Jeanne snatched the tickets from his hands and then her face lit up like Christmas might have arrived already. ‘The front row! The very front row!’
He smiled at her pure joy, so richly transparent. He instinctively knew she would like to sit in the very first row and he had been almost as excited as he knew she would be when he had found there were still seats in that area available. What he hadn’t been expecting though was what quickly came next. Jeanne threw herself at him, stick-thin – yet surprisingly strong – arms going around him in a bear hug of mammoth proportions. It caught him off guard. He wasn’t quite sure what to do. For a brief second he didn’t do anything and then he caught sight of Keeley and she put her arms out, mimicking a hug. Yes! He should hug Jeanne back. That was exactly what he should do. Except affection like this, it did not come naturally. Finally, he grouped his arms around her and gathered her a little closer, patting her on the back. Why was he so bad at this? And why was he so bad at this in front of Keeley? What must she think of him?
‘Can we get popcorn?’ Jeanne asked, stepping back, cheeks flushed, eyes showing signs of unshed tears.
‘Maybe in a while,’ Ethan offered.
Jeanne waved the tickets in the air and was off again, gamboling down the aisle and making for the front rows of seating right next to the ring.
‘She is so excited,’ Keeley said. ‘More excited than Rach was to discover designer fashion brands at a flea market.’
‘I suspect this will be the first time she has been anywhere close to anything like this,’ Ethan replied. He was still watching Jeanne, finding himself a little concerned when she was too far away. What was the impetuous child doing to him? She was making him care, opening him up in ways he never thought could be possible in his life.
‘Is she staying with you?’ Keeley asked. ‘At your apartment above a bakery?’
He turned to Keeley then and smiled, nodding. ‘It really is small,’ he answered. ‘When Bo-Bo comes into the living area it is like sharing the space with a large horse.’ He sighed. ‘But, what else could I do? She has nowhere safe to live. The alternative would be…’ He didn’t finish the sentence.
‘There must be someone you could call for help,’ Keeley suggested.
‘Help’ would come if he called it. ‘Help’, he knew from experience, would end up being worse than all anyone’s nightmares rolled into one. He didn’t want to think about that option. And that was why he was letting Jeanne stay. ‘I have said she can stay for a while. After Christmas, we will see.’
There would be no ‘seeing’. He had made Jeanne a promise and he had meant it. He would get her into school if she stayed. He did not have the first idea what he was doing attempting some kind of parenting, but he could not let her go back to how he knew she would be living. Cold. Desperate. Having to make friends with unsuitable people simply to get warm standing around a fire.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ Keeley said.
‘She will run the rings around me,’ Ethan answered. ‘Exactly like the horses we are going to see in a few moments.’
‘I like that you care about people,’ Keeley told him as they arrived at the very front row of seats. ‘I think you find it difficult to know what to do when you do care about people but… caring in the first instance that’s the most important thing.’
‘Oh,’ Ethan whispered, dropping his face a little nearer to hers. ‘Believe me, I know what to do when I care about people. I am just… a little out of practice.’
And then he kissed her. Firm and intentional, leaving no doubt about the depth of his feelings. Right away her lips responded and the glow that reappeared around his heart whenever their mouths met in a kiss, brightened to a new level.
Jeanne cleared her throat like perhaps she had caught the annoyance of hairballs from Bo-Bo and Keeley backed away from him, her cheeks a little flushed.
‘I believe it is a family show,’ Jeanne said, sitting high and proud in her chair, hat as far pulled back from her face as it had ever been.
Family. Settling down in his seat next to Keeley, Ethan thought about the fact that family had always seemed such an unlikely scenario in his life, until Ferne. And now, with Ferne gone, with Louis uncomfortable with Ferne’s last wishes regarding the hotels, he had thought it unlikely the universe was going to reach out to him for a second time. But as the lights around them dimmed and the spotlight focused on the circle of sawdust, the ringmaster approaching, Ethan took Keeley’s hand in his. Maybe the world could be on hold for a time and, perhaps, the reaching out did not, after all, have to be commenced by fate.
‘Horses!’ Jeanne breathed louder than Ethan suspected she had expected. ‘And… acrobats!’
Keeley turned to look at him and as their eyes met there it was again, loud and clear, a cluster bomb of internal reactions Ethan wasn’t at all familiar with. It was demanding loud, screaming, this was right! And then Keeley whispered to him, ‘I’m almost as excited as Jeanne.’
He smiled, squeezing her hand. ‘Moi aussi.’ He let out a breath of content. ‘Me too.’
Fifty-One
‘The bikes were the best… no, the clowns… no, the acrobats on the horses… no, wait, ses furets! Oui, ses furets!’
Yes, there had been performing ferrets that had brought back all the Mr Peterson vibes and had Keeley wondering exactly how big the squirrels that had attacked her mum had been. The performing ferrets were certainly bigger than any stoat-like creature she had come across before, on a nature documentary or once in the closet of a particularly wealthy estate agent customer.
‘You have named almost every act that performed,’ Ethan said laughing.
‘Apart from the ringmaster,’ Keeley told Jeanne. ‘And he was very good too.’
Jeanne was chomping on a hot dog now as they walked away from the big top over the grass and towards the area where the car was going to collect them from. It was freezing, the snow cracking with every foot laid upon it, breath visible as they chattered. The circus had been amazing and, as it was near to Christmas there had been some lovely festive touches to add to all the hair-raising feats and slapstick from the clowns. Ethan had laughed hard at the clowns, their stupidity off the scale, with most of the endings to their sketches predictable but hilarious all the same. And his laughter had warmed Keeley right the way through. To her it was the sweetest sound, because it felt somehow like that slight tenseness he tended to carry was relieved in that moment. Ethan laughed openly and genuinely, always with a whoosh of stress expelled along with that laughter.
‘Bo-Bo would have liked it,’ Jeanne carried on.
‘Bo-Bo would have tried to eat the ferrets,’ Ethan said.
‘He’s a good dog!’ Jeanne exclaimed.
‘I can vouch he knows how to play dead very well,’ Keeley answered.
‘He will be pleased to see you,’ Jeanne said, a smudge of tomato ketchup on her cheek.
‘Where is he?’ Keeley asked, ‘Is someone watching him?’
‘He is at my apartment,’ Ethan said. ‘He has the entire, yet small, lounge to himself, together with water, too much food and I hope no unexpected accidents on the floorboards. I was also instructed to leave on the TV because he may get lonely.’ He paused then and looked to Keeley, his expression giving the impression he thought he had said something wrong. ‘That is… you do not have to come… to my apartment… I was not saying that was a firm plan. We can always… go somewhere else or… nowhere at all.’