Free Circus of Thieves on the Rampage by William Sutcliffe and David Tazzyman Page A

box office, guarding the safe?
    Armitage took out his binoculars. He was drooling.
    Billy knew that look on his face. With a little less self-control, Armitage would have been cackling, too. This was the look of a dastardly scheme falling into place.

Backstage at the Oh, Wow!
    A FTER THE SHOW, Granny took Hannah backstage. The circus on its own was almost more excitement than Hannah
could take, so the idea of actually meeting the circussers afterwards was close to mind-blowing.
    What a birthday! Even though she’d only been given two presents – a chunky tandem and a filing cabinet – this was still proving to be the best birthday of her life.
    Hannah gripped Granny’s hand as they edged through the thick 35 crowd of circus-watchers heading happily home. Granny’s hand was both
gnarled (because she was old) and sticky (because she’d been scoffing candy floss for the last two hours), but it felt to Hannah like the most comforting thing in the world. Granny had always
been an important person to Hannah, but now more than ever. She was her link to the past, to the mystery of her parentage and to her long-lost mother. Crowds usually scared Hannah, who preferred
fresh air, grassy meadows and the feel of cowpats squelching underfoot, but as long as she had a grip of her sticky, gnarled grandmother, she felt safe.
    After several conversations with sour-faced security men who all sprouted curly wires out of their ears and down into the back of their suits (which made them look as if they had battery-powered
brains (which maybe they did)) Hannah and Granny were ushered into a long corridor with a thick 36 red carpet.
    Somehow, Granny knew where to go. The further they walked through the winding passageways of the Oh, Wow! backstage area, the tighter Granny gripped Hannah’s hand. There was a look on
Granny’s face Hannah had never seen before – a gleam in her eye, a flush to her cheeks, and a slight tremble in the loose flappy bits on her neck. Despite being old and gnarled and
sticky, her grandmother was clearly just as excited by circussiness as Hannah.
    ‘Granny?’ said Hannah.
    Granny stopped walking and gave Hannah’s hand an extra squeeze. ‘I know,’ said Granny.
    That was the end of the conversation – a conversation which perhaps appears totally meaningless – but which to Hannah and Granny made perfect sense. They were telling one another
this was almost too much excitement to bear, and checking the other one felt the same thing – a feeling like that of simultaneously skydiving, winning the lottery, and needing a pee really,
really badly.
    After this exceptionally concise chat, they both felt reassured that the feeling was mutual.
    Gripping hands tighter than ever, they arrived at a door with a large star on it and the thrilling words: ‘ QUEENIE BOMBAZINE – DO NOT DISTURB ’. Maybe the last three words
weren’t particularly exciting, but the first two more than made up for it. This was her dressing room! Queenie Bombazine! Living legend! Mermaid of the Skies! Etc.!
    Granny knocked noisily with her gnarled knuckles. 37
    ‘Mmm-hmmm?’ came the reply, which sounded like a ‘come in’, but with a hint of ‘though I’d prefer you to go away’.
    They went in. The first thing that hit Hannah was the smell. Or, rather, the scent. This was the most perfumed room she had ever visited. Entering Queenie’s dressing room was like diving
into a swimming pool of rose petals; it was like smacking yourself in the face with a mallet of loveliness; it was a grenade of exquisite, wafty fabulosity exploding inside your nostrils.
    One moment Queenie was sitting at her dressing table, the next she was on top of them, squealing with delight, hugging Granny, then hugging Hannah, then hugging both of them at once, so hard
that they both lifted off the floor. She may have looked dainty up on that trapeze, but this was a woman with serious muscles. Hannah had never been hugged like this in her whole life.