figures. Fascinating didn’t begin to describe them.
He had them all in the file he’d handed her. Profit and loss for the last ten years, expenses, tax statements—this was a summary of the financial position of the entire circus.
She recognised every set of figures except one.
‘These payments are mortgage payments,’ she said at last. ‘They’re paying off Gran and Grandpa’s retirement house. There’s no way the loan’s that big.’
‘I don’t know anything about a house,’ he said. ‘But the loan is that big.’
‘That’s monstrous.’
‘Which is why we’re foreclosing.’
‘You can just … I don’t know …’ She pushed a wisp of hair from her eyes. ‘Repossess the house? But there must be some mistake.’
‘Where’s the house?’
She stared across the table in astonishment. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The house you’re talking of,’ he said gently. ‘The house that matches this mortgage you seem to think exists. Is it in Fort Neptune?’
‘Yes,’ she said blankly. ‘It’s a street back from the harbour. It’s small but it’s perfect.’
‘Have you ever been inside?’
‘It’s rented. Gran and Grandpa bought it ten years ago. It’s for when they need to leave the circus.’
‘Have you ever seen the deeds?’
‘I … No.’
‘So all you’ve seen is the outside?’
She felt … winded. ‘I … yes,’ she managed. ‘They bought it while I was away and it’s been rented out since.’ She was thinking furiously. She would have been, what, seventeen or eighteen when they’d bought it? It was just after that awful fuss about the elephants …
The elephants … Maisie and Minnie. Two lumbering, gentle Asian elephants she’d known and loved from the moment she could first remember.
Elephants.
House.
‘They sold the elephants,’ she whispered, but already she was seeing the chasm where a house should be but maybe elephants were instead.
‘There’s not a big market for second hand circus elephants,’ Mathew said, still gently, but his words were calmly sure. ‘Or lions. Or monkeys, for that matter.’
‘Grandpa said he sold them to an open-range zoo.’
