by Lyn Gardner
She suddenly looked very serious. “I’ve got a confession too, Dad. I did something terrible,” she said, glancing at Jack.
But Jack cut in, “There’s no need for anyone else to know, Cosi. That’s between you and me, and it’s over. If you want to tell people, that’s fine, it’s your decision, but as far as I’m concerned no more need ever be said.”
Cosi smiled at him gratefully. Just then Alicia drew breath and everyone turned to look at her. Her face was stern and Olivia felt her heart begin to thump. She was in for a telling-off.
“You do realise, Olivia, that what you and Cosi did at the theatre tonight was deception?” said her gran. Both Olivia and Cosi felt chastened by her serious tone and they nodded.
“What you did, and I’m including you in this, Tom, was very serious and entirely unprofessional and I very much hope that nothing like it will ever happen again.”
Cosi shook her head.
“It won’t, Gran,” whispered Olivia.
“Good,” said Alicia. “So nobody need ever say anything about it ever again to anybody.”
Olivia and Cosi nodded vigorously.
“And I’d just like to say,” added Alicia, a twinkle coming into her eye, “how delightful it is that Cosi has the heart of a brave lion and that Livy is as great an actress as her mother.”
Olivia felt very warm inside. She knew she wanted to do more acting. Playing Wendy had given her a taste for it. It was strange – she didn’t mind people watching her on stage, but seeing everyone looking at her now made her feel really shy.
“Hey, Cosi, I’ve got a present for you,” she said suddenly and she pulled out the polar bear badge.
“That’s so cute!” said Cosi. “I’ll never take it off. Thank you.” She beamed at Olivia and Tom, and burst out happily: “I just love having friends!”
“Me too,” piped up Cosmo. He blushed. “I want to apologise to everyone for being so rude to you all when we first met.”
“Forget it, Cosmo. It’s all water under the bridge,” said Tom. “Do you want to come back to the Swan later? Liv, Jack and I could give you your first taste of walking the wire?”
Cosmo looked thrilled, then glanced at his dad as if he expected him to protest. But Jasper just said cheerily, “Go for it, kiddo. I know you’re in the safest possible hands.”
“You know,” said Cosi, “when my leg’s mended I think I might like to have a go at wire-walking.” Everyone cheered.
Just then Jon turned up at the hospital with a big bunch of flowers.
“Look at this,” he said, showing them the front pages of two of the early editions of the Sunday papers. The first headline read: “Wood family take to the Trees”. The second read: “An Awfully Big Adventure”, and below was an ecstatic review of Peter Pan, plus an account of the battle for the trees. “It says here,” said Jon, looking directly at Olivia as he spoke, “that Cosi Wood has the potential to be one of the greatest actors of her generation.”
Olivia shook her head and said, “How nice, Cosi. It’s such a pity that your broken leg means you’ll not be able to repeat your performance.”
Jon kept looking very hard at Olivia. “Is there no possibility that it could happen again?”
“Afraid not, Jon,” she said, holding his gaze. “Looks like it was a one-off. But Petal will be fantastic in the role.”
It was just over a week since the night of the Battle for the Trees, as it had become known. Olivia took a deep breath and blew out the thirteen candles on her cake and made a wish. It was strange being thirteen. It didn’t feel any different from being twelve. But she would never be twelve again. She was a teenager! When she had first come to the Swan, the children in Year Nine had seemed so old, but next term she would be in Year Nine too. She grinned at Tom, who smiled back. She cut the cake and started to hand it out.
“None for you, Cosmo, is that right?” she said with a grin. His face dropped. “But I thought you were wheat-free?” she said.
“Not any more. That was in the days when I was talent-free too.”
“Those days aren’t over, Cosmo, no way!” shouted Cosi from the sofa where she was laid up with her leg in plaster. Everyone laughed and Cosmo threw a cushion at her.
“Katie?” asked Olivia.
“Yes, please, Livy,” said Katie shyly. After everything that had happened over the last few days she felt overwhelmed to be sitting here with Olivia and her friends. She was squashed between Aeysha and Georgia, who kept smiling at her, and Tom was treating her as if she was one of the gang. They were all being so kind to her. She still felt guilty about what she’d done to her father, although Inspector Slightly, Alicia and even her mum, who had started divorce proceedings, kept telling her she’d done the right thing.
It turned out that Alicia hadn’t been the only person Mr Wilkes-Cox had been harassing. He had bought some little terraced houses and had been illegally trying to evict the sitting tenants, including several families and a ninety-year-old couple. They had been terrified by him but were prepared to give evidence against him in court. Then, just when it was almost certain that he would have been going to prison for a very long time, he had skipped bail and fled abroad.
Katie was very worried about her and her mum’s future. It turned out that their mansion was mortgaged up to the hilt and would soon be repossessed. Alicia saw Katie’s wan face and made up her mind what to do. She would consult with Olivia and her friends, but if they were all happy about it, which she was sure they would be, she would offer Katie a scholarship so she could return to the Swan after the summer holidays.
Olivia looked at all her presents and cards.
“Open mine, open mine,” said Eel, handing Olivia an envelope. It was two tickets to the ballet to see Coppélia at the Royal Opera House.
Olivia laughed. “Thank you, Eel, for giving me the present you wanted,” she said, giving her sister a kiss. “I assume you will be coming with me?”
Eel nodded enthusiastically. “I was worried you wouldn’t ask, and take somebody else. I’d already told Tom and the others to refuse if you asked them.” Everyone laughed.
Olivia opened all her other presents and cards, which included a beautiful book of photographs of trapeze artists from Pablo, some exquisite vellum-covered notebooks from Alicia and a first edition of Peter Pan from Jasper, Cosi and Cosmo.
Tom, Aeysha and Georgia had bought her chocolates and a framed photograph that Tom had taken of her flying during a rehearsal. Finally there was just a box-shaped gift left on the table. Olivia knew that it was from Jack. She unwrapped it carefully. Inside was a small box and as she eased off the lid, the sides of the box fell away to reveal an exquisite model of a miniature Big Top. When Olivia peered inside there was dark-haired girl walking the high-wire and on the other end of the wire opposite her was a man.
“Oh, Jack, it’s so beautiful,” she said, tears springing to her eyes. “Did you make it yourself?” He nodded. She looked at him shyly and said, “It’s you and me, isn’t it?”
Jack nodded again. “Liv, chick,” he said. “A very long time ago, in what seems like another life, I asked if you would like to be my partner on the high-wire. It never happened because of my accident. I know that in the meantime you’ve found another partner in Tom, and I don’t want to upset that relationship at all. But Tom’s committed to Peter Pan for a good few weeks yet, so I wondered whether you and I might work up a double act together. Would you like that?”
Olivia was so choked up that she could hardly speak, and just nodded instead.
“Good,” said Jack, “because we’ve already got a gig. We’re going to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe during the summer. We can all be together as a family, and you and I can walk the high-wire at the heart of the show. It’s time the Swan Circus hit the road!”
“The Swan Circus!” gasped Olivia.
“Yes,” said Alicia. “Your dad and Pablo and I have been planning it for weeks. I think it’s a wonderful idea. The Swan is going to Edinburgh.
We should toast its success.” She raised her glass. “To the Swan Circus!”
“To the Swan Circus!” chorused everyone.
“To the Swan Circus at the Edinburgh Festival,” whispered Olivia, a little after everyone else. She raised her glass up high and her eyes were shining like stars.
Chapter One
Olivia Marvell stood by the railings at the top of the Mound and looked down over Edinburgh. Below her was a group of acrobats attempting a human pyramid and wobbling dangerously like a badly-set jelly on a hot summer’s day. Two teenage girls were doing a comic juggling act. One of them was juggling perfectly with what appeared to be half a dozen fresh eggs, but which Olivia suspected were rubber fakes. The other girl was throwing real eggs into the air and failing to catch them. They kept splatting on her partner’s head, whose pretend anger was creating much hilarity amongst the crowd.
There was also a troupe of mad tap-dancers wearing kilts who were doing an intricate routine to bagpipes and being cheered enthusiastically. Olivia smiled as she watched some small children trying to join in and falling over their own – and the dancers’ – feet. She felt a mounting sense of excitement as if someone were hugging her insides very tightly.
Below her a mass of people swirled, all attracted to the Mound and its merry sights and sounds on this bright early August afternoon just a few days before the official start of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It made Olivia think of the Pied Piper. It was as if the entire world was being drawn towards the city by an invisible thread of music and bright colours. She wished her friend Tom was here to see it, but he was finishing his contract playing John in a huge sell-out West End production of Peter Pan and wouldn’t be free until the very end of August.
Olivia wheeled round as somebody touched her shoulder. It was Georgia and Aeysha.
“Hey!” she said, pleased to see her friends. “Did you get rid of all your posters?”
“All but one,” said Aeysha, unfurling a midnight blue A3 sheet dotted with silver stars. It showed a girl on a trapeze surrounded by fairies and a magician and a sprite walking the high wire. Emblazoned across the top in small golden gothic letters were the words: “The Swan Circus Presents” and then in even bigger letters it read: “Enchantment: a Magical Circus Entertainment.” They had all looked at the poster many times before but it still made Olivia feel shivery with pleasure.
“Eel and I found people to take all ours,” she said. “Lots of shops will put them up in their windows. It helps that they’re so striking. The woman in one of the cafes said she might even come and see our show after Eel did a crazy tap dance and stood on her head. I can’t wait to put the Swan circus in front of an audience!”
She grinned at her friends and they grinned back. Aeysha winked and Georgia did a little skip. Olivia didn’t have to say anything; she could tell from Georgia’s doll-like face and Aeysha’s sparkling eyes with their thick dark lashes that they felt as excited as she did.
Have you read the other books in the series?
Olivia’s First Term
Olivia Flies High
“Hugely enjoyable”
The Stage
Look out for:
Olivia’s Enchanted Summer
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2012 by Nosy Crow Ltd
The Crow’s Nest, 10a Lant Street
London, SE1 1QR, UK
This ebook edition first published 2012
Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and / or registered trademarks of Nosy Crow Ltd
Text copyright © Lyn Gardner, 2012
The right of Lyn Gardner to be identified as the author and illustrator respectively of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblence to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978 0 85763 077 3
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