‘I doubt it,’ said Caramella. ‘She won’t reconsider. There’s no way your mum could move to Albury. How would she work there?’
Caramella can be so practical. I stared at my chocolate macaroon gloomily. I knew she was right, but sometimes I just want her to play along with my dreams, or at least accompany me into the drama and tragedy of it all.
‘Anyway, guess what?’ I decided to change the topic.
Caramella never guesses, so I carried on. ‘I did some superb sleuthing today. Kind of incidental sleuthing, but still.’
‘What?’ she said. She wasn’t really looking at me, she was fiddling with the packet of biscuits. I wasn’t sure, but suddenly I suspected she was upset about something.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, still not looking. ‘Tell me what you discovered.’
‘I met that girl who got out of the Abutula’s van. She’s from Afghanistan.’
‘Oh. How did you meet her?’
‘At the place where Aunt Squeezy volunteers.’
There was definitely something wrong. Where was the excitement? ‘Caramella, tell me what’s wrong. I know something’s wrong.’ I pulled the biscuits away from her.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘No, it’s something. Tell me. Have I done something?’
‘No, you haven’t done anything. That’s the problem.’ She looked up at me for the first time since the conversation began, her short bunched pigtails dangling above her shoulders as she hunched over the table and squeezed her plump little hands into a knot.
‘What do you mean?’ I said it quietly and gently. I could tell she was struggling to explain. She looked down again and bit at her lip.
‘It’s just, remember how when Kite left the circus you went on and on about him not caring about us and our circus? Well, now it seems you want to do exactly the same thing. You just want to leave and be a star and you don’t seem to care about what happens to us.’ She shrugged and pushed her lip out and looked at me like I was a traitor. I blushed and took a deep breath.
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It’s not like that. I do care, of course I care…it’s just…It’s just, God, I just don’t know how or what to do with us, with our circus.’
‘Have you tried?’
Before I could answer, Mrs Zito waddled into the kitchen, pinched my cheeks and asked me if I wanted to stay for dinner. I was blushing because somewhere deep inside I felt guilty and I didn’t feel I could stay for dinner, so I stood up and said thank you but Mum was expecting me home for dinner. I smiled at Caramella and said I’d see her tomorrow. She nodded feebly and I felt like a skunk as I left. I felt like I was scurrying off and leaving a bad smell in the air between us, because I couldn’t face it, I couldn’t work out how to clean up the smell. Maybe Caramella was right. But I couldn’t figure it out on the spot. I knew there was a bit of thinking to do but I had to go do it before I could know what was what.