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.’
‘Maybe your grandpa wanted to keep you happy.’
She stared at him—and then she snatched up the paper and stared at it as if it was an unexploded bomb, while Mathew Bond’s words washed around her.
‘Bond’s Bank—meaning my grandfather—was approached ten years ago,’ he told her as she kept staring. ‘We were asked to set up a loan to provide for the care of two elephants, three lions and five monkeys. A wildlife refuge west of Sydney provides such care, but, as you can imagine, it’s not cheap. Elephants live up to seventy years. Lions twenty. Monkeys up to forty. You’ve lost one lion, Zelda, last year, and two of the monkeys have died. The rest of the tribe are in rude health and eating their heads off. The loan was worked out based on costs for ten years but those costs have escalated. You’ve now reached the stage where the interest due is almost as much as the loan itself. Henry’s way overdue in payments and the refuge is calling in its overdue bills. They’re winding down. Your grandfather’s seventy-six, Allie. There’s no way he can repay this loan. It’s time to fold the tent and give it away.’
Silence.
She was staring blindly at Mathew now, but she wasn’t seeing him. Instead she was seeing elephants. She’d watched them perform as a child, she’d learned to work with them and she’d loved them. Then, as a teenager she’d started seeing the bigger picture. She’d started seeing the conditions they lived in for what they were, and she’d railed against them.
She remembered the fights.
‘Grandpa, I know we’ve always had wild animals. You’ve lived with them since you were a kid, too, but it’s not right. Even though we do the best we can for them, they shouldn’t live like this. They need to be somewhere they can roam. Grandpa, please …’
As she’d got older,
