“It’s from your mother. I must say, I didn’t expect her to actually send anything.”
“It is?” I’d never had a present from her before. I looked down at the dress with renewed love, smoothing the denim. It was very grown-up. I wondered if my mum had one the same.
“You don’t have to wear it,” Dad said, starting toward the car. “The gingham one’s perfectly respectable.”
“But I want to. Dad, where is Mum? Why doesn’t she live with us anymore?”
Dad was halfway to the car now. “I keep telling you,” he called back over his shoulder, “she had to go away, she wasn’t well.”
“Will she come back soon?” I asked, but he was already heaving his huge bulk into the little car. Perhaps Mum would appear at the circus as a surprise, popping up from the middle of a giant birthday cake, or exploding out of a cannon into the audience. I smoothed down my hair with spitty fingers: I wanted to look my best, just in case.
* * *
The Circus—so important it required capital letters—was on top of a hill. We parked at the bottom, and as we made our way up the soft grass, a warm waft of animal smells filtered down to us with a hint of cotton candy. Dad took a deep breath in through his nose and pummeled his chest.
“How could you capture that in a painting?” he asked me. I ignored him.
Inside the circus tent it was dark and hot. My eyes took a while to adjust and I sought out Dad’s hand, dry and warm round my own. We took our seats halfway up a flimsy stairway. Dad’s seat creaked, while mine merely sighed. I couldn’t see much over the heads in front of me.
A man in a black-and-red suit made his way over to us, whispering into Dad’s ear. I peered round Dad to look at him. He had a tall top hat and long brown hair flowing down to his shoulders: the ringmaster. As he was talking to Dad, he looked at me and smiled, his mouth glinting dangerously. I leaned back in my seat, reaching for a hand to grab hold of, but instead I caught hold of the arm of a woman I didn’t know, who was sitting next to me. She frowned, removing her sleeve from my grip.
Dad was getting to his feet. He indicated with a nod that we should follow the man in red. We navigated our way back along the row, Dad’s gruff voice apologizing as person after person had to stand to let us out. The man in red and black took us to some seats right at the edge of the ring. These ones didn’t creak as we sat down. From here I could see everything. I craned my head back to look at the very top of the tent.
“This is more like it!” Dad whispered as he whisked a toffee apple from a tray held by a grinning clown.
I reached over and stroked the apples’ shiny surfaces, trying to decide which one had the thickest toffee. Suddenly, a stream of water hit me right between the eyes. I looked up, half-blinded, to see the clown and my father laughing at me, a dripping plastic flower suspended from the front of the clown’s costume.
“Serves you right for putting your sticky mitts all over them,” Dad said, handing me a handkerchief to mop myself up with. I narrowed my eyes angrily at the retreating clown. He was still smiling, but I couldn’t tell if it was a real smile, or just one painted on over his sad, thin mouth.
Dad passed me his toffee apple instead, and I blinked the last of the water from my eyes as the lights went down.
A single spotlight illuminated a small circle in the center of the ring. The ringmaster was there, appearing so fast it was as if he had teleported from right next to us. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but in a flash of fireworks, he disappeared again, and in his place was a beautiful woman dressed in glittering pink. The audience oohed and clapped, and the woman bowed, her feather headdress undulating.
I licked the toffee apple and passed it back to Dad. He took a bite, the toffee shattering with a satisfying crack.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” he said, winking, and I nodded.
* * *
We made our way out through the milling crowd. Night had begun to fall, and the air had lost its warmth. Dad wrapped his huge sweater round my shoulders. We stopped just outside the tent and looked out from the top of the hill. From here, Suffolk lay flat all around us, as if we were on the only hill in the world. The first lights of houses and streets could be seen against the yellow-blue sky. I stood, a little way away from Dad, on the edge of the hill, looking up at the countless stars. A warm hand slipped into mine, and I jumped at the touch, but when I looked there was no one there. I ran to Dad and hid my face against him, feeling his arms wrap tight around me, and peered back anxiously to check for ghosts.
A horse from the show pranced past us, coming to a stop nearby, its huge feathery headdress shimmering as it tossed its head. The woman leading it stopped too. It was the woman in pink I had seen in the ring. Close-up, she was a strange, glittery creature, but there was something familiar about her. A glimmer of sequined leotard peeped out from beneath a tan belted coat, and I realized that this was the lady in the picture Dad was painting at home. She had the same chestnut hair, set in waves, and the same pink feathery headdress.
“Tobias,” she said, then she looked down at me and smiled, a knowing, thoughtful smile. I retreated farther into Dad’s sweater.
“Lidiya—” Dad clasped her hand in his “—thank you for getting us such wonderful seats.” His voice was lighter than I had heard it before, as if the toffee apple had varnished his throat on the way down. They were still touching hands.
“Don’t be silly, Tobias. Anything for your pretty girl.” She pronounced it “preetty,” and she crouched down and smiled at me again, the pink feathers on her head nodding at me like insect feelers. From here I could see a great gorge of white cleavage encased in pink sequins. She was like a butterfly that had settled just for a moment. I held my breath, careful not to blow her away. She studied me, her head on one side, then reached up and plucked a feather from her headdress.
“Here,” she said, offering it to me. “A pretty feather for Tobias’s pretty girl.” Her voice wasn’t the hushed Suffolk sound that I had heard a lot of recently. Maybe she was Scottish. Or Irish. I took the feather and whispered my thanks.
* * *
Later that night I climbed into my bed. Stacey’s little brooch was on my bedside table, and I picked it up and put the feather in its place, running my finger round the brooch’s rough edge. Dad climbed through my doorway and sat on the bed, watching me for a moment.
“Treasure?” he asked.
I nodded, and he smiled approvingly.
“What story shall I tell you tonight?”
“The one about The Circus.”
And he began. He wove our visit into a story of giant gray elephants and man-eating panthers. I could smell the sparklers, the toffee apples and the elephant poo, which is strange because we had only been at the circus a few hours ago, and I didn’t remember any elephants when we went.