Chapter Ten

“How could he? How could he do such a thing?” raged Georgia. Her face was tear-streaked and her fair skin blotchy from crying. Olivia and Aeysha were sitting just outside the tent that the three of them shared.

“My poor mum!” wailed Georgia. “I’m never going to talk to my dad ever again. He’s toast as far as I’m concerned.” Her rosebud mouth was set in a mutinous line.

“Oh, Georgia, you don’t really mean that,” said Aeysha carefully. “I can see that it’s really upsetting, and it’s a shock, but it’s not as if your mum and dad were ever going to get back together again. Your mum seems fine about it; she’s only upset because you’re so upset. Only the other day you were saying that she was relieved that the divorce was almost through so she’d be able to get on with the rest of her life. You said that she said that she and your dad had both moved on. You even said how much you liked your dad’s girlfriend.”

“Maybe I did,” said Georgia, “but that doesn’t mean I want him to marry her and for her to have his baby. It’s all too soon.”

“But you’ll love having a little brother or sister, Georgie,” said Aeysha. “You’ve always said that you wished you had a bigger family and that you weren’t an only child. Now you won’t be.”

“Dad and Leonie and the baby will be a real family. I’ll just be the half-sister. The outsider who comes to visit. Since Dad left, Mum and I have only been half a family, like the last couple of bits of stale cake in the tin that nobody wants!” Georgia burst into angry tears again.

Aeysha patted her back, and Olivia drew circular movements with her finger on the inside of Georgia’s elbow. It was something that Eel and she did when the other one was really stressed, and they always found it soothing. She knew that if Jack suddenly announced that he was getting married again and having a baby with his new fiancée, she would feel just like Georgia, but she could see that Aeysha was right too.

“Well, I think you’re lucky to have two families. You’ll be able to choose the bits you like best from both of them. Most of us don’t have a choice. We just have to make the best of the family we’ve got,” said Aeysha, who was the eldest girl of seven children and often joked that she liked coming to school because it gave her a rest from the noise and mayhem.

“But you wouldn’t want to swap your family for another one, would you?” said Georgia, sniffing.

“Of course not,” said Aeysha. “But I also know that one day, when I’m older, I will want to leave them and set out on my own. My brother cried on the day he went away to college and said he didn’t want to go, but my mum made him go, even though I knew she was dreading her eldest child leaving home. She said it was the next step in his life and he’d regret it if he didn’t take it. Now he loves it, and can’t stop talking about uni and his friends when he comes back to visit.”

“I’m never going to leave my mum,” said Georgia fiercely. “Not ever!”

Aeysha glanced at Olivia over Georgia’s head. “You may say that now, Georgie, but you wouldn’t want everything to stay the same for ever. Imagine if your mum still treated you like she did when you were four or if you were never allowed to go up a grade in ballet or got any better at algebra. Although in your case, Georgie, it would be hard to get any better at algebra than you already are.”

Georgia gave a pleased, embarrassed little smile. It was true she was very good at maths, just like her accountant father.

Olivia knew that Aeysha was right and that change could be a good thing. She had hated leaving the travelling circus and coming to the Swan but it had been the best thing that ever happened to her. But maybe Aeysha’s willingness to embrace change came from the fact that she felt so secure in her own family, or the clan as she called them, a great network of cousins, aunts and uncles as well as her own siblings.

Olivia didn’t have a clue who her great-grandparents were, and as far as she was aware she didn’t have any cousins at all. Her mum had been an only child, and Jack had never mentioned any brothers and sisters. In fact, now she thought about it, Jack never mentioned much about his childhood at all, except that his parents had died within months of each other when he was seventeen and he’d got his first job in a circus shortly after. “I was an orphan,” he’d said. “The circus became my family.”

“Maybe,” ventured Olivia, “family seems more precious when you don’t have much of it, like Georgia and me. You want to hold on tight to the bit you’ve got.”

Aeysha laughed good-naturedly. “That might be true. My family love each other but they’re always falling out with each other and having feuds.”

“What sort of feuds?” asked Georgia, who had long stopped crying. She was fascinated by Aeysha’s big family and loved hearing stories about them.

“Well,” said Aeysha, “my mum and her sister, Hema, are tight as anything now. But they didn’t speak to each other for almost eighteen months once.”

“Why?” asked Georgia. “Did one sister betray the other in some dreadful way?”

“Oh no,” said Aeysha cheerfully. “They fell out over a game of Monopoly. Auntie Hema refused to swap Bond Street for all four stations and the get-out-of-jail-free card that my mum was offering her. They didn’t speak for ages. It’s lucky it wasn’t over something more serious or they might still be feuding. There’s one part of my family that still isn’t talking to another because of a dispute over ownership of a goat in the nineteenth century. No one can remember anything about it but they still don’t speak.”

Georgia and Olivia stared at her in astonishment. “You are joking, right?” asked Olivia.

Aeysha grinned. “Of course it might be a family myth, but there’s probably some truth in it. Grown-ups can be really stupid some times, and these things get out of control.” She turned to Georgia. “It’s why you should call your dad and tell him that you love him and you know that he loves you even if he is getting married again and having a baby with Leonie.”

Georgia looked bashful. “That’s what my mum said I should do, too.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” asked Aeysha. “Come on,” she said to Olivia. “Let’s go sit in the bus. It’ll be leaving in ten minutes to take us into town for rehearsals. Georgia can ring her dad in peace and quiet, and you can sit next to Auntie Aeysha and she’ll solve all your problems for you.”

Olivia stood up with a smile, but inside she wished that Aeysha could do just that. There was a gulf between her and Jack, and since Evie’s arrival at the Swan Circus, it was getting bigger by the minute.