The Show Woman

Ayr, Scotland, September 1910

PROLOGUE

The Fall

Showtime. 

High above the tent, Violet glistens like a sleekit fish. Stock still, toes pointed, head bowed as though in prayer. The crowd below twist their necks as Lena the ringmistress flits amongst them, her words seductive as a hypnotist’s. Do they know that Violet is the greatest trapeze artist who ever lived? That some believe she may actually have wings? 

The throng shifts with restless excitement. They suck loudly on boiled peppermints and lumpen caramels. Sweat rises above the ring in steamy clouds. They have heard about this circus of ladies that travels the land, thrilling the towns and villages with their flying girls, daredevil horse riders and the mysterious, tail-coated ringmistress with the velvet voice. They bring glamour and danger, and the hint of something darker, teetering on the edge of illicit. They have queued at the ticket booth and paid their pennies. It is their turn to be dazzled.

‘Look up,’ says Lena. ‘Can you see her? Right at the top of the tent. Look up ladies and gentlemen, because this young woman is about to fly.’

Taut as piano wire, Violet swings forward and grabs the bar. For a single, perfect moment she is flying. Soaring through the tent, light as the air that carries her.  

And then, as though it were planned, as if it were the most graceful of movements, Violet’s hands slip from the bar as though it were spun from silk. Or coated in grease. She falls, her body like an arrow shooting for the ground. 

The tent glitters. Lena runs. But not even the tail-coated ringmistress can stop gravity.

Violet, heavy as the moon, lands on the sawdust with a toneless thud. The crowd begins to howl. The greatest trapeze artist who ever lived is lying flat on the floor of the tent. Her toes are still pointed. But only she is looking up.

Vinegarhill Showground, Glasgow

Six Months Earlier

CHAPTER ONE

Carousel

It is past six o’clock when the old man finally dies. Outside the wagons women crouch over smouldering fires, prod hopefully at reluctant flames. Men are downing their tools for the day, loud and brash, in need of hot tea and a plate of soup. Children are told to shush now, and away to bed. Wood smoke coils over the showground. High above, a lone gull circles a tender pink sky.

Lena has been sitting with him for three days now. Three days in which Joseph Loveridge has stubbornly refused to die. Three days of taking rags to his hot forehead, dribbling water and whisky on his dry, chapped lips, singing soft, childish lullabies in his ear. She looks down at the thin, papery hand in hers, fingers twisted like the worn roots of a tree.

 ‘Daddy,’ she says.

 A slight fluttering of the eyelids. His lashes, long and dark, flare in the gloom, but the old man’s eyes remain closed. Through the caravan window a span of draught horses pull her father’s carousel to the far side of the ground, their wooden counterparts bobbing serenely. She wonders if the blood has dried.

It is early spring, plump with cherry blossom and harebells, and they are on the cusp of a new season. In berths across the ground they have been painting up wagons and stalls, rehearsing acts, tinkering with their rides, readying to get back on the road. There is a crackle of anticipation in the damp air. They do not like to be tethered, these acrobats and jugglers, boxers and tarot readers, trapeze artists and cinematographers and menagerie owners and horse riders. They are show people, men and women of the road. They have no business with life on a hill at the edge of this vast, blackened city.