For a moment he thought she might cry, but she didn’t. Instead she bit her lip, then tilted her chin and met his gaze straight on.
‘The goodwill you get for selling this place, our booking rights, our name, will probably get you enough to cover our debts—apart from the animal refuge debt but I’ll worry about that later. I’ve insisted Grandpa pay into superannuation for everyone—I assume that fund’s safe?’
‘It is.’
‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘That’s that. You’ve given us two weeks and I don’t want more. You’re calling in the loan and you have every right. For the next two weeks we might need you as our ringmaster—and our friend—but after that … Thank you, Mr Bond, but that’s all.’
BY THE TIME they had Cleo back at the circus, the vet was waiting. All three camels had pellet wounds. The injuries were superficial but the vet was grim-faced.
‘It’s a wonder these guys didn’t kill themselves with fear. Someone shooting these into their flanks … I’ll talk to the police. If we could find out who, we could lay charges, but I’m betting it’ll be a bored teenager with a new air gun.’
But what about the fencing? Mathew thought. The bolts between the fencing had been cut with speed and precision. Surely a kid would simply aim an air gun through the wire?
Bolt cutters took strength. Adult strength. And someone must have aimed the gun from the direction of the truck, so the camels couldn’t retreat.
He wanted to talk to the cop, but his experience with the town’s constable wasn’t encouraging.
He glanced at Allie, who was helping wash Cleo’s side with disinfectant. He wasn’t about to share worries about thugs with bolt cutters with Allie. She had more than enough to worry about.
But assets needed to be protected. That was a rule ingrained into his banker mind since time immemorial. These were the bank’s assets, he thought, though as he looked over the wounded camels and watched the geriatric circus crew fuss around them, he thought the word asset hardly applied.
Still, he took himself out of earshot, made a couple of phone calls and felt happier. He’d have security guards here by tonight.
He turned and Allie was approaching him. She looked businesslike, and he wondered how much effort it was costing to keep herself calm in the face of the future before her. What was she proposing? To spend the rest of her life paying for the keep of geriatric animals?
‘There’ll be no camel show today,’ she said. ‘They’ll need time to settle but it’s fine—I’ll put in an extra dog show. We’ll leave the camels in view so the kids can see them as they go in and out, and we’ll put up a notice saying what’s happened. With a bit of luck it might even out our air gunner—there’ll be kids who’ll know what’s happened. Mike’s applying lots of bright red antiseptic so their wounds look even more dramatic than they are. Meanwhile I need to amend your cheat sheet.’
‘My cheat sheet …’ His mind wasn’t working like it should be, or maybe he was having trouble switching from banker to outrider to teacher to … ringmaster? Or to the guy who just wanted to watch Allie.
‘Your notes for tonight’s performance,’ she said patiently. ‘Tinkerbelle and Fairy can put on an awesome act if needed and they’re needed now. Okay, Maestro, time to suit up.’
‘Maestro?’
‘Maestro, all the way from the vast, impenetrable reaches of Outer Zukstanima,’ she said and chuckled. ‘It’s a circus tradition. That’s who we’ve decreed you are. By the way, when you’re not in the ring can I call you Matt?’
‘No!’
‘I’m not calling you Mathew for two weeks,’ she retorted. ‘It’s a banker’s name. It’s the same as your grandfather’s, according to the website I read. So Mathew is your banking name and Maestro is your circus name. What do I call you when I just want to talk?’
There was a question to take him aback. Or, actually, just to take him back.
‘Okay, Matt,’ he said, before he could think any more, and it was like a window being levered, opening into the past. Matt was who he really was, in his head, but he admitted it to no one.
His memories of his big sister Lizzy were hazy, but her voice was still with him. ‘ Matt, come and play with me. Matt, you ‘re messing up my painting. Mattie, hold my hand while we cross the street.’
And his mother—also a banker …
‘Elizabeth, call your brother Mathew. Mathew, call your sister Elizabeth.’
And the two of them grinning at each other and knowing that, regardless of how the world saw them, they were really Matt and Lizzy. He’d stayed Matt in his head, he thought, but only in his head. No one else ever used the diminutive.
‘What did I say? What’s wrong?’ Allie demanded and he hauled himself back to the present with a jerk. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she was watching his face. ‘I’ve hurt you. The web said your family was killed. Is that what’s wrong? Did they call you Matt?’
How intuitive was this woman?
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he said, more harshly than he intended. ‘But Matt is okay.’
And suddenly it was.
For two weeks he was playing ringmaster. Make-believe. Why not extend it? For two weeks he could be Matt in his private life and he didn’t have to be a banker at all.
With Allie. With The Amazing Mischka.
He should stay being a banker, he thought. He should insist that at least his name stayed the same, but Allie was moving on, and she was taking him with her. She seized his hand and tugged him forward to her grandparents’ caravan, where the circus world in the form of his ringmaster’s coat and hat waited.
Memories of Lizzy were suddenly all around him. ‘Come on, Matt …’
The pain of knowing she wasn’t there … He’d been six years old and the agony was still fresh. Lizzy.
Do not go there. Do not ever let yourself near that kind of emptiness again.
But … ‘Excellent,’ Allie was saying and the pressure on his hand intensified. Strong and warm—and very, very unsettling. ‘Matt is nice and easy to say,’ she decreed. ‘And it makes you sound far less toffy. We can relax around nice, plain Matt.’
‘Nice and plain? Says you who’s about to force me into spangly top hat and tails.’
‘There is that,’ she said and she chuckled. ‘Matt and Maestro seem a fearsome combination. For the next two weeks you’re our hero. We’ll like you in both personas, and we can forget about Mathew the Banker entirely.’
Matt or Maestro? He was thrown off balance by both. He shouldn’t answer to either. He felt … he felt …
Okay, he didn’t know how he felt. He had an almost overwhelming urge to head back to Margot’s, climb into his gorgeous car and go home to Sydney. Taking leave had been a bad idea.
He’d done it to say goodbye to Margot but now Margot had no intention of dying, at least for the next two weeks.
If he left,