The auditorium was high-ceilinged, air-conditioned and overwhelmingly busy. There were at least two hundred people in the audience, if not more; pupils dressed in black Phoenix sweaters, guests in black winter coats. There was so much black, the heads seemed to be levitating above the bodies.
‘Gosh,’ Steffie said apprehensively. ‘That’s a lot of people.’
‘Jemima can handle it,’ Greg replied.
Steffie wasn’t so sure. Jemima had been doing so well, but after the rec-room incident she had suddenly seemed terribly nervous.
‘Well, here goes,’ said Greg. They entered the room, going all the way down the aisle to find some empty seats. As they walked, Steffie was aware of heads swivelling to look at them. It was quite dark in the room, lit only by subtle wall lighting and green fire exit signs. She began to feel queasy, warm in her turtleneck sweater again.
‘Did they really need so many people here?’ she asked Greg, as they settled into their seats in a row right at the back.
‘I expect it’s to test the kids’ nerves,’ he said. ‘If they’re selected, they’ll be performing in front of far bigger audiences than this.’ He was taking off his jumper. There was a crackle of static and his hair rose at the back.
‘And why is it that we want Jemima to be selected exactly?’ Steffie said.
He threw his jumper on the seat next to him, tapped her leg lightly. ‘It’s all going to be fine,’ he said, staring ahead of him, waiting.
Steffie gazed at him. Whilst she knew him intimately, at that moment she had never felt so separate from him.
It couldn’t have been more apparent then that each human being was on their own, ultimately detached, singular. No matter how well she knew him, she couldn’t climb into his thoughts, his being – had to endure this inside her own shell. As did Jemima. For no one could be with her on that stage, even if an entire dance troupe were with her. She alone had command of her body and mind.
Never had Steffie felt so alone, so mortal.
She folded her coat on her lap, and then Jemima’s coat on top. It was a dusky-rose coat that Jemima had had for years, but was loath to part with, for the simple reason that there was a ballerina appliqué on the lapel. Steffie fondled the appliqué now, touched its velvet padding that felt cushiony like a puppy’s paws. She emitted a little sigh, smoothed the coat tenderly.
It had been awful leaving Jemima earlier because it was obvious that she was suffering. She had felt small in Steffie’s arms as they hugged goodbye – smaller than Steffie could recall her ever being, even as a toddler. She was trembling all over, pale-faced, and for an instant Steffie considered calling time on the whole thing.
But Noella was magnificent, emboldening Jemima with words that made Steffie ripple with pride and anticipation. They were the sort of words to inspire troops, the sick, or anyone else facing near-death.
As they left Jemima in the corridor outside studio four, Steffie had glanced over her shoulder, hoping that Jemima would be gone, but she was still standing there in her black leotard and white tights. She wasn’t wearing her tutu today, in order to better display her movements. It made her look barer, less fortified. Steffie had stopped, hesitated, but Greg had pulled her forward, away.
There was a flicker of movement on the stage before them now, and Steffie caught sight of Zach Williams waiting in the wings, stretching.
Her stomach churned. Jemima was on after Zach.
She gazed up at the ceiling, at the ugly mesh of wires and lights.
The dust that would be up there, she thought, fretfully – on that equipment.
Mikhail Alexandrov was standing up at the front to talk to someone. She watched him. He was throwing his head back to laugh, clapping his hands. Then he sat back down at the table, joined his intimidatingly long panel of judges.
The lights were dimming. The audience hushed in response. And Zach entered the stage.
Gone was the cheeky caricature. In its place was a serious boy who moved astonishingly well.
‘Told you so,’ Greg said in her ear.
‘Told me what?’ Steffie replied. What had he told her?
But she didn’t find out, forgot to ask him later, because the child on stage had seized her attention and kept it throughout the performance.
He had chosen a long, complicated free-form piece that she didn’t fully understand, but the panel seemed to – several even stood to applaud at the end as he stood there, chest heaving, smiling widely.
As Zach left the stage and the lights slowly rose, Steffie’s heart began to race.
The boy was brilliant – stunning.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t actually seen any of these children dance before, knew nothing of what they were capable of.
Was Jemima up to this? Was she as good as that?
Her hands felt clammy. She rubbed them on her coat to dry them. ‘Oh, flax seed,’ she said.
Greg tapped her hand again. ‘It’s all right,’ he said.
‘Stop telling me that,’ she said.
‘Well, it is. Everything’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about.’
She gazed up at the lights once more, and at the rows of heads before them that were illuminated on top, their hair glowing universally white.
She tried to imagine what Jemima would be doing, tried not to picture a small child standing there, gazing after her mother, petrified; a dismembered insect that couldn’t fly.
She shook her head. Not that image. Another one. Jemima dancing.
When Jemima began to dance, she would no longer be from Wimborne Primary, but something celestial, luminous, causing the audience to murmur, and Steffie to sway as she always did in the mirror of her child.
‘That’s it,’ Noella was saying, her hand lightly on Jemima’s back. ‘And hold … And release … Good girl … Excellent.’
Jemima, holding the barre, was fully stretched but very stiff. There were drops of perspiration above her top lip and on her nose. Her eyebrows were arched, her knees shaking.
In her eyes was a look that Noella had seen many times before – a silent pleading to be released, a soul who was desperate to find a panic button, an emergency cord to summon a team of heroes to come running forward and take the victim somewhere safe.
It was a look that said that Jemima was going to mess this up. Noella had to do something for her – had come prepared. It was risky. Yet this entire profession was risky: the stress on the body, on its muscles and nervous system. You couldn’t set foot on stage without risk.
She glanced at the clock. It was only ten minutes until Jemima would be called to the wings.
She looked all about her, checking there was no one in sight. No one else had cause to be here or in the vicinity, since Jemima was the last audition of the morning.
It was unyieldingly quiet.
‘I have an idea,’ she said. ‘Carry on stretching.’
She hurried to the side of the room, where her bag was on a bench. The studio, so busy an hour before, was empty now, although the scent of its guests lingered: a subtle blend of nerves, perspiration, stress.
She returned with her bag, looking furtively about her. ‘I brought this only as an emergency,’ she said. ‘I hoped we wouldn’t need it. But I think we do.’
Jemima stopped stretching. ‘What is it?’
Noella moved closer. ‘If I do this, you must promise not to tell anyone,’ she said.
Jemima looked even more frightened now. ‘OK,’ she said.
Noella unclipped her bag and pulled out a hip flask. ‘Brandy,’ she said. ‘It’s excellent for relaxing the nerves … Here.’ She glanced over her shoulder, before unscrewing the lid. ‘Take a swig.’
Jemima was frowning at the flask. ‘Should I? … Isn’t that breaking the law?’
‘Nonsense. We used to do this sort of thing all the time in Paris. It’s what top dancers have to do, Jemima. It’s the sacrifice you have to make.’
‘Oh,’ said Jemima doubtfully.
‘Take it!’ Noella said. ‘Quickly!’
Jemima grabbed the flask and took a sip, grimacing.
‘That was barely anything,’ Noella said, pushing Jemima’s elbow up. ‘Drink!’ She watched Jemima take a longer drink. ‘Good,’ she said. Jemima was shuddering, shaking her head, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.
Noella snatched the flask and hid it in her bag, then produced a breath spray. ‘Open, ma chérie,’ she said.
Jemima obliged, Noella squirted Jemima’s mouth and the deed was done.
‘Right,’ Noella said. ‘Now we have to summon our muse.’
‘I can’t,’ Jemima said, hopping about. ‘I need the loo.’
‘What?’ Noella said. ‘At this late hour?’ She put her hands on her hips, scowled. ‘Why didn’t you say earlier?’ Then she thought of what had just occurred and of what the child had still to come, and softened her tone. ‘Well, it can’t be helped. Go quickly, then.’ She shooed Jemima away. ‘It’s just down the corridor, on the left. Chop chop!’
And Jemima ran from the room.
Sitting on her own in the studio, Noella felt cold. She rubbed her arms, began to pace up and down, wondering whether she had done the right thing.
Of course it wasn’t the right thing. Yet she had seen far worse in her time, involving dancers younger than Jemima. Vodka colas, whisky milks.
Steffie and Greg would be furious. Yet Noella had warned them that this would be a highly competitive environment – hostile, even.
Had she used that word? Had she actually said it might be hostile?
It had been implied. For surely hostility meant the same as highly competitive, was synonymous with perfection and success.
The higher you rose, the more lines you had to cross. Her contemporaries at dance school in Paris had all left home at an early age, were single-minded, intent only on winning, would have stopped at nothing to get where they wanted to be – even the sweet ones, like her pretty room-mate, poor doomed Delphine.
It was no different here.
If the Lees hadn’t picked up on it yet, on the toxic atmosphere, then they were imperceptive, naïve. Or misled by their hopeful love for Jemima. They didn’t want to see the hard little lines of the children’s mouths, the sneaky glances, the fake smiles, the anxious breathing. They didn’t want to see the Phoenix as a pressure cooker of small sweaty bodies sparring for centre stage. They didn’t want to see the relentless regimes, the physio appointments, the eating disorders, the badly wired brains.
Yet they would all be here, as sure as the floor and walls.
Jemima had needed something to take the edge off and Noella had helped her; that was all.
Noella shivered, wondering why the studio was so cold. It didn’t help the nerves. She glanced at her watch. What was keeping Jemima? She was supposed to be in the wings by now. The woman with the headset would be marching along in a minute, outraged by their tardiness.
She began to walk up and down again, her arms folded.
Jemima had been too long. There was a problem of some kind. Perhaps she had an upset tummy from nerves, or had been sick.
She would go and find her.
She plucked up her bag, Jemima’s duffel bag of clothes, and ran from the room.
*
The shop was always busy on Saturdays, but today Helena could barely cope with it. It was as though there was an event on the shopping calendar that she wasn’t aware of. The doorbell kept jangling and more customers entered, cramming into the compact space.
Ordinarily, she would have enjoyed the bustle, but today she was finding it hard to concentrate. Her heart kept tripping about as though tipsy. And when she went to wrap goods in tissue and pull Sellotape from the dispenser, she found that her hands were shaking, clumsy.
She bit her lip, smiled apologetically at the customers, hoped no one noticed.
During an opportune moment, she pulled her phone from her bag and sent Steffie a text.
Everything OK?
Steffie replied right away.
All OK Mum. Hope shop OK. Just about to go into auditorium so need to switch phone off now. Will text afterwards. Here goes! Xxx
Helena slipped the phone back into her bag. Half a dozen more people had just entered the shop, shuffling politely for space.
She checked her watch. Twelve thirty. Jemima was on in quarter of an hour.
Her heart felt now as though it were being fired out of a canon – completely out of control, doing dangerous leaps and plunges. She was too old for a dare-devil body, for maverick organs.
She didn’t have time to consider what to do about it, since one of the customers was asking her about the hanging animals in the window, about what they were made of and stuffed with.
She didn’t want to climb into the window to check the labels, didn’t feel agile, steady enough today. She would knock everything here and there. ‘I uh …’ she said.
‘Oh look,’ the customer said. ‘There’s one here.’ There was a giraffe dangling from the front of the counter. The customer bent to examine the toy, just as another customer approached.
‘Do you have another flower-shaped slate clock, like the one over there?’ the woman asked. ‘I’d rather not have a display one.’
Helena nodded. ‘I’ll go and check. One moment, please.’
Normally she knew where all the stock was, but the slate clocks were new. She wasn’t sure where Steffie had put them.
She was hurrying to the stock room at the side of the shop, when suddenly the walls seemed to be closing in on her. She stopped still, put her hands out to her sides, her hair line breaking out in perspiration. ‘What in God’s name …?’ she said.
She thought she was dying.
But it was nothing like that.
It was all the doubt that she had been feeling over the past few weeks coming to a head inside her – snagging her windpipe, like a fish hook.
She knew for certain then that she was right – that Jemima shouldn’t be there, not in that academy, not trying to be one of those étoiles.
Because something awful was going to happen.
Steffie was sitting stiff-backed, waiting for Jemima to appear on stage, as were Greg and the rest of the audience. People were beginning to talk, a wave of voices rising louder and louder through the auditorium.
Her eyes were burning with nervousness. She stared at a large phoenix crest on the wall that appeared to be wobbling in a heat haze. She blinked and the phoenix settled.
‘What time is it?’ she said, even though she was wearing a watch, hadn’t stopped checking it.
‘She’s three minutes late,’ Greg replied.
‘Should we go and look for her?’
‘No,’ Greg said. ‘She’ll be here any second.’
Steffie closed her eyes, summoned Jemima to her mind, pictured her coming on stage in her black leotard, white tights.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls …’
Steffie’s eyes snapped open. One of the academy staff, wearing a microphone headset, was addressing the audience. ‘Do we have a Jemima Lee here?’ the woman said.
Steffie looked at Greg in alarm. ‘We need to go and check on her,’ she said.
‘OK,’ Greg said, standing up.
They made their way to the end of their row, brushing knees, knocking bags, and then hurried down the aisle.
‘Jemima Lee?’ the woman was saying, her voice booming.
There was something wrong. Noella was always punctual, precise; as was Jemima, her ardent disciple.
They went out to the corridor where the silence seemed foggy, grainy. Fear, Steffie knew, was like sand kicked into eyes.
‘Maybe they don’t realise they’ve been called,’ Greg said. ‘Try ringing Noella.’
Steffie pulled her phone out of her bag as they ran to where they had left Jemima: outside studio four, at the end of the corridor.
‘It’s gone straight to voicemail,’ Steffie said, hanging up the phone.
Greg pulled the studio door open. It made a swooshing sound. They both stared at the empty space of studio four.
‘What now?’ Steffie said. She was trying to think of a logical explanation. Perhaps Jemima had taken a turn for the worse, was feeling sick. ‘Toilets!’ she said.
They ran to the ladies’ toilets. Inside, with Greg propping the entrance open, Steffie crouched on the floor, looking underneath the cubicle doors. There was no one there, no noise other than the cistern making plaintive dripping sounds.
They went back to the corridor and looked at each other, confounded.
Then they walked back along the hallway, slowly now, looking through the port holes in the other studio doors.
‘Let’s check again in the auditorium,’ Greg said. ‘She might be there by now.’
‘That’s true,’ said Steffie, doubting it as she said it.
They returned to the auditorium and saw that the stage was still empty, the audience talking all at once in a muddle of voices. The lady with the microphone was speaking to Mr Alexandrov. When he saw Steffie and Greg, he approached them, tucking his shirt into his trousers with a neat motion, running a hand through his dark hair.
‘Mr and Mrs Lee?’ he said. He took Steffie’s hand as though shaking it, but then clasped his other hand around the handshake in a gesture that was more affectionate than she would have expected.
‘Yes,’ was all she managed to say.
‘We appear to have lost Jemima,’ he said. He turned to Greg now, shaking his hand. ‘Was she nervous? Do you think she’s run off somewhere?’ He looked back at Steffie. ‘She is hiding, perhaps?’
She thought about this. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I mean, she was nervous, of course. But …’ She trailed off. She couldn’t think of anything else to add.
‘It’s very strange,’ Greg said. ‘Her tutor is very punctual and—’
‘One moment, please,’ Mr Alexandrov said. He pulled his mobile from his pocket and took the call, his finger pressed against his other ear. ‘Yes, please. Check everywhere,’ he said. ‘Well then, do it again … Thank you.’
He hung up. ‘I am sure we’ll find her shortly,’ he said. ‘We can all wait.’ He bowed his head in parting and turned away, grabbing a member of staff to speak with them.
‘Do you think she’s hiding?’ Steffie asked Greg.
He was opening his mouth to reply, when there was a commotion behind him and they both turned to look.
Halfway down the side of the auditorium, a fire-exit door had burst open. The audience seated nearest the door were standing up, shouting. Steffie couldn’t see what was happening. There were too many people in the way.
But then she caught a glimpse of the person in the fire-exit doorway.
It was Noella, face taut with shock, flapping her arms, shrieking.
‘Oh,’ Steffie said, putting her hand to her mouth. ‘Greg,’ she said, turning to him. But he was running to the main exit, as were Mr Alexandrov and a team of staff.
Steffie stood still for a moment, the blood pounding so intensely in her ears that she couldn’t hear anything; just a hiss. Around her she could feel the thud of cinema-style chairs jumping up as bodies stood – could feel the heavy vibrations of footsteps and voices en masse.
And then she hurried forward, following Greg out of the room. He was already lost in the throng of people moving down the corridor. She could see colours flashing, limbs moving on white floors, against white walls.
They were entering studio three. The hissing sound was so loud now, she couldn’t hear above it.
She stopped abruptly in the room’s threshold. There were fifty people or so gathered to the left, motionless. Somehow the energy of the room had pulled them that way, as though the floor were on a tilt and they were all liquid. But their eyes were being summoned elsewhere.
In the middle of the room, underneath a hole in the ceiling above, was a small body.
The face was turned the other way, the black leotard curved slightly on the spine, the white legs curled as though sleeping, the arms splayed, one wrist dangling limp, smashed.
People were beginning to move, to pull out phones, to cry, talk, whisper.
Steffie took in the details at once, her gaze resting on the sparkly beanie on the head of the body. There was no mistaking it. That hat belonged to Daisy Kirkpatrick.
She could hear a little better now, the hissing was abating.
That wasn’t Jemima lying there. That wasn’t her daughter.
She was looking about for Greg, when she felt someone small pushing against her to enter the room. A crowd had quietly amassed in the doorway, filling the space around Steffie with hot anxious breath, warm bodies.
Steffie rocked to the side as the small person squeezed forward and stood just beyond her, hands clasped to mouth, wearing a black leotard that made her look as thin as liquorice laces.
Then the child began to scream.
Steffie stared at her in horror.
‘Come away,’ the mother said, pushing forward, holding out her hand to her daughter. ‘Don’t look. Come away, Daisy. Now!’