Luckily, Steffie hadn’t liked Radiohead, but it still took her a long time to dump her boyfriend. In the meantime, Greg had continued to bump into her in the lift, to suggest musical alternatives, to work out when she might be in the coffee lounge and happen to be there by the machine when she got her sugary tea.
If she suspected that these frequent meetings were contrived, she didn’t let on. She became very friendly towards him – telling him that the scratches on her hands were made by her flatmate’s unstable cat, that she took sugar in her tea because her mother had given her lots of cake from an early age and if she didn’t keep it up she would become hypergluconic.
‘Is that a word?’ Greg asked her.
She laughed. ‘I don’t think so.’
She laughed readily. And she made him laugh in turn.
He knew almost from the outset that he was in love with her. It was just a case of making her see that she loved him too, or could do.
Yet more often than not he watched the back of her head walking away – those curls, tightly wound, hiding her thoughts.
And then one weekend he was running through the gardens of Corpus Christi and there she was sat in the middle of the lawn, reading a book, wearing a sundress, straw hat and cowgirl boots.
Out of the office, endorphins high from exercise, he felt it was now or never.
He approached her. ‘Hi,’ he said, pulling his shirt up to wipe his forehead.
Slowly, she lowered her book, raised her eyes to his bare midriff. ‘Hi.’
‘I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me sometime,’ he said, lowering his shirt, putting his hands on his hips, trying not to sound out of breath.
‘OK,’ she said.
He wanted to do a little jig, but didn’t. He nodded solemnly. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll get back to you.’ And he went to walk away, but then turned back and said, ‘How about tonight?’ And then, rather rashly, he knelt down and kissed her, despite being sweaty, despite the picnicking family beside them.
She was every bit as sweet-tasting as he had imagined her to be, after all that sugary tea, after those pink mints she was eating from a paper bag on her lap. And the smell of her perfume on her skin, mixed with sun lotion and summer saltiness, made him weak-kneed.
They went out for four years before he proposed. He would have done it sooner, on the day he kissed her at the park, but she was not a woman to be rushed. And he had all the time in the world for her.
First thing on Wednesday morning, Greg called into the Silver Tree. Steffie was behind the counter, flicking through a catalogue. As the shop door tinkled, she looked up, putting the catalogue aside. When she saw it was him, her smile faded.
He came to a halt before the counter, hands resting on it. ‘Steffie …’ he began.
On the way here, he had gone through the words several times. It had sounded OK, acceptable. But now he felt like a moron.
Evidently, she thought so too. ‘Greg,’ she said coldly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She gazed at him. ‘That’s all you ever seem to say,’ she said.
‘Well, what else can I say?’
She picked up the catalogue again, flicked through it in a manner that suggested that she wasn’t really taking it in. ‘Try coming up with something to tell your daughter, for a start.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
She shrugged a shoulder. ‘Only that she asked me whether that woman was your girlfriend and I didn’t know what to say.’
He sighed. ‘She’s not my girlfriend. Tell her that.’
‘No,’ said Steffie, tossing the catalogue aside. ‘You tell her.’
They stared at each other. He glanced around the shop. It was quiet here today – no customers. Yet it was still early.
He turned back to Steffie, who had begun tidying a revolving stand of earrings on the counter. ‘Like I tried to tell you on the phone yesterday,’ he said, ‘I didn’t want Olivia there – I wasn’t expecting her. I was trying to get rid of her when you arrived. It was just bad timing.’
‘I’ll bet,’ said Steffie. She gave the stand a push and it circled around – a blur of shining metal and coloured gems – before coming to a halt, earrings wobbling.
‘I’m not seeing her any more,’ he said. ‘You have to believe me.’
She sat back down, folded her arms. ‘No, I don’t,’ she said. ‘Because I’m not interested, Greg. Not right on top of Jemima’s audition. I just want us to be civil and friendly, for her sake.’
‘That’s what I want too,’ he said.
‘And then afterwards,’ she said, ‘we can kill each other.’
He wanted to think she was kidding, but you never could tell.
He studied her, trying to do so discreetly. She was wearing a toffee-coloured jumper that he hadn’t seen before. Maybe it was new. Eventually he wouldn’t recognise any of her wardrobe from old. He noticed also that she had painted her nails the same toffee colour. She didn’t normally paint her nails. Maybe it meant something, or nothing.
‘How’s the counselling going?’ he asked.
She looked away. ‘Good,’ she said.
‘Have you—’
‘What we talk about is confidential, Greg.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ He tapped the counter nervously. ‘Course.’
A clock chimed out in the corridor. It reminded him of why he had come here, or the official reason at least.
‘Just wondered what time I should pick you up Saturday?’ he asked.
‘Well … About that …’ she said.
He felt the hair on his head suddenly recede in apprehension. For a moment, he thought she was going to tell him not to come to the audition.
‘The Phoenix have invited all the parents to a coffee morning,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he said, relieved.
She reached for a clip from the counter display and pinned it into her hair – a sparkling cupcake clip. ‘So we need to leave earlier than we thought.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘So what time?’
‘Seven o’clock?’ she said.
‘That’s fine,’ he said, smiling.
He was included, not shut out.
She could have shut him out – made up some excuse about how his presence would unsettle Jemima, just to punish him. Yet she hadn’t.
‘Thank you, Steffie,’ he said.
She plucked the hairclip from her hair, stuck it back on the display. ‘For what?’ she said. ‘It’s you doing all the driving.’
But she knew what he meant, he sensed.
‘Well, I’ll be off,’ he said.
‘OK.’ And she picked up the catalogue and resumed reading.
He left the shop, the doorbell tinkling behind him.
As he walked alongside the shop window, he glanced inside. To his surprise, Steffie was watching him leave.
On Friday, the night before the étoile audition, Noella went into her studio, unlocked a cupboard door behind the piano, and flicked on the light.
She stood on a footstool to reach the top shelf of the cupboard, squinting as she pulled down a shoebox, prompting a small avalanche of dust.
She sneezed, took the shoebox and went out to the piano stool.
For a moment, she sat with the box on her lap, drawing snaky paths on the lid with her finger in the dust.
She could remember doing this as a child – drawing patterns in the gravelly soil in their back yard. No one had ever been there with her, as far as she could recall. She had played alone, whilst her brothers – older, freer – had roamed the surrounding cornfields and tobacco fields.
She hadn’t been happy as a child. For although the village of Galgon had been her homeland, it had been too hot, too arid for her. The dry land – colourless commons and fir-tree plantations – had nothing to offer her, had wobbled with the heat, searing her eyes.
From the earliest age, she had longed to escape.
It could have been anything – any number of professions that she might have chosen as an exit route. She was precocious at school, academically advanced. Yet something about the ballet drew her like nothing else.
It was the notion of being underneath a spotlight – of being free, incandescent, admired; none of which she had been, sat in the dirt clouds of Galgon.
She took a deep breath and eased the lid off the shoebox.
In a rush, as she touched the photographs, ballet shoes, key ring, lipstick, letters, postcards, she could hear her friends’ laughter, could feel the cold of the floor in her old room in Paris, could smell the perfume and hair products; could feel the scratchiness of the blankets drawn to her chin in bed.
They had been inseparable – Noella and the five other girls with whom she had shared a corridor. The Six Swallows.
They had got drunk one night during their first term at the ballet school and had all had tiny black swallow tattoos inked on the back of their necks. It was daring, given that they wore their hair up most of the time, and would have resulted in immediate expulsion from the school had their superiors found out.
It was their secret. They had taken great pleasure in coming up with ways of disguising the tattoos in rehearsals: concealer pens, foundation, plasters, scarves, hooded sweaters.
They had all laughed so much about it.
It seemed stupid now. And yet it still meant something to Noella – the little tattoo; although its meaning had changed.
Once it had felt rebellious, anarchistic. Now it was a poignant reminder of how each and every one of the Swallows had fallen from the sky.
The tattoos, the laughter, the drunken nights had been a ruse, a cover-up for how fragile they each were; fragile because they were human, and what the ballet school asked of them was often not.
They were to train constantly, socialise rarely, eat little. This was the life of a top dancer. They all knew it was so – knew what they had entered into at the outset.
Noella’s room-mate, Delphine, had been the most vivacious of them, and yet she wore arm-warmers permanently, covering the bloody patches on her arms where she scratched them in her sleep. The girls next door were both anorexic; everyone knew so. The other two Swallows were obsessive compulsive and alcoholic, respectively.
Not a wonderful line-up, yet not an entirely unusual one at the school.
From the shoebox, she picked up a silver necklace, pressing the Mackintosh pendant against her lips. It smelt ever so faintly of perfume, still. She closed her eyes, sighed with longing. And then waited for the guilt that always came, crushing her breath.
Mikhail Alexandrov was the first man she had ever loved. She had wanted him from the first time she had seen him. He was intensely attractive and had made his way through most of the female students at the school. But not yet amongst the Swallows.
It would be them next, they joked – probably Delphine, whose beauty had caught his eye. And it was this that was so cruel, Noella had felt. For she had fallen in love with a man who barely noticed her, who preferred her pretty friend.
Yet even with Delphine, Mikhail appeared tentative. Their corridor was famed for its neurosis and he perhaps was wary of its creakiness, its fragility, its female brittleness. Others in the school joked that it was the lunatics’ wing, a joke that made Noella bristle with indignation because everyone here – especially the perfectionists – was flawed, some more obviously than others. It was easy to spot the too-thin, the repulsively arrogant. Others, like Noella, were more secretly afflicted.
To those who observed her, Noella would appear abrasive, uptight, yet ultimately well-meaning, compassionate.
And this was their error.
For a child raised in a warm climate, it was rather ironic; or perhaps biologically sensible, given that lizards were built for the heat too. Because whereas her friends were red-cheeked and giggly, Noella was cool-skinned and steely.
A sudden noise made her drop the necklace. ‘Dammit!’ she said, jumping up from the piano stool. It was the buzzer on the door downstairs. She glanced at the studio clock. Quarter to nine. Who would be here this late?
She gathered the shoebox together, pushed it inside the cupboard and slammed the door shut, before hurrying to the stairs.
The buzzer was going again. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK. I’m going as fast as I can.’
Downstairs, she was surprised to see Jemima and Steffie standing on the pavement, squinting in the rain.
‘Apologies for disturbing you so late,’ Steffie said, hands on Jemima’s shoulders, ‘but Jemima couldn’t sleep. She wondered if she could have just one more run-through before tomorrow?’
Noella smiled. ‘Of course, ma chérie!’ she said, reaching out to take Jemima’s hand.
Steffie raised her eyebrows at Noella apologetically. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Hopefully it’ll only take a few minutes. Really, she should be in bed.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ Noella said, ushering her ward up the stairs to the studio. ‘Honestly.’
Jemima moved beautifully that night, possibly the best that Steffie had ever seen her dance, even though she was in her pyjamas and dressing gown. Perhaps it was this that gave the sequence a dream-like feel – her dressing gown flapping behind her as though she were flying with Peter Pan.
Steffie had kept consulting her watch, disapproving of the lateness of the hour. Yet Jemima had insisted on dancing at Noella’s one last time.
And looking at her now, asleep in bed, it seemed to have done her some good.
Steffie pulled the covers up over Jemima’s shoulder and stood gazing down at her. There was just enough light from the lounge to see Jemima’s face, to watch her chest rise and fall.
How many times had Steffie watched her daughter sleeping over the years, just as she was doing now?
She never tired of it. It was a secret delight; for sleeping children appeared uncannily similar to their mother’s first glimpse of them. Somehow sleep robbed them of growth, of affectations and influences, and there they were again: babies.
Steffie wondered what the total might look like – the tally of hours spent watching Jemima sleep. It was only a little bit here and there, but it would add up.
These were not wasted hours, though. They were gorgeously rich and warm, like the inside of a baby’s clenched hand, the hot folds in their chubby legs.
Steffie looked lovingly at Jemima’s little hand, which was lying above the covers. Jemima always slept with one arm under the sheets, one arm out.
She was holding something. Steffie peered closer to look and then smiled. Jemima was holding a tiny pair of ballet shoes – a cheap bag charm that she deemed lucky.
Gently, Steffie prised the charm from Jemima’s grip. No point her holding it and scratching her face by accident in the night.
She sat down on the chair next to Jemima’s bed, shifting to get comfortable on the lumps and bumps of the pile of clothes beneath her.
She gazed at Jemima, listened to her rhythmic breathing, thought of her dancing in her dressing gown.
That image, that memory, would stay with her always.
Quietly, she began to cry.
‘Oh, sweet Mims,’ she whispered. ‘What will I do without you?’
Suddenly, Jemima shifted position. Steffie froze.
She sat still, waiting, listening.
It was all right. She could hear Jemima breathing again, softly snoring.
She rose, wiped the tears from her eyes with her sleeve, placed the little ballet shoes on the table beside Jemima, and left the room.