CHAPTER THREE

      MARGOT’S HOUSE WAS adorable. This whole town was adorable, Allie thought, as she walked past the long row of fishermen’s cottages to reach Margot’s postcard-perfect cottage.

      The rain had stopped. The late afternoon sun was shimmering on the water and the boats swinging at anchor in the bay looked clean and washed. Fort Neptune had once been a major defence port, and the fort itself was still a monolith on the far headland, but the time for defence was long past. The town was now a sleepy fishing village that came alive each summer, filling with kids, mums and dads eager for time out from the rest of the world.

      It was Allie’s very favourite circus site, and the thought that Henry and Bella had planned their retirement here was a comfort.

      Or it had been a comfort, she thought grimly, fighting for courage to bang Margot’s lion-shaped brass knocker. It was all lies.

      Lies created to save her elephants?

      This was her call. Her responsibility. She took a deep breath—and knocked.

      Mathew answered, looking incongruously big, stooping a little in the low doorway. Margot’s forebears must have been little, Allie thought—or maybe it was just Mathew was large. Or not so much large as powerful. He was wearing a fisherman’s guernsey and jeans. Maybe he’d walked on the beach as well—he looked windswept and tousled and … and …

      Okay, he looked gorgeous, she conceded, taking a step back, but gorgeous didn’t have any place here. He was looking at her as if she was a stranger, as if she had no right to be here, and she felt like running.

      If Margot was dying she had no right to intrude.

      But what was at stake was her grandparents’ future and the future of all the crew. If she didn’t front this man she’d have to go back to the show-ground, give orders to dismantle the big top and do … what?

      The future stretched before her like a great, empty void.

      ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said, but Mathew’s face was impassive. She was a loan, she thought. A number on a balance sheet. A red one. It was this guy’s job to turn it to black.

      The human side of him had emerged this afternoon. Her grandfather’s collapse had propelled him into the circus ring and he’d done well, but how could she propel him to do more?

      The loan was enormous. She had the collateral of an ageing circus and a bunch of weird animals. Nothing else.

      He needed to turn back into a banker and she knew it.

      ‘There’s nothing more I can do,’ he said, surprisingly gently. ‘But how’s your grandpa?’

      ‘I … he’s okay. They’re keeping him in hospital for checks.’

      ‘Maybe it’s just as well. It’ll keep him off site while the circus is disbanded.’

      She felt sick. More, she felt like … like …

      No. She had no idea what she felt like. Her world was spinning, and she had no hope of clinging to it.

      ‘Mathew?’ She recognised the old lady’s voice calling from the living room. Margot. ‘Mathew, who is it?’

      ‘It’s Allie from the circus,’ she called back before Mathew could answer. Margot had always seemed a friend. It would have been wrong not to answer. ‘It’s Allie, alias The Amazing Mischka.’

      There was a faint chuckle in return. ‘Mischka. Allie. Come on in, girl.’

      Come in …

      ‘How sick is she?’ she said urgently, whispering.

      ‘She’s decided she’s dying,’ Mathew said in an under-voice. ‘She’s only eighty, but her dog died and she’s scarcely eaten since. She’s spending her time planning her funeral and deciding who inherits her pot plants. Not me, I gather, because I’m not responsible enough. It sounds comic but it’s not. She wants to die, and she’s making sure it happens.’

      ‘Oh, no.’ She looked into his impassive face—and realised it wasn’t impassive. He was fond of the old lady, then. Very fond.

      ‘Come in, girl.’ Margot’s voice was imperative. ‘Mathew, don’t keep her out there.’

      ‘Don’t …’ Mathew said and then he shrugged his shoulders. But she knew what he wanted to say. Don’t upset her. This loan is nothing to do with her.

      ‘Allie!’ This time the call was peremptory and Allie had no choice but to brush by Mathew and walk through into the sitting room. She was tinglingly, stupidly aware of Mathew as she brushed past him—but then she saw Margot and Mathew was forgotten.

      Margot was sitting hunched over the fire, in a pale pink dressing gown, draped in a cashmere throw.

      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