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It had seemed higher when he was a kid, he thought, and there hadn’t been a safety net underneath—or maybe there had, he just hadn’t noticed.
Bernardo was good. Very good. He was juggling as he was balancing. Once he faltered and dropped one of his juggling sticks. A ringmaster would fetch it, Matt thought, so he strode out and retrieved it, then stood underneath Bernardo, waited for his imperceptible nod, then tossed it up to him. When Bernardo caught it and went on seamlessly juggling he felt inordinately pleased with himself.
He glanced into the wings and saw a lady in pink sequins relax imperceptibly. She gave him a faint smile and a thumbs-up, but he could tell the smile was forced.
She was doing what was needed to get through this show, he thought, but that faint smile signalled more confrontation to come.
Did she really not know her grandparents’ financial position? Was she living in a dream world?
Bernardo the Breathtaking was finished, tossing his juggling sticks down to one of the clowns who Matt realised were the fill-in acts, the links between one act and another. Fluffy and Fizz. They were good, he thought, but not great. A bit long in the tooth? They fell and tumbled and did mock acrobatics, but at a guess they were in their sixties or even older and it showed.
Even Bernardo the Breathtaking was looking a little bit faded.
But then …
‘Ladies and gentlemen …’ He couldn’t believe he was doing this, intoning the words with all the theatrical flourish the child Mathew had obviously noted and memorised. ‘Here she is, all the way from deepest, darkest Venezuela, the woman who now will amaze us with her uncanny, incredible, awesome …’ how many adjectives did this script run to? ‘… the one, the only, the fabulous Miss Mischka Veronuschka …’
And she was in the ring. Allie.
Her act included three ponies, two camels and two dogs. The animals were putty in her hands. The dogs were identical Jack Russell terriers, nondescript, ordinary, but with tricks that turned them into the extraordinary. She flitted among her animals—her pets, he thought, for there was no hint of coercion here. She was a pink and gold butterfly, whispering into ears, touching noses, smiling and praising, and, he thought, they’d do anything for her.
He understood why. The audience was mesmerised, and so was he.
She had the camels lying down, the ponies jumping over the camels, the dogs jumping over the ponies, and then the dogs were riding the ponies as the ponies jumped the camels. The dogs’ tails were wagging like rotor blades and their excitement was infectious.
Allie rode one of the camels while the ponies weaved in and out of the camels’ legs, and the little dogs weaved through and through the ponies’ legs. The dogs practically beamed as they followed her every whispered command.
Matt thought of stories of old, of animal cruelty in circuses, and he looked at these bouncing dogs, the camels benignly following instructions as if they were doing Allie a personal favour, at the ponies prancing around the dogs—and he looked at the girl who knew them from the inside out and he thought … he thought …
He thought suddenly that he’d better think nothing.
This was a lady in pink spangles. She was the granddaughter of a client. Where were his thoughts taking him? Wherever, they’d better get back where they belonged right now.
He didn’t get involved. Not personally. The appalling sudden deaths of his parents and his sister had smashed something inside him so deep, so huge, that he’d spent the rest of his life forming armour against ever feeling that sort of hurt again.
He’d looked at Allie’s face as she’d seen her grandfather collapse and he’d seen a glimpse of that hurt. It should be reinforcing that armour, yet here he was, looking at a girl in pink spangles …
And then, thankfully, she was gone. The clowns swooped in again, making a game of the pan and shovel they needed—the camels were clearly not house trained—and the show was ready to move on.
He needed to focus on his next introduction.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen …’ he said, and the circus proceeded.
Interval.
Since when did standing in a circus ring make you sweat? He felt wiped. He headed out through the pink and gold curtains—and was struck by the sheer incongruity of the difference between front and behind the curtains.
The ring was all gold and glitter—a fantasy. Back here was industry. Men and women were half in and out of costumes, hauling steel rods and ropes and shackles, lining up equipment so it could be carried out neatly as needed.
Allie was back in her boots again, heaving like the best of the men. She had a denim jacket over her sequins.
‘Time for you to change, Allie, love,’ a very large lady yelled. ‘Fizz’s selling popcorn instead of Bella. We’re cool. Allie, dressing room, now.’
‘Someone give Mathew the words for the next half,’ Allie yelled and shoved the last iron bar into place and disappeared.
He watched her go and he felt the slight change in atmosphere among the women and men behind the scenes.
She was the boss, he thought.
Henry was the boss.
Henry was seventy-six years old.
Matt had thought he was coming to deal with an elderly ringmaster, to tell him it was time to close down. It seemed, however, that now he’d be dealing with Allie, and something told him dealing with Allie would be a very different proposition altogether.
He pretty much had things down pat by the second half.
He introduced acts. He was also there as general pick-up guy—and also … set-up guy for the clowns?
‘The gag’s on page three of the cheat sheet,’ Fizz had growled at him at half-time. ‘Henry sets it up for us so you’ll need to do it. It’ll be weird you reading it but it’s the best we can do.’
Right now the Exotic Yan Yan—Jenny Higgs, wife of Bernardo, or Bernie Higgs, according to the staff sheet he’d read ‘… fresh from the wilds of the remotest parts of Tukanizstan’— was there such a place?—was doing impossible things with her body. She was bending over backwards—like really backwards. Her head was touching her heels! Matt was appalled and fascinated—and for some weird reason he was thinking he was glad it wasn’t Allie doing the contorting.
He glanced ahead at the feed lines for the gag and thought … he could do this better if he stopped looking at the Exotic Yan Yan.
And he could do this better if he stopped thinking about Allie?
Do it. He read it twice, three times and he had it.
Yan Yan unknotted and disappeared to thunderous applause. Out came the clowns. It was time to take centre stage himself.
Deep breath. Remember the first line.
‘Fluffy, I have a present for you,’ he called in a Here Kitty, nice Kitty voice, and set the clipboard down, preparing—against all odds—to play the ham. ‘It’s your birthday, Fluffy, and I’ve bought you a lovely big cannon.’
‘A cannon?’ Fluffy squeaked, somersaulting with astonishment.
The clowns responded with practised gusto and foolishness as the great fake cannon was wheeled in. The joke went seamlessly, water went everywhere and the audience roared their appreciation.
Exit stage left, two dripping clowns with cannon.
Matt headed back to the sidelines for his clipboard as the ropes and pulleys and shackles were heading out at a run.
Allie, dressed now in brilliant hot pink, with her trademark tiger stripes making her look spectacular, was in the wings and she was staring at him with incredulity.
‘You memorised it?’
‘I had time.’
‘You had two minutes.’
‘Plenty of time,’ he said and felt a little smug. Banker Makes Good. He motioned to the bars, ropes, pulleys and shackles, set up in well drilled order. ‘Let’s get this show moving.’ He picked up his clipboard and strode out again.
And then Allie was flying in from the outer, twisting and clinging to a rope that looked like the sort of rope you’d hang over a river. She swung to the middle, seized another rope, changed direction—and swung herself up to a bar far up in the high reaches of the big top.
There was a guy up there waiting, steadying her.
It was his turn again.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your hats. From the wilds of outer Mongolia, from the great, wild warrior hunting grounds of the Eastern nations, ladies and gentlemen, the great Valentino, to be catcher for our very own Mischka. Watch with bated breath while Mischka places life and limb in his hands and see if he lets her down.’
He didn’t let her down.
Mathew had watched this act when he was six years old and he’d been convinced the spangly lady would fall at any moment. In fact he’d remembered hiding under his seat, peeping through his hands, afraid to come out until the gorgeous creature flying through the air was safely on the ground.
He didn’t watch with quite the same sense of dread now. For a start, he’d seen how big, quiet and competent ‘Valentino’—alias Greg—was. He was six feet eight at least, and pure muscle. He hung upside down and swung back and forth, steady and unfaltering, as Allie somersaulted and dived.
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?
