London, six years later.

 

My hands were shaking.

All I was doing was holding a piece of paper, and my bloody hands were shaking. I was standing by the open window, trying to get some air, but it wasn’t working. I felt woozy. I had to sit down. I’d already read the letter three times. So I read it again.

Dear Alexis,

I hope you don’t think my letter intrusive, but I found you through the agency you run and some of your past modelling work. My name is Lille Baker, and I’m an artist. I work in a travelling circus, the Circus Spektakulär. We perform all over, but right now we’ve stopped to do some shows in London.

I’ve wanted to send you this letter for weeks, but I held out. I had to wait until we were close enough for you to come. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just email you. Or call. Letters are sort of a lost art form now, right? But what I have to tell you is of such great importance that I felt an email would be too impersonal. A call too abrupt.

I apologise. I’m going off topic. So yes, the circus.

It’s run by a woman named Marina Mitchell. Perhaps you’ve heard of her? Anyway, Marina has a brother. His name is King, Oliver King. He stays with her most of the time; other times, he wanders on his own. I suppose you could say he doesn’t really have a home. King carries around a picture of you, Alexis. It was taken six years ago on a beach in Rome. Do you remember? He treasures this picture, goes crazy if anyone tries to take it.

Why is the picture so important to him?

Did you love each other once?

Do you ever think of him, wonder about him?

I’m sorry. I ask a lot of questions sometimes. It’s just that I worry for King. He’s been on a destructive path for years, and I fear that if something drastic doesn’t happen soon, he’s going to kill himself. He drinks far too much, more and more each day, it seems. I try to help him, we all do, but there’s no point trying to help a person who doesn’t want it. Then I think, if you came, if he could see you, then maybe he would want to be helped. Maybe he’d have something to live for. I see glimpses in him, Alexis, glimpses of a fascinating mind, of a great man from whom circumstance has stolen everything.

Please come and see us. I think you’re the only one who has a chance of saving him.

Yours sincerely,

Lille.

Tears filled my eyes again as my heart pounded. King. He was alive. For so long I’d lost hope. I hadn’t seen him since that night at his mum’s house, where he’d fled after he thought he killed his father. He hadn’t killed him. The paramedics managed to revive Bruce, and just a few short weeks later, he was sent to prison for the attempted murder of Elaine. It was a hard time for all of us, especially since King had all but become a ghost. We searched high and low, spoke with everyone he’d ever known, but he’d vanished without a trace. I even quizzed Elaine about the gypsy woman, but she had no clue who I was talking about. She was the one missing link, and I knew deep in my heart that if I could just discover who she was, I would find him.

Now I held a letter in my hands that explained everything.

On the other side of it was an inner city location where the circus was currently camped for shows. It was no more than a car journey away, and my skin prickled to think he was so near. Was this real, or was someone playing a trick?

No, it had to be real. No one other than Bruce would think to do something so cruel, and he’d died in prison six months after he was put there, shanked by a young guy who didn’t want him coming in and taking over. I thought it was a fitting death.

Bruce Mitchell.

Marina Mitchell.

King had a sister. How had I not known this? How had Elaine not known? A memory of the gypsy woman King once said was family flashed in my mind again. This Marina must have been his half-sister, born of Bruce and a different mother. That’s why Elaine didn’t know her. But why the hell would King be living with someone who had anything to do with that monster? It was all too much to take in, too confusing. I leaned back in my chair, trying to make sense of it.

After he’d disappeared, I’d gone through all the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then finally acceptance. Now each of those stages were rushing back all at once, becoming a strange muddle of hope and anger, happiness and fear.

I’d finally settled into my life. How could a single letter flip everything on its axis?

Four years ago, I’d stopped modelling and started up my own agency. It did so well that I’d finally saved up enough money for a mortgage, and had purchased a small two-bedroom house in Waltham Forest. Elaine, who I’d grown close to over the years, sold her big house in Bloomsbury that held too many bad memories, and bought herself a small cottage in Waltham in order to be close to us.

Us.

The very thought made my tears increase. Life had been so hard since King disappeared. For a long time, I couldn’t move on. My heart refused to believe he’d stay away of his own volition, but at the same time I understood the trauma he must have been suffering to think he’d killed a man with his own bare hands. Now I was being told he was out there, close enough for me to reach. To touch. To pull close.

And yet, here I was living in my little house with the love of my life. The one who’d come along after King and mended my broken heart.

I heard him pull on the doorknob and step into the room, probably wondering why I was upset, why I was crying. I wiped at my tears and tried to plaster on a brave face, not wanting to worry him.

“Mummy,” he asked, “what’s wrong?”

My boy was so beautiful, so like his father with his pale blond hair and blue eyes. I didn’t even realise I was pregnant for a long time after King vanished. I’d put it all down to heart sickness. Yeah, I thought I was vomiting my guts up every morning because of how much I missed him. I soon came to realise that wasn’t the case. Apparently, the pill isn’t always one hundred percent effective.

But still, some small part of me was grateful. My love had disappeared, but he’d left something of himself behind. Nevertheless, I was depressed for much of my pregnancy. Karla and my parents were worried sick. Elaine, too. She wanted a grandchild so badly. And then, my Oliver came along, and I fell in love again.

My strength returned. I needed to live for the little one who needed me. So I put my all into my career, began modelling as much as I could. Elaine helped out with money until I was doing well enough to go it alone. I think the combination of Oliver’s birth and Bruce’s death changed something in her. She started going outside more, becoming independent. She even played piano every once in a while. She was often sad, as she grieved for her missing son, but she was no longer the shell of a woman she once was.

Even though I’d accepted the fact that he was gone, I grieved, too. Every day. For King.

I think it was the fact that we had so little time together that made it worse. I had all these possibilities to wonder about. What might our lives have been if certain events hadn’t come to pass? It’s different from losing your love at eighty after a lifetime together. The pain is so much sharper, more cutting. It guts you to the core, because you’d once held perfection in your hands, only to have it drift away like mist. You have to go on knowing you’ll never feel how he made you feel ever again, knowing no one else will ever compare.

I had to go to him. And yet, I hesitated.

The words in Lille’s letter frightened me. What would I find at the circus? What sort of man? Summoning some strength, I knew I still had to go. For him. For our son. For my heart.

I pulled Oliver up onto my lap and gave him a soft squeeze. “I was just thinking of a sad story, that’s all.”

“Why do you think about sad stories?” he asked, curious, fingers going to my damp face.

“Because sometimes my brain makes me,” I answered, and his hands travelled to my forehead, giving it a poke.

“Brain, stop making Mummy sad.” His words made me laugh. In just a couple of months he was going to turn six. The time was flying by so fast. Sometimes he’d ask about his dad, ask if he had one, because all the other boys at school did. I told him that his daddy was far, far away. I hated the sad tilt to Oliver’s mouth afterwards and wished I could have come up with a better answer.

It felt unnatural to see him sad, because he was such a happy, gregarious child. He was never shy or insecure, always open to the world and the possibilities each day might bring. He made friends easily, too. The teacher of his Montessori class said he was always the one bringing the kids together, making suggestions for new games they might play.

I let him off my lap and went into the kitchen to prepare lunch. It was Saturday, my day off. Usually, either Elaine or my mum took Oliver when I was working, but I always had him on weekends. If I asked one of them to babysit tonight, they’d want to know why, and I didn’t want to explain Lille Baker’s letter yet, not to anyone. I especially didn’t want to tell Elaine in case it wasn’t real. Getting her hopes up would be too cruel.

After I’d made Oliver his food, I went and called Karla. We were still as close as ever, even though we no longer lived together. We didn’t get to see each other as much as we used to, but we spoke on the phone almost every day. Having been my rock when Oliver was a baby, she loved my boy just as much as I did, and I knew she’d jump at the chance to have him for an evening. In fact, she’d be so happy she wouldn’t think to ask questions.

Not asking questions was key.

I gave her a quick call, and she said she’d be over in a couple of hours. With that sorted, I tried to play with Oliver for a while, but my heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t focus. Slotting a DVD into the player, I settled him in front of the TV so I could go shower. I was nervous. I’d gotten out and was wrapped in a towel when I began to shiver. My stomach twisted and turned. I hadn’t been able to eat a bite since morning. My throat was clogged with nerves and hope, annihilating my appetite.

I stared into my closet with no clue what to wear. My fashion sense, if anything, had only become more distinct over the years. When you work in the industry, you tend to become a little obsessed with the latest trends. My hands were shaking again as I pulled out a pretty lace top and some skinny jeans. I paired them with some leather boots and allowed my hair to dry curly.

My heart thrummed.

I couldn’t believe I was doing this. He was out there, alive and breathing. For a brief second, it took all my willpower not to rush out of the house right away and go find him.

Shakily swiping on some lip gloss, I gave my appearance one last glance before I heard Karla knocking on the front door. I hurried down to answer it and found I was wrong about her not asking questions.

“You look nice. Going anywhere exciting?”

I rummaged in my bag for my car keys. “Just meeting up with Bradley and his new boyfriend for some drinks. I should only be a couple of hours.”

“Ah, right, well, have a good time.” Her brows knitted together, which was usually a sign that she thought I was lying. I didn’t know why she’d suspect anything, because my story seemed airtight. It was only as I slid into the driver’s seat that I realised my mistake. If I was going for drinks with Bradley, then why the fuck would I be driving? I swear, this whole thing was turning my brain to jelly. My mind wouldn’t stop racing, and I just wanted to get to the circus and see King with my own two eyes. Prove to myself this was real.

Hope flooded my veins, filling me with anticipation.

I could have him back. We could have him back for good.

It took forever to find a parking spot close enough to the circus, and in the end I had to leave my car a ten-minute walk away. It was seven-thirty, and the tent was all lit up for the night’s show. People queued up outside to buy tickets, and I didn’t know where to go. Should I buy a ticket? Should I ask around after this Lille person? I’d brought the letter in my purse, as though I’d need to show definitive proof before they’d let me see him.

Unsure of what else to do, I got in line and bought a ticket. I walked alongside a couple of young women as I went into the tent and took a seat close to the back. My skin prickled with awareness. My body hummed. King was here somewhere. It was almost like he’d shown up on my internal radar, sending everything into a fritz.

There were about another twenty minutes before the show would begin, and I was too antsy to just sit there. Standing, I made way down the aisle to an open doorway that led backstage. The place was a flurry of activity as I stepped through. A middle-aged woman wearing some kind of glitzy stage outfit passed me by.

“Excuse me,” I said, and she turned to face me. “I’m looking for Lille Baker.”

The woman smiled. “She should be out front at the face-painting booth.”

A tall, dark-haired man who had seemingly overheard my question stopped, arching a curious brow. “You’re looking for Lille?” he said. His voice was deep, his accent Irish.

I stared up at him, a little intimidated, if I was being honest. He had dark shoulder-length hair, and wore jeans, boots, and a wife-beater vest. His body was a fucking masterpiece of muscle and sinew, and it was a little much for me to take in all at once. I hadn’t been with a man in a long, long time, and he was one of the hottest male specimens I’d ever seen. He must have been a part of the show. These types always were. Finally, I nodded.

“Who are you….” He paused for second, trailing off, as something like recognition lit up his eyes. He looked like he knew me, which made me feel weird. Running a hand over his stubbled jaw, he swore under his breath. “Fucking hell, Lille.”

“You know Lille?” I questioned breathlessly, my heart rate picking up as I stepped closer.

“Yeah, I know her.” He nodded to the back of the tent. “Come with me.”

Instead of leading me out to the front, like the woman had instructed, he led me in the opposite direction. We exited the tent and he stopped, pulling out a smoke and lighting up. He side-eyed me, not saying a word.

“Um….” I began, feeling nervous. He might have been sex on a stick, but he was also scary and intimidating. These days I was used to hanging around my clients (who were all women) and my little boy. Men were an area I was completely out of practice with. Of course, I had my brothers, but I didn’t see them very often.

“How did you know to come here?” he asked.

Anxious, I fumbled in my bag. “I got this letter.”

Now he was swearing again. “For fuck’s sake.”

I frowned. “What?”

He seemed apologetic. “I’m sorry. My girlfriend likes to meddle. You shouldn’t have come.”

“You’re Lille’s boyfriend?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh.”

My voice grew so quiet it was practically a whisper. “Do you…do you know King?”

His eyes went sad, like he felt sorry for me. Something thick and heavy lodged in my throat. Was I too late? Had his self-destructive path reached its end? The thought took the strength right out of me. I was about to ask him what had happened when another man exited the tent. He was tall, too, but with shorter hair and a smarter dress sense. He was also very handsome, and I wondered just how many drop-dead gorgeous men just so happened to be hanging around this circus.

“What’s happening, bro?” he said. American. It was becoming hard to keep up with all the accents. Before the first man, whose name I still didn’t know, could answer, the American’s eyes wandered to me. He took me in quickly, shrewdly, and seemed to immediately recognise who I was. It didn’t take him a few minutes like it had the first man. And his reaction to me was a whole lot different, too. A wide, almost giddy smile spread across his lips.

“Holy shit! It’s you,” he said with a gasp, and came to put his hands on my shoulders, squeezing them as he beamed down at me. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

Okay, now I was confused. “Uh, me neither?”

“I’m Jay,” he went on. “The grumpy one’s Jack. He’s my brother. Crappity crap, you’re real, Alexis. You’re a living, breathing woman. For a while there we thought you might be a ghost.”

“Hold up a sec,” Jack, the grumpy one, interrupted. “Don’t fucking tell me you were in on this, too?”

Jay rolled his eyes and grinned. “Of course I was.”

“And Matilda?” Jack asked.

“Nah, it was just me and your woman. We were kinda sneaky about it.”

“This isn’t a joke, Jay. This is serious. King isn’t….”

“King will be fine,” Jay intoned meaningfully, turning his head to his brother before looking back at me. “Once he sees his beautiful Alexis, he’ll be doing fucking cartwheels.”

“No, he won’t.”

“He will.”

“He won’t.”

Seriously, I was going to get whiplash going back and forth between these two. I interrupted loudly, hands on hips. “Will one of you just bring me to him?” I stated, my voice on the shaky side.

Jay’s face went serious. “Yeah, sorry, come with me.”

“I’m going to find Lille,” Jack muttered before stomping off. He sounded like he had a serious bone to pick with her, and I didn’t fancy being Lille right then.

I tugged on Jay’s shirt sleeve and he stopped walking to face me. “What’s wrong, darlin?”

I bit on my lip, emotion filling my lungs and my eyes growing watery. “How is he?”

“Ah, shit, babe, don’t cry,” he said, and stepped forward, startling me when he pulled me into a hug. I’d been alone for so long, lonely, and this stranger hugging me just made things worse. His kindness was more than I could handle as I let him embrace me. It felt good to have a man close, to smell one, clean and warm. I couldn’t have anticipated the emotional effect it would have on me.

He began rubbing the centre of my back soothingly, and I tried my best to blink away my tears. I stood back, shaking my head. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve been searching for him for years. This is all a little much right now.”

Jay’s brows drew together in empathy as he let out a gruff breath and placed his hands on his hips. He stared at the ground before meeting my gaze. “Look, I’m not gonna lie. He’s in a bad way. Lille didn’t exactly say it explicitly in her letter, but fuck, your man’s got a serious drink problem. I’m gonna take you to him, you’re gonna see him, but he sure as hell isn’t gonna be the same as you knew him. You need to prepare yourself for that, Alexis, okay?”

I inhaled, and even though his words were a grave warning, there was something reassuring about them. “Okay.”

Jay nodded, satisfied. “Good. Now, this isn’t going to be easy, but I think that if he sees you, if he knows you still exist, then we can all work together to pull him back from the brink. You’ll be the catalyst. You’ll be the goal for him. I mean, if he knows he can have you back, then I think he’ll even do all the hard work himself.” A pause as he eyed me. “He can have you back, right?”

Without thinking, I nodded. Then I simply stared at him, absorbing everything he’d just said. A silence fell between us. Memories bombarded me, all the things that King had been through in his life.

Jay’s voice was a soft whisper, his eyes flittering over me, studying me like I was a book and he was straining to see the words. “Jesus, Alexis, what the fuck happened to him?”

My face went sad. “So much and too fast. I have a feeling he still doesn’t know that he didn’t do what he thinks he did.”

“What does he think he did?”

I wasn’t sure what it was about this guy, but he had a way of pulling all the information right out of me. My voice was a whisper when I replied, “He thinks he killed someone.”

Jay absorbed this quickly, his posture stoic. “But he didn’t?”

“No, he didn’t. He should have. If anyone deserved to kill that bastard, it was King, but he didn’t.”

“Christ.”

“Jay.”

“Yes?”

“Take me to him. Please.”

“Okay, darlin’, okay. Come on,” he said, and threw his arm protectively around my shoulders. He led me farther from the circus tent and towards a cluster of mobile homes camped out nearby. In the centre of them was a large open-air gazebo with tables, chairs, and a few gas cookers. There were a couple of people milling about, but not many. My eyes scanned the space frantically, desperate for a glimpse of King. Jay stopped walking, and so did I.

That’s when I saw him.

He was so changed, I wasn’t even sure how I recognised him, but I did. My heart would know him anywhere, in any guise. He sat on a bench, his body slumped over the table, his fingers clasped around a bottle of liquor. His hair was long and dirty, his face heavily shrouded by a beard. He wore filthy, unkempt clothing, a grey jacket with a woollen jumper beneath, worn jeans and muddy boots.

I couldn’t believe this was the same man who once sat in his office overlooking the Thames, a ruler of his own universe, the best at whatever he set his mind to. Now he was reduced to a homeless drunkard, completely unrecognisable. I really didn’t understand how the world worked sometimes.

At thirty-three, he’d been at the top.

Now thirty-nine, almost forty, he was at the bottom.

And yet, his very presence still made my heart pound, still made my lungs fill up with too much air. He was alive. He was breathing. And I didn’t care what form he took, so long as I could have him back. My legs gave out, but Jay steadied me. I couldn’t take my eyes off King, and he didn’t even know I was there.

A small commotion sounded from nearby, and I turned to see a tall blonde woman come running up to us. She was followed closely by Jack and another woman, a short brunette. She stopped in front of us, hands going to her hips as she tried to catch her breath. Her beautiful grey eyes danced as she took me in.

“You’re here,” she breathed. “I can’t believe you came.”

I stared at her, taken aback, but I knew instantly that this had to be Lille. She confirmed my assumption when she threw her hand out and introduced herself. “I’m Lille, the one who wrote you the letter.”

Slowly, I reached forward and shook her hand, feeling shy and out of place. “I’m Alexis.”

She nodded, smiling, and replied loudly, “Yes, I know.” She was clearly excited.

“Quiet the fuck down,” a broody, scratchy voice demanded from nearby, and every hair on my body stood on end. His voice, so changed, yet so the same. I couldn’t help closing my eyes, blinking away another tear. I’d turned my back to him when I shook hands with Lille, and now I heard hard boots crunching on the ground. I turned back around as he neared. His blue eyes, once so bright and sparkling, were now dull and reddened.

I sucked in a breath.

He stopped in his tracks.

Time slowed down, the world became as small as a grain of sand, as we stared at one another. It was a moment I’d never forget. The bottle he’d been clutching like a life raft fell from his grip. The harsh sound of glass shattering shot through me, making this all so real. King didn’t even notice he’d dropped the bottle. He reached up, rubbing at his eyes to the point that it looked painful.

“Stop it, stop it, stop showing me. I don’t want to see her anymore. No more.”

He was hurting himself, and I couldn’t watch. I stepped forward, my voice lighter than air. “Oliver,” I whispered. I stood mere inches away, the smell of him hitting me. He stank of booze and dirt. My heart cracked in two. It was a physical pain to see him like this.

“No!” he screamed, hands flying out and pushing at me. I stumbled backwards but managed to find my feet before I fell. Grumpy Jack strode forward, his size formidable, and gripped King by the shoulders. “Calm down, friend, calm down.” His words seemed to soothe something in King, whose body slumped forward. Jack’s eyes wandered to his girlfriend, who stood frozen in place.

“I told you, I fucking told you, Lille.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think….”

“That’s just it, you didn’t think at all,” Jack fumed, eyes now flashing accusingly at his brother. “Neither one of you did.” There was something in the way he spoke that made me feel like this was personal to him, like he was truly angered that Jay and Lille had brought me here to King, who clearly wasn’t in a fit state to see me. Again, my tears came. I felt like my heart, my very soul, was being torn in two. I didn’t want him to be like this. I just wanted the old King back.

Now I wasn’t sure if that was even possible. Then, all of a sudden, the anger hit me. How could he let himself become like this? How could he leave me for all these years and never once try to make contact? There had to be a reason, but I just wasn’t seeing it. Perhaps it was the tears filling my eyes that caused my blindness.

Jack led King away, and I stared after my love, a lump in my throat and a brick in my stomach. Nothing about this was okay.

Nothing.