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Ellie pressed through the crowds to her mother, and they headed out arm in arm under the moonlit sky to find their bikes. Their shoes slapped the path as they walked: the thud of Ellie’s Dr. Martens and the squelch of her mother’s trainers.
“I really thought that was going to end badly. What a relief he’s okay,” said her mother.
“He’s fine,” said Ellie, lost in a jumble of thoughts.
“You made up then, after last time? I was sorely tempted to come after you when you ran into the ring.”
They located their bikes: her mother’s stately one in apple green with its wide handlebars and woven basket up front, and Ellie’s, neon amber with a high bar and extensive gears for the speeds she liked to ride.
Her mother secured her purse in the basket and mounted her bike. “It’s a pity I couldn’t say hello. I hope there aren’t any bad feelings.”
Ellie tied her hair into a bun. “He had other things on his mind, Mama,” she said, swinging her leg into place and pushing off.
She smarted from Yusuf’s rejection. It lay at odds with her own depth of feeling for him. She had no idea how to scale his walls, or if she should give him up altogether. How often had she shown him they were on the same side?
Let him wrap his sadness and anger about him if that’s what he wants.
One thing had become clear: the truth needed to come to light. She needed to write her version of the story, with or without his blessing.
She rode next to her mother at a comfortable pace along the edge of the park. Firs and oaks rustled as they passed, and the musky scent of the damp night lay on the leaves.
“You’re quiet, love. It was quite a shock, seeing Yusuf fall. The circus is so joyful, it’s easy to forget the risks the performers take. And then, with you knowing him, it makes it harder.”
Being with her mother left no room for morose thoughts. Every moment with Katharina Richter thrummed with curiosity. She couldn’t help but set the world to rights, to question and fill voids. It both exhausted and lifted Ellie.
“Still, all’s well that ends well.”
“Except it isn’t,” said Ellie, glancing over her shoulder as the big top receded into the distance. “Yusuf decided he didn’t need saving, not by me or anyone else.”
Her mother’s laboured breath punctuated her sentences. “Quite right too. I imagine him being pushed and pulled all over the place, poor lad. He must have been all up-ended after that tumble–a proud man like that. Give him some space to make his own decisions.”
Ellie cycled faster, suddenly craving space. Part of her wished to turn her back on the whole sorry affair. She could move. Barcelona beckoned. Or she could resurrect her school French and head to Paris. No, maybe not Paris. She preferred Berlin’s laissez-faire flair to Parisian chic. Besides, Paris had its own problems with multiculturalism and the march of the far right, and Ellie considered herself most at home in tolerant, hopeful places. Researching possible destinations would give her something to get her teeth into. A new start always brought opportunities. She kidded herself that her parents needed her, that her mother required support with her father’s drinking. They were grown adults. She’d never flown far from the nest: it could be the best decision she’d ever made.
Except Ellie never ran from problems. She ran into them, and she wrestled them until she won.
Her mind shuttered back to Yusuf, cowed but proud before her, stubborn and brave but determined to be alone. His siege mentality would get him nowhere but he needed to find that out for himself.
In some ways, they were alike. As adventurous as she was, she’d always needed her touch points, the places and people who anchored and understood her. There could be no thought of traversing the world alone, with her thoughts bouncing about her head with no one to listen. Even tonight, there could be no question of returning to her flat with its silence and stark walls. She’d boomerang back to her parental home like a migrating bird following its instinct for preservation.
She’d return to the cocoon of her family home, and attack this story anew, whether Yusuf wanted it or not. But bubbling beneath the surface, something niggled: a sense that her journalistic mettle hadn’t been tested enough to unravel a story this big.
She slowed her bike to let her mother catch up. “Can I come home with you tonight?”
“Of course, darling. Your father’s probably snoring on the sofa, but what a lovely surprise for him.”
How lucky she was to have these two humans raise her. How easy to take her stable environment for granted, and how she’d never been subject to the tyranny of war.
“Am I too much of an amateur to get this story out? Just tell me straight. I can take it.”
Her mother’s voice boomed, filled with passion. “You can’t be serious? Ellie, this is your story. You’ve done the legwork. You’re passionate about it. Why would you think you’re not good enough to write it?”
“Maybe Marina was right, starting me on filler stories. I was chomping at the bit, but what if I’m not ready or experienced enough?”
They rolled around a corner and onto a bike path, riding alongside each other. Above them, street lights hummed on the quiet streets.
“Darling, do you think a man would second guess his abilities? Yes, experience counts, but so does fearlessness, and plain old guts, and the willingness to risk looking stupid. Do you think masters of their field get there just by experience? It takes so much more to be a supernova. Don’t dim your own light. There are plenty of people who will do that for you. You’re like me. You always need a purpose. Just because you don’t have a job, it doesn’t mean that internal need stops. Just write the story—that’s your talent—and the rest will fall into place.”
“You make it sound easy. What about when I’ve written it? What then? It’s not like I have the mechanisms to get the story out.”
“Blogs are all the rage, you know that. Especially controversial ones.” Her mother chuckled and the sound fell like pearls into the open expanse around them. “Or use your contacts. If the story’s good enough, it’ll stick. The most important thing is deciding a course of action. Anyway, enough shop talk. I’ve never quite seen a clown like the one tonight. He was magnificent, wasn’t he? So expressive. How he was able to twist his face into those positions, I’ll never know. I must take your father.”
Her mother knew when to retreat. She had quashed Ellie’s doubts and buoyed her, but now she stepped back, allowing her words to linger. The wind ruffled their hair while her mother told her about the acts she’d missed, about how she could still feel the remnants of the music in the echo of her chest, how the ringmaster had forged ahead despite the scare, and the animals had delighted the crowd.
They pulled up to the apartment block and dismounted. Her mother wheeled her bike into the rack in the courtyard and secured it. Then she retrieved her bag. She reapplied her lipstick, smacking her lips together, before shaking her pink hair free of its clasp. It remained curled upwards in a peculiar fashion.
“Come now, let’s scare your father awake.”
Ellie stored her bike and trudged up the stairs.
Just write the story. It sounded like a mantra.
Truth didn’t just appear. It required advocates and trail-blazers, heroes and heroines to herald it.
Silberling and Marina deserved a comeuppance.
It did Ellie good to be freed from the constraints of editorial requirements. She made herself comfortable at her father’s desk, switching on the light with its dusty, fringed lampshade. Then she prepared herself a steaming mug of coffee, tucked a blanket over her knees and powered up her laptop. When the home screen had finally flickered to life and she had managed to connect to the internet, she spent a few minutes drafting an email before ringing Tom.
He answered on the second ring. “Hi, trouble.”
She smiled. “Hi, you. Fancy coming over for some beers next week? I can make you some of my veggie pasta, and we can sit out on the balcony.”
“Or we could just hit the town for a burger.”
“Sure.” She hesitated. “I have a favour to ask.”
Tom groaned. “Doing favours for you is like going into battle. I’m not ready for another round yet.”
“Have I scarred you for life? You really were very brave, trying to distract Marina.”
“I almost soiled myself. Let’s just say I’m not cut out to be in the spy game.”
The vapours from the coffee drifted into the air. “Do you have your laptop nearby?”
“Hang on,” he said. The sound of him rummaging filtered through the phone line. “Got it.”
“I’m sending you over a story outline, for your eyes only. It can’t go anywhere.” She hit send on her email app. “You should have it any second. I’ll wait while you read it.” She undid her ponytail and rubbed the sore bit on the back of her head.
“Okay, here it is,” said Tom.
She sipped her coffee and sank into the sensation of heat travelling through her body.
Tom emitted a low whistle. “That’s what you found out? Holy hell, Ellie.”
Her hands jittered and she set down the cup. “Could you send me the name of a few editors who might be interested?”
“Are you sure you want to go down this route?” said Tom. “As your friend, I need to warn you, these are powerful people.”
“The truth will speak for itself. It has to,” she said simply. Without that one belief, her whole world would tilt. She lived by the values of truth and justice. There could be no question of hiding or ignoring what she had uncovered.
“If you’re sure.”
“I am.”
He sighed. “I’ll get you a list by tomorrow.”
She exhaled. “Thank you.”
“Good luck, trouble.”
She set her phone aside, and stretched her fingers out over the keyboard. Her father’s persistent snore reached her through the walls. Before long, her childhood home had faded from around her. She added flesh to the lead story she had outlined for Tom, her biro leaving a trail of messy ink as she swept her hand across the page. She had to bring Silberling and Marina’s deception into sharp focus and hope that an editor of another national paper would pick it up. Her story needed to grip the consciousness of the nation, creating waves, and not disappear into the cracks.
When she had finished, she read over her work, and the bare bones of the lead article seemed lacking to her, as if it were merely a skeleton and it needed to be brought to life with the colours and back stories of the circus. Ellie resolved not to cut short the story; the refugees’ voices deserved to be heard, not silenced or squeezed into the space a news desk could spare for them.
She wrote a supplementary piece, and then another, and another, that she eventually decided would become a blog series. As she wrote, the centrifugal forces of the story took shape beneath her fingers, growing it far beyond the story she had initially submitted to Marina. At first, she didn’t know who her audience was. Then she realised her ideal reader had to be someone like her. Someone who had fleeting interactions with refugees but might not have had cause to know them better. A reader who had the capacity for compassion, if only Ellie could show them that the aches and needs of the refugees were not far removed from their own.
She had to humanise strangers, to awaken sympathy, to portray them not as a faceless group of outsiders, but as individual people. She had to define the real monsters: poverty and war, corruption and fear. Her thoughts lingered, in turn, on each of the individuals she’d met at the circus, considering the heroes and heroines of her story, and the villains. She had little hope of convincing those who disliked immigrants of their value. Instead, Ellie targeted those who wavered; she addressed those in the swollen middle ground whose minds remained open. Those who might stumble onto her blog after reading about the Treptow Circus in the nationals.
She bled her ideas onto the page until the early hours, and when her eyes blurred and her fingers ached, she gathered up her work into a neat pile, and curled into a ball on her parents’ sofa, exhausted.
