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shrugged.
    ‘When you said that one day you’re going to get out, were you talking about running away?’
    Billy’s chin moved ever so slightly upwards and to the left, which appeared to be both a nod and a shrug.
    ‘You’re supposed to run away
to
the circus, not from it.’
    ‘I
would
run away to the circus. I could never become a civilian. Yuk! No offence. What I want is to run away from this circus to another one. My dad’s one.’
    ‘But you’re Billy Shank. Heir to the Shank Entertainment Empire. I thought Mr Shank was your dad.’
    ‘Not my real dad. He’s just my circus dad.’
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘It means Armitage booted out my real dad and twisted his circus into what it is now.’
    ‘Which is what?’
    ‘I can’t really say.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I can’t say.’
    ‘Is it something to do with why you’re on the run?’
    Billy nodded.
    ‘Are you always on the run?’
    Billy nodded.
    For a short while, 17 they sat in silence. Then Billy said, ‘Do you want me to tell you the whole story? About my dad and everything.’
    ‘Oh, yes. If you don’t mind.’
    ‘Usually I do. It’s not something I like talking about, and I’m not really allowed to tell anyone, either. You’re different, though.’
    ‘Thanks. Different from what?’
    ‘Other civilians. But you have to promise not to cry.’
    ‘Is it a very sad story?’
    ‘Tragic.’
    Not crying was something Hannah was not good at. In fact, just the thought of listening to a sad story made her want to cry. The thought of a tragic story – a tragic story that had
actually happened to Billy and his family – well, that had an instant effect.
    Hannah began to cry. Not sobby, snotty, snorty crying, just a silent little leak from the corner of her left eye, which was always the weepier of the two. Her right eye was as hard as nails.
    ‘Are you crying already?’ said Billy.
    ‘No,’ sniffed Hannah.
    ‘I haven’t even started yet!’
    ‘It’s just hay fever.’
    ‘No, it isn’t.’
    ‘Maybe I’m allergic to camels.’
    ‘I don’t think you are. I think you’re allergic to sad stories.’
    ‘I’m not wet. I just cry easily. I don’t know why. The thought of other people being unhappy, especially people I like, always sets me off. It’s dodgy eye plumbing,
that’s all.’
    ‘OK,’ said Billy. ‘Cry if you really have to. But try and wait till I get to the sad bit.’
    ‘I’ll do my best.’
    Billy took a deep breath and began to speak in a slow, sombre tone. ‘This whole circus used to belong to my family. My
real
family. Back then, it was Espadrille’s Impossible
Circus. My mum was Esmeralda Espadrille.’
    He paused expectantly. A hush filled the cage – a strange kind of hush, of a variety you may not have heard – that of nobody talking, accompanied by distant birdsong and
not-at-all-distant camel snoring. A camel snore, by the way, sounds like a man sawing through a tree trunk. In other words, this was a rather noisy variety of hush, 18 and the longer it went on, the more confused Hannah became.
    ‘Why have you stopped?’ she said, eventually.

    ‘Esmeralda Espadrille!’ Billy repeated. ‘The trapeze artist!’
    ‘Er . . .’
    ‘Esmeralda Espadrille!
The only person ever to do a back somersault from trapeze to trapeze with a double pike, triple flip-flop and quadruple wing-ding! Queen of the air!
Bird-woman supreme!’
    ‘Oh!’ said Hannah, with a polite attempt to sound like she knew what he was talking about. ‘Esmeralda Epsadrille! The trapeze artists! She was your mum?’
    ‘Yes! And you know what happened to her, don’t you?’
    ‘Er...’
    ‘The papers never told the full story. You see, this was my mum and dad’s circus for years, and before that my grandparents’, but Mum and Dad weren’t very good with the
money side. They just spent everything they made on the show, and on looking after the animals, so they got into debt. They tried to borrow to keep things afloat, but