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Allie had met this lady every year, every time the circus came to town. She was tall and dignified, wearing tailored tweeds with effortless grace. For the last few years she’d carried and used a magnificent ebony walking cane and she’d given the impression of timeless beauty.
But now she was shrivelled. Disappearing?
‘Oh, Margot.’ Her cry of distress was out before she could stop herself. She’d always referred to Margot as Miss Bond. They’d greeted each other with businesslike pleasantries—this woman was a patron of the circus and her grandfather’s friend—but here, in her pink robe, her body hunched over the fire, Miss Bond seemed inappropriate and cruel.
She hadn’t realised, she thought, how much this lady was part of her history. Even as a little girl, every time the circus was in Fort Neptune she remembered Margot in her tweeds, sitting proudly upright in the front row.
Could she remember Mathew coming with her? No. He’d be older than she was, she thought, and he mustn’t have come with his aunt for years.
All these things flickered through her mind as she knelt by Margot and took her hand. ‘Oh, Margot …’ she said. ‘Oh, Grandpa will be so distressed.’
‘Your grandfather’s ill himself,’ Margot said, looking down at their linked hands for a moment and then gently pulling away. ‘All my friends are dying.’
It was a shocking statement, one that made Allie sit back and glance at Mathew.
His face was grim.
‘You still have family,’ he said. ‘And friends. What about Duncan? What about me? Just because you lost your dog … Margot, there’s no need for you to die as well.’
‘Halibut was my family,’ she said, gently reproving. ‘And it’s my time. Losing Halibut made me realise it. I’m eighty years old, which is too old to get another dog. I have no intention of lying around until everyone’s forgotten me and even my nephew’s wrinkled and gnarled as he stands by my grave.’
It was such a ridiculous image that Allie stared at Mathew in astonishment. He looked anything but gnarled.
He was thirty-fivish, she thought, surely not more.
‘Wow,’ she said to Margot. ‘You might have a few more years before that happens. Too old to get another dog? Dogs live for less than fifteen years. Ninety-five isn’t such a great age. And Mathew, gnarled? It doesn’t seem an immediate danger.’ And she chuckled.
Okay, maybe a chuckle was inappropriate. Mathew surely looked as if it was inappropriate. ‘Your business is with me,’ he snapped. ‘Not with Margot. Come into the study.’
‘Not yet,’ Margot said, with a touch of the asperity Allie remembered. ‘How’s Henry? Mathew told me he was taken ill.’
‘He’ll be okay,’ Allie told her, deciding to ignore Mathew’s blatant disapproval. ‘The doctors say it’s just angina after a dose of the flu.’ She looked cautiously at Margot, wondering exactly what the matter was. ‘If you’d like to risk a few more years to stay friends with him, it might be worthwhile.’
Margot chuckled then, too, but it was a bitter chuckle. ‘But Henry’s only here in summer,’ she said. ‘You all go. Two weeks of Sparkles Circus … I can’t stick around until next year.’
‘And we won’t be here next year, anyway,’ Allie admitted, and saw Mathew’s face darken and thought … uh oh. Hasn’t he told Margot what he’s doing?
‘In the study,’ he snapped and it was a command, but Margot’s hand closed on Allie’s wrist.
‘Why not?’
‘Because the circus is bankrupt,’ Mathew said in a goaded voice. ‘Because they’ve been living on borrowed time and borrowed money for ten years now. Because their time has past.’
‘Like mine,’ Margot said, and her voice matched his. Goaded and angry.
‘You know that’s not true.’ Mathew closed his eyes, as if searching for something. He sighed and then opened them, meeting Margot’s gaze head-on. ‘How can you say your time is past? You know you’re loved. You know I love you.’
It hurt, Allie thought. She watched his face as he said it and she thought it really hurt to say those words. You know I love you. It was as if he hated admitting it, even to himself.
‘And I love Sparkles Circus!’ Margot retorted, her old eyes suddenly speculative. ‘You’re declaring them bankrupt?’
‘He has the right,’ Allie admitted, deciding a girl had to be fair. ‘Margot, you’ve been wonderful. I gather you persuaded Bond’s to finance us all those years ago. I’m so grateful.’
‘Yet you come here looking for more,’ Mathew demanded and there was such anger in his voice that she stared at him in astonishment—and so did Margot. Whoa.
‘I’m not here looking for more money,’ Allie said through gritted teeth. ‘Or … not much. I didn’t know about the loan, but I’ve been through Grandpa’s files now and I’m horrified. The circus can’t keep going—I know that now—but what I want is permission to continue for the two weeks we’re booked to perform in Fort Neptune. We have sold-out audiences. That’ll more than pay our way. If we need to refund everyone, it’ll eat into your eventual payout and we’ll have a town full of disappointed kids. If we can keep going for two weeks then I can give the crew two weeks’ notice. The alternative is going back tonight and saying clear out, the circus is over and letting your vultures do their worst.’
‘Vultures …’
‘Okay, not vultures,’ she conceded. ‘Debt collectors. Asset sellers. Whatever you want to call them. Regardless, it’s a shock and we need time to come to terms with it.’
‘You’re foreclosing on the loan?’ Margot said faintly. ‘On my loan?’
‘It’s not your loan,’ Mathew told his aunt. ‘You asked Grandpa to make the loan to Henry and he did. The circus can’t keep bleeding money. With Henry in hospital, they don’t even have a ringmaster. How the …’
‘We do have a ringmaster,’ Allie said steadily and turned to Margot. She knew what she wanted. Why not lay it on the table? ‘This afternoon your nephew put on Henry’s suit and top hat and was brilliant as ringmaster. He’s here to take care of you. Could you spare him for two performances a day? Just for two weeks and then it’s over?’
‘Mathew was your ringmaster?’
There was a loaded silence in the hot little room. Margot had been huddled in an armchair by the fire, looking almost as if she was disappearing into its depths. Suddenly she was sitting bolt upright, staring at Mathew as if she’d never seen him before. ‘My Mathew was your ringmaster?’ she repeated, sounding dazed.
‘He made an awesome one,’ Allie said. ‘You should come and see.’
‘I did it once,’ Mathew snapped. ‘In an emergency.’
‘And I couldn’t come,’ Margot moaned. ‘I’m dying.’
‘You don’t look dead to me,’ Allie said, and she wasn’t sure why she said it, and it was probably wildly inappropriate, cruel even, but she’d said it and it was out there, like it or not. ‘If you’re not dead then you’re alive. You could come.’
To say the silence was explosive would be an understatement. She glanced at Mathew and saw him rigid with shock.
He’d throw her out, she thought. He’d pick her up bodily and throw.
‘I’m … I’m sorry,’ she said at last because someone had to say something. ‘I don’t know how sick you are. That was … I mean, if you can’t …’
‘If you ate some dinner, let me help you dress, let us rug you up and use your wheelchair …’ Mathew said in a voice that was really strange.
‘I can’t eat dinner,’ Margot retorted, but it wasn’t a feeble wail. It was an acerbic snap.
‘You could if you wanted to.’ He glared at Allie, and back at Margot, and he looked like a man backed against a wall by two forces.
He loved this woman, Allie thought—and with sudden acuity she thought he loves her against his will. He hates it that he loves her and she’s dying.
What was going on?
And he told her.
‘It’s Margot’s decision to die,’ he said, sounding goaded to the point of explosion. ‘Her dog’s died. Her knees don’t let her walk like they used to, so she’s given up. She’s stopped eating and she won’t see her friends. She’s lost twelve kilos in the last four weeks.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Allie said, awed. ‘Twelve kilos? Wow, Margot, what sort of diet are you on? Our Exotic Yan Yan—Jenny to the rest of us—has tried every diet I’ve ever heard of. She’s currently on some sort of grapefruit and porridge diet. Her husband keeps sneaking over to my caravan for bacon and eggs. Maybe I should send Jenny to you.’
There was another silence at that. A long one. She’d trivialised something life-threatening, Allie thought. Uh oh.
She glanced at Mathew and saw his face almost rigid with tension. How hard would it be, she thought, to watch someone you loved decide to die? And she’d made light of it. Joked.
But in for a penny, in for a pound. Why not go for it?
‘It’s Sunday,’ she said, to no one in particular. To both of them. ‘We don’t play tonight, which is just as well as I’m feeling shattered, but tomorrow’s another day. We’re in the middle of the summer holidays and the forecast is for perfect weather. We have performances at two and at seven-thirty. Choose one. Mathew could rug you up and we’d keep the best seat for you like we always do. You could watch Mathew being wonderful and afterwards you could talk to Jenny about your diet.’
‘You can’t want me being wonderful,’ Mathew exploded. ‘If you think I’m about to make a spectacle of myself again …’
‘You enjoyed it,’ she said flatly. ‘Tell me you didn’t. I won’t believe you.’ She turned back to Margot. ‘Mathew took to ringmaster to the manor born,’ she said. ‘He’s seriously awesome. He could spend the next two weeks playing ringmaster. You could put off dying for a couple of weeks. I could give the team time to figure where we go from here. It’s win-win for everyone.’
‘You think dying’s a whim?’ Margot said faintly and Allie took a deep breath and met her gaze head on. She’d been blunt and insensitive—why not just keep on going?
‘I guess dying’s something we all have to do,’ Allie admitted. ‘But if you could squeeze in a couple more weeks of living and lend us your nephew while you did, we’d be very grateful. More than grateful. You’d be saving the circus. You’d be giving us—all of us—one last summer.’
‘The loan’s already called in,’ Mathew snapped.
‘Then call it out again,’ Margot snapped back and suddenly the old lady was pushing herself to her feet, unsteady, clinging to the arms of her chair but standing and looking from Mathew to Allie and back again.
‘Mathew is your ringmaster?’ she demanded as if she was clarifying details.
‘He is,’ Allie said.
‘I’m not,’ Mathew said, revolted.
‘If I eat,’ Margot said. ‘If I manage to eat my dinner and eat my breakfast … if I decide not to die … would you extend the loan for the two weeks Allie’s asking? You know I’ve never touched Bond’s money. You know I fought with my family. Apart from that one loan to Sparkles, I’ve never asked anything of you or your father or your grandfather. I’ve asked nothing but this, but I’m asking it now.’
‘Margot …’
‘I know,’ she said, and amazingly she grinned and Allie caught the glimpse of the old Margot, the Margot who’d been a friend of the circus forever, who’d sat and cheered and eaten hot dogs and popcorn and looked totally incongruous in her dignified tweeds but who now held the fate of the circus in her elderly, frail hands. ‘It’s blackmail,’ she admitted. ‘It’s something we women are good at. Something this Allie of yours seems to exemplify.’
‘She’s not my Allie,’ Mathew snapped.
‘She’s your leading lady,’ Margot said serenely. ‘Mathew, I’m happy to live for another two weeks, just to enjoy the circus.’
‘This is business, Margot.’
‘It’s probably not fair,’ Allie ventured. To say she was feeling gobsmacked would be an understatement. She’d come to plead for a two-week extension, not to negotiate a life. ‘Margot, you don’t have to do this.’
‘Don’t you want me to live?’ Margot demanded, and Allie felt flummoxed and looked at Mathew and he was looking flummoxed, too.
‘I came down to spend time with you,’ he managed.
‘And now you can,’ Margot retorted. ‘Only instead of immersing yourself in your financial dealings while I die, you can be a ringmaster while I watch. You’ve been a banker since the day you were born. Why not try something else?’
What had she done? Allie thought faintly. She hadn’t just backed this man against the wall; she’d nailed him there. He was looking as if he had no choice at all.
Which was a good thing, surely? It was the fate of the whole circus team she was fighting for here. She had no space to feel sorry for him.
Besides, he was a big boy.
And he was an awesome ringmaster.
‘I brought the scripts for the clown jokes for the week,’ she ventured, sort of cautiously. The room still felt as if it could explode any minute. ‘We swap them around because lots of families come more than once. If you could read them … even memorise them like you did today …’
‘He memorised his lines?’ Margot demanded.
‘He helped with the water cannon joke,’ Allie told her. ‘He timed it to perfection.’
‘My Mathew … a ringmaster …’
‘Worth living for?’ Allie asked and chuckled and glanced at Mathew and thought chuckling was about as far from this guy’s mindset as it was possible to get.
‘Yes,’ Margot said. ‘Yes, it is. Mathew, do you agree?’
It felt as if the world held its breath. Allie had almost forgotten how to breathe. Breathing was unnecessary, she thought—unless the decision came down on her side.
‘Yes,’ Mathew said at last, seemingly goaded past endurance, and she couldn’t believe she’d heard right.
‘Yes?’
‘Give me the scripts.’
‘You mean it?’
‘I don’t,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘say anything I don’t mean. Ever.’
‘Oh, my …’ Her breath came out in a huge rush. ‘Oh, Mathew …’
‘You have what you want,’ he said. ‘Now leave.’
‘But I’d like crumpets,’ Margot interjected, suddenly thoughtful. ‘With butter and honey. Mathew, could you pop across to the store to get me some?’
‘Of course.’ Mathew sounded totally confused. ‘But …’
‘And leave Allie with me while you go,’ she said. ‘If I’m not dying I need company.’
‘I’ll get them for you,’ Allie offered but Margot suddenly reached out and took her hand. Firmly.
‘I’d like to talk to you. Without Mathew.’
‘Margot …’ Mathew said.
‘Women’s business,’ Margot said blandly. ‘Fifteen minutes, Mathew, then I’ll eat my crumpets and have a nap and you can go back to your work. But I need fifteen minutes’ private time with Allie.’
‘There’s nothing you need to discuss with Allie. Two weeks. That’s it, Margot. No more.’
