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‘Fine.’ She sighed and pushed the door wide so he could enter. The dogs stood at each side of her, looking wary.
How well trained were they?
‘They’re not lions,’ she said, following his look. ‘They don’t go for the jugular. They’re very good at hoops, though.’
They were. He’d seen them at work today and they were amazing. They were two acrobatic canines, who now looked like two wary house pets, here to protect their mistress.
‘Basket,’ she said and they checked her face, as if to make sure she really meant it, then obligingly jumped into their basket.
It was tucked into a neat slot under the table where feet didn’t need to go—about the only space in the van a basket would fit. The van was a mastery of a home in miniature, he thought. Unlike Bella and Henry’s, it wasn’t cluttered. It looked feminine and workable, and very, very comfortable.
‘Nice,’ he said approvingly and she gave a sort-of smile.
‘It’s the way we live. It’ll be hard to get used to a house that doesn’t move.’
‘Will you work for another circus?’
‘No!’ That was definite. ‘Most circuses are nomadic and I can’t leave Gran and Grandpa. The only circus that works around here is Carvers and I won’t go near them in a pink fit.’
‘So what will you do?’
‘I’m a trained accountant,’ she said and he blinked because of all the unlikely professions …
‘I know,’ she added bleakly. ‘I’m a qualified accountant for a circus that’s gone bankrupt. What a joke.’
‘But how can you be a qualified accountant?’
‘Online university,’ she said curtly. ‘Doesn’t that fit the image? Circus folk. Inbred and weird.’
‘I never said that.’
‘You never thought that? Why the astonishment, then? Because we’re bankrupt? It’s not my fault. Professionally, this is a bombshell. I wasn’t given the facts.’
‘Which wasn’t fair.’
‘Maybe it was,’ she said wearily. ‘I wasn’t given the facts to protect me. Grandpa could never have afforded to keep our animals into their old age. He took on the debt for me. I loved those elephants, and even now I’ll never agree to have them put down, even though I foresee a lifetime of debt in front of me.’ She closed her eyes for a brief moment, as if gathering strength for a lifetime of elephant support, then took the document and sat at her table-in-miniature and read.
He stood and watched her read.
Her head was bowed over the paper. Her gorgeous curls were tumbled so he couldn’t see her face.
A lifetime of debt … A lifetime of bookkeeping for a girl in pink sequins.
‘There might be charities that’ll help with the animals,’ he ventured at last, and she nodded without looking up.
‘I’ll sort it. Not your problem. According to this, Bond’s owns this circus and all its assets as of today—and nothing we can do in the next two weeks changes it.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And we’re in receivership right now. You’ll sell us to Carvers?’
‘That’s up to us,’ he said gently and she bit her lip and went back to reading.
‘All this document says is that I promise not to try and extend the two weeks, and I don’t get rid of any assets in the interim.’
‘That’s the gist.’ She was good, he thought. What she was accepting must be a gut-wrenching shock, but he’d drawn it up in legalese, and she had it in one quick scan.
‘So no riding off into the sunset on camels?’
‘Um … no.’ Unbelievably, she was trying to smile, and something inside him twisted. Hurt.
She read on, then reached for a pen and signed.
‘We won’t do anything stupid,’ she said dully and the smile had gone again. He missed it.
‘Thank you.’ He took the document, checked the signature—some things were inbred—and tucked it into his pocket.
He should go.
‘This is not your fault,’ she said suddenly. ‘And you have promised to be ringmaster. There’s no reason for you to feel bad.’
‘I don’t.’ But he did and she knew it. How? She was watching his face and he had a strange feeling that she could see … much more than he wanted her to see.
‘I need to check on Pharaoh,’ she said abruptly, standing again, and in the confines of the tiny caravan she was way too close. She’d washed in something lemony, he thought. Citrus. Nice.
He could just reach out and touch those curls.
In his dreams. He was here on business.
‘Pharaoh?’
‘You met him this morning. Camel. Cough.’
‘Right,’ he said faintly. ‘Don’t you have anyone else to do the heavy work?’
‘The animals are mine,’ she said, suddenly protective. ‘I love them. How could I ask anyone else to care for them?’
‘You love camels?’
‘How can I not? Come and make their acquaintance. You’ve only met them in passing, and they’re special.’
He should leave—but the lady of the pink sequins was asking him to go chat to camels.
How could a banker resist an invitation like that?
The ground had dried a little since this morning, but not much. His brogues were suffering. Allie had her boots on again and was sloshing along like a farmer.
She graciously allowed him to carry the feed bucket.
The enclosure was made of cyclone fencing panels, bolted together to form a secure, temporary home. The panels started and ended at a huge truck, opened at the back with the ramp down.
‘That’s their retreat,’ Allie told him, seeing him checking the place out under the temporary lighting. ‘The van’s their security. The camels hardly use theirs but if they’re threatened—for instance we’ve had hoodlums break in and throw stones, and once we had dogs dig under the fencing—they’ll back into the van. The noise they make clattering up the ramp is enough to wake us and we’ll be out here in minutes, but we’re not worried. We seldom have problems.’
The camels didn’t look worried, Mathew thought, as he saw the great beasts greet Allie with what looked almost like affection. Even though he carried the feed bucket, it was Allie they headed for.
She greeted each of them in turn, scratching ears, slapping sides, and as one tried to nuzzle her neck she reached up and hugged him.
‘Pharaoh’s a softie,’ she told him. ‘He’s the oldest. His cough’s getting better. I think we might let him work tomorrow.’
‘It won’t be too strenuous?’ He thought back, remembering the clowns slipping and sliding from the camels’ backs.
‘They love it,’ she said simply. ‘These guys are designed to trudge through the desert, going without water for days at a time. I’ll take them for a decent workout in the morning, but without the circus work they’re bored. If they can’t work …’ She faltered. ‘I’m going to have to find them a desert to roam.’
‘On accountancy wages?’
‘That’s not your problem,’ she said again, and grabbed the feed bucket and sloshed it into the trough with something like violence.
‘We might be able to find you an accountancy position within the bank.’
He’d said it without thinking. He’d said it because … she seemed bereft. Alone. She seemed a slip of a girl with the weight of the circus on her shoulders.
He shouldn’t have said it, and he knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth.
She didn’t look at him, but she straightened and looked beyond the circus grounds, to the foreshore where the moon glimmered over the distant sea.
He saw her shoulders brace, just a little, as if she was preparing herself for what lay ahead.
‘Thank you,’ she said in a cool, polite voice that had nothing to do with the Allie he was beginning to know. ‘But I have Gran and Grandpa, and my two great-uncles—Fizz and Fluffy are really Harold and Frank and they’re Gran’s brothers. How can I leave them? I can’t. Between us we have two dogs, three camels and three ponies. So … an apartment within commuting distance of Bond’s Bank … Sydney, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘There you go, then. Impossible.’
‘Allie …’ He was supposed to be the stand-back, dispassionate banker here. Bankers didn’t get involved—had his grandfather taught him nothing? But right now …
He couldn’t bear it. He felt so responsible he felt ill.
He put a hand on her shoulder, but the moment he touched her she wheeled to face him. With anger.
‘For the third time, it’s not your problem,’ she snapped, and she was so close … so close …
‘I’d like to help.’
‘You already are. You’re ringmaster. You’ve extended our time. What else?’
‘I could do more.’
‘Like what?’ His hand was still on her shoulder and she wasn’t pulling away. ‘Extend the loan? Let us get deeper in debt? Even if you would, we couldn’t accept. I know when to call it quits and we’re calling it quits now. You’ve given us two weeks of getting used to the idea, of finding ourselves somewhere to live, of figuring out something. The caravans will be repossessed but they’re ancient, anyway. I now know why Grandpa’s been so reluctant to replace or even fix them. I’m thinking maybe an old farmhouse somewhere out of town, for a peppercorn rent, some place I can commute to a bookkeeping job for a local car yard or something. You don’t need to offer any more charity.’
‘It’s not charity.’ She was still so close. His banker barriers … his rule about non-involvement … were dissolving because she was so close.
‘Giving us that loan in the first place was charity,’ she said bleakly. ‘No more.’
‘Allie …’
‘What?’ she demanded, and glared up at him and it was too much. It was far too much.
She was too close. The moonlight was on her face. She looked frightened and angry and brave, all three, all at the one time, and quite simply he’d never seen a woman so lovely. She stood there in her ancient jacket and old jeans and her disgusting boots, but the memory of her slim, taut body flying through the air in her pink and silver sequins was with him still.
A bookkeeper for a car yard …
His hand was on her shoulder. He could feel her breathing.
She was glaring up at him, breathing too fast. She should break away. He expected her to, but she didn’t.
Why? The night held no answer. It was as if they were locked there, motionless in time and space.
One woman and one man …
Her face was just there. Her mouth was just there.
Don’t get involved.
How could he not? Something was happening here that was stronger than him. He didn’t understand it, but he had no hope of fighting it.
It’d take a stronger man than he was to resist, and he didn’t resist.
She didn’t move. She stood and looked up at him in the moonlight, anger and despair mixed, but something else … something else …
He didn’t understand that look. It was something he had no hope of understanding and neither, he thought, did she.
Loneliness? Fear? Desperation?
He knew it was none of those things, but maybe it was an emotion born of all three.
It was an emotion he’d never met before, but he couldn’t question it, for there was no time here or space for asking questions. There was only this woman, looking up at him.
‘Allie, I care,’ he said and it was as if someone else was talking.
‘How can you care?’
He had no answer. He only knew that he did.
He only knew that it felt as if a part of him was being wrenched out of place. He was a banker, for heaven’s sake. He shouldn’t feel a client’s pain.
But this was Allie’s pain. Allie, a woman he’d known for less than a day. A woman he was holding, with comfort, but something more. He looked down at her and she looked straight back up at him and he knew that now, for this moment, he wasn’t her banker.
In a fraction of a moment, things had changed, and he knew what he had to do. He knew for now, for this moment in time, what was inevitable, and she did, too.
