Chapter 2

Mary and Helen were being home schooled by my wife, so it had mostly escaped my notice that the long summer school vacation was upon us. The only difference I experienced was that there was less traffic – fewer cars – on the roads during the ‘rush hour’, when it seemed everybody was trying to get to or from work without the extra burden of parents driving their children to and from school.

So it was something of a surprise when the doorbell rang one afternoon and we discovered my sister, Jasmine, on the doorstep, her young teen daughter beside her. They were soon enjoying the July sunshine out in the back garden, where we tended to eat our meals when the weather was warm enough.

I hadn’t seen Jasmine or Claire for many years. I vaguely recalled that shortly after I left home to find work the other side of the country, Jazz had married – a showman, I understood – in a travelling circus. Every few weeks, the whole kit and caboodle would move on, a convoy of trucks loaded with dismantled rides – dodgems, waltzers, chairoplanes, and so on – and towing the big caravans in which the circus staff, including Jazz and her husband, lived.

A consequence of this peripatetic existence was that she and I had lost touch, mobile phone technology not being then what it is today. However, I recall hearing that she’d had a baby a few months after we parted: I guess Claire was that erstwhile child.

“So,” I said, “where’s Arturo? That was his name, wasn’t it?”

I’d never met her husband, and there was no wedding ring on Jazz’s finger.

She shrugged. “He split, years ago. We were in Catalonia – or maybe it was Tuscany. A very fit young trapeze artist joined us and, long story short, they went off together.”

I’d opened a bottle of Merlot, and now filled glasses for Jazz, my wife, and me. We considered the girls to be a bit too young, although when there was just us, the girls were allowed a little wine with their dinners.

“Anyway, it’s lovely to see you both,” I said, smiling. I wasn’t being false: Jazz and I had history – albeit about fifteen years previously when we’d both been in our early teens, and she looked as beautiful to me now as she had then. In fact both she and Claire sported even tans, no doubt from their years moving around Europe in hot places; and both were very slender and fit-looking.

Claire, I realised, was staring at me when she thought I wasn’t looking. Probably, I thought, just from the novelty of never having met her uncle before.

“So, how old are you, Claire?” I asked.

She blushed prettily. “Fourteen.”

Jazz was looking at her daughter with an expression of pride. “She’s almost a woman already, and I’m hoping she completes her development in the next few weeks and months.”

I thought it a rather odd thing to say about one’s daughter, but Jazz had always had a very direct way of speaking. Her words prompted me to surreptitiously scrutinise my niece.

She was almost as tall as her mother, and, like her, had brown hair and eyes. A sprinkle of freckles was just about visible under her tan. She fiddled a lot with the scrunchie holding her ponytail together, pulling her hair straight back from her face every time a strand or two escaped.