Page 101 of The Ringmaster’s Daughter

She took his hand in hers. ‘It would make me happy if you would lie next to me, stroke my hair and tell me how much you love me.’

He smiled at her and allowed her to take him into the bedroom. They lay down next to each other, just a few centimetres between their faces.

‘You think we will be all right?’ she asked.

‘I do.’

‘I want to leave.’

‘And where would you go?’

She rolled away from him and let out a sigh. ‘The world – the whole world!’ She lifted her arms up as if the space between her hands was the circumference of the earth.

Michel propped his head on his hands.

‘The whole world is pretty big; can you think of one place?’

‘One place… One place… How about California? It’s warm there. Werner got a postcard once, from someone who had left to join a circus there as a trapeze act.’

‘Like you.’

‘Like me.’

‘Certainly, my love, we will go there.’

She stroked his face.

‘Do you mean it?’

‘All I can promise you is that we will go away together. Start a life together. Be safe somewhere.’

‘Will we have children?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many?’

‘Three – no, four. Maybe five.’

‘Five? You are crazy, Michel.’

‘We will need them to have our own troupe.’

‘Our own troupe…’ she repeated.

‘It will be the Cirque de Bonnet—’

‘And you will be the ringmaster.’

‘I will be the ringmaster. And you will be the star act. Our children will do whatever they like – perhaps they will be clowns, or tumblers, or fire eaters.’

‘And we can send for Jean and Giordano. And Madame Rosie, and Kacper and Gino.’

‘Of course. And Hugo.’

‘Perhaps not Hugo,’ she said. ‘He would not travel that far, I am sure; he would worry too much.’

‘And Madame Geneviève, and Vassily—’