CHAPTER 8

MEETING MY MATCH

So there I was. I’d metaphorically tossed a coin. Heads – Mark saying he’d dance with me, and I’d be flying to England to revive my dancing career. Tails – Mark saying he wasn’t free after all and my future would be as an estate agent. It could have gone either way and I really did think I would be equally happy with either outcome, but I just couldn’t make the decision for myself. But Mark saying, ‘Hang on a minute. I have a flatmate who’s looking for a partner. Why not try out with him?’ wasn’t on either side of my imaginary coin. Even so, it seemed something that was meant to be and I immediately booked a flight to England for a try out with the mystery dancer. Little did I know, as I boarded that plane to London, what a pivotal role Brendan Cole, who like me had been out of dancing for a while and wanted to get back into it, would come to play in my life …

Not my type

Unlike Mark, who I’d always quite fancied, I didn’t think Brendan was my type. But he was tall, with very fair skin, tight curly brown hair, and a good physique – nice-looking, I could see that, but he wasn’t the sort of guy to make my heart skip a beat.

Physically, though, we were perfectly compatible as dancers – he was six feet tall, I was four inches shorter, and we were both long-limbed. So in theory at least, we’d look good together on the dance floor. These four inches were important. In the past I’d danced with boys who were shorter than me, and that really did look awkward!

And when Brendan and I started to chat, it was immediately obvious how much we had in common, especially when we simultaneously blurted out the names of coaches we’d like to work with. They were the same. We both hugely admired Donnie Burns and Gaynor Fairweather, who were the current Professional World Latin Dance Champions. They were stunning dancers: no wonder they won that title 16 times! Like us, they were tall and long-limbed. It was amazing to discover that Brendan and I had both been watching them on video, he in New Zealand and me in Denmark, both of us dreaming of one day working with them.

Then we stopped talking, started to dance, and from the moment our hands touched I knew we were a perfect match. Just like with Kenneth, Klavs and Lars, it just felt so right.

We started with my favourite dance, the rumba. As it’s the slowest of the Latin dances, it’s easy to get an idea of how you work together when you dance it. You can quickly see how he leads and how you follow; and how you both connect, mentally as well as physically.

We were about 15 minutes into it when suddenly I got this stabbing pain in my chest, as if there were knives in my heart. I knew I needed to breathe into the pain for it to go away, but I couldn’t because that made it hurt more!

I was so embarrassed when I had to say, ‘Excuse me – I have to lie down for a minute. I have pains in my heart!’ It’s little wonder that this became one of the defining jokes of our early relationship, something we would laugh about over and over again for years to come.

Fortunately I managed to pick myself up and continue with the try out – and by the time we’d finished I knew I wanted to go back to dancing, with Brendan as my partner.

No more politics

Having been disenchanted with the politics of the dance business in the past, I promised myself that this time round I would not let them concern me, I’d simply keep my mind on the dancing, and maintain a positive frame of mind at all times. I wanted to enjoy every step of my journey and if I ever found that this wasn’t happening, I’d quit and do something else. I don’t think I really realized at the time what a huge promise I had made that day, for trust me, it would be tested many times in the next ten years!

We both wanted to start dancing together straight away if we were to stand any chance in the upcoming Open British, to be held in Blackpool. But I still had three months of my estate agency apprenticeship to complete back in Copenhagen. If I left Denmark before that, I’d lose everything I’d worked for. If my dancing career didn’t work out, I’d have no plan B career to fall back on. So Brendan, who didn’t speak a word of Danish – how many people do? – said he would move over to Copenhagen.

I was blown away when he made that commitment – clearly this gorgeous, athletic-looking man was as keen as me to get back on the dance floor as soon as possible.

‘Come and live with me!’

There was a lot to think about, practical things like what would Brendan do for money? And where would he live? In the end, I said, ‘Come and live with me!’ despite the fact that my flat was tiny, just a studio. It meant Brendan would have to sleep on a little fold-out bed I had, but as we so wanted to dance together, it seemed the only way. And it would only be for three months because we knew that if all went well with the Open British, the next step would be to move to London, where all the best dancers trained.

Dancers, like all sportsmen, often have to go through a lot of hardship when they decide to follow their dreams. So poor Brendan had to swallow his pride and take the only job he could get as a non-Danish speaker: he cleaned offices, cinemas and restaurants at night. He hated it and was earning less than £10 an hour to put toward our food and dance expenses. But we needed every penny we could get. A dress could cost anything from £500–£2,000. Trousers for the man cost £150 and shirts can be £150, even more if they’re decorated with Swarovski crystals. A pack of them would easily be £50 and one pack didn’t go far!

We’d chosen to train with a Danish coach called Karin Witander and the Australian champions Jason Roditis and Tonia Kosovich, and were working with one or other of them every day from six o’clock, when I finished work, until very late at night when Brendan had to go off to his cleaning jobs.

Falling in love again

The two of us would hang out together every day, eating together, training together, and going out together with my friends – who, fortunately for Brendan, all spoke English. They all kept asking, ‘How come you’re not a couple? You get on SO well!’

But back at home we’d lie at opposite sides of the room, he on his narrow fold-out bed, me on my ordinary one – with a sofa and a table between us – chatting until we fell asleep. Then one night as we lay there, we started talking about how we enjoyed each other’s company but how complicated it was to date your dance partner and I just came out with the words, ‘But I don’t like to sleep alone …’ and he said ‘Neither do I!’ And, from that night on, we no longer slept alone – even though we hid it from my parents in the early days, by making up Brendan’s fold-out bed when they visited!

Back to Blackpool

We were really excited about going to Blackpool to compete in the Open British, the competition we’d been training so hard for. To the ballroom dance world it’s what Wimbledon is to tennis.

There were 250 couples in the competition and having both been off the dance floor for quite some time, we were thrilled to make it into the last 98 and we only just missed getting into last 48. We were also delighted by the compliments from people saying how well-suited we were. We could see our future ahead of us and we were so thrilled about it.

With Blackpool under our belts, we were ready for that move to London, more specifically, south London, which was where most of the top trainers lived and had studios. There were champions from all over the world teaching there and couples would travel a long way to practise and take lessons with them. We wanted to train in one of the most famous dance studios – the Semley in Norbury – and to be inspired and surrounded by the champions who were there every night. The studio even had its own DJ who played all the latest dance tunes. Even just being there, you could feel the energy of all the champions whose careers the studio had shaped.

Not what I expected!

If by moving to south London I thought we’d be living and breathing the world of dance, I was wrong. It’s a good job that I’d decided to stay positive through thick and thin before leaving my life in Denmark, because arriving in London and starting from the bottom was going to be tougher than I’d ever imagined.

I was leaving behind a job with good prospects, as well as my lovely little flat. But I’d decided to sublet it furnished, just in case I had to run home with my tail between my legs. And I’d also checked that a door would be left open at the estate agents. My Mor had wisely always told me not to burn all my bridges. I had my education to fall back on too, thanks to Far who’d persuaded me to do that course at business school and then the apprenticeship – so I’d always have something behind me if things didn’t work out. But when I left Denmark I was full of hope and was convinced that I would need neither the flat nor the job again.

In that short time together, Brendan and I managed to save up enough to buy a brand new car, which we loaded with my things and after a special breakfast with my family at my sister Jeanet’s house, we drove from Copenhagen to Jutland to catch the ferry to Harwich.

A new life

As we waved goodbye, my thoughts were a mixture of hope for the future and sadness at leaving my sister, Mor and Far behind. Jeanet and I had always been close, but she tended to be far less emotional than me. Telling me she loved me didn’t come that easily to her, but just as we were about to leave, she handed me a card. As we drove away I opened it and the words I read brought a lump to my throat. ‘I love you, Camilla,’ she’d written. ‘Always remember that – and know that you can always come home if you need to.’

I had to wipe away a couple of tears, as her words brought home to me what a big step I was taking, and how it would impact on my family as well – it wasn’t just my life that was about to change. As my Far said in his speech at my wedding many years later, ‘When Camilla left Denmark, she left a big gap in our hearts.’

We’d arranged for somewhere to live in London – the spare bedroom in a friend’s parents’ house not too far from the dance studios. It was lovely of them to put us up while we settled into London life, but having lived on my own for two years, I found it really difficult to share their bathroom and kitchen. It was like being with our parents again, so I made it my mission to find us our own flat, and within a month we’d found a small place in Norbury, a suburb in south London. It was very different to what I was used to in Copenhagen where I’d lived near water and lots of green parks, but it was convenient for all the dance studios, and at £500 a month it was affordable. We had a living room and a bedroom with only the most basic furniture in it, just a bed and a wardrobe. And it stayed with just a bed and a wardrobe until Brendan found bits of timber and built us some furniture. Back home in New Zealand he’d done some roofing, and he was the kind of practical guy who could turn his hand to pretty much anything he put his mind to, so fitting out our flat wasn’t too hard for him. I loved that he could do all the things I didn’t have a clue about. But I was good with the paperwork and finances, so we complemented each other well.

‘When Camilla left Denmark, she left a big gap in our hearts’

Before leaving Denmark I’d fixed myself up with a job in a Danish candle store that had a London branch – in Hammersmith! How was I to know when I arranged our accommodation that the commute from Norbury to Hammersmith was horrendous. It took an hour and a half in each direction in crowded Overground and Underground trains and buses crammed with commuters. Oh how I yearned for Denmark where most people cycled everywhere.

All my life I’d dreamed of living somewhere like London, and now here I was and this was the reality of London life! But I was with Brendan and we were at that lovely stage of being newly in love. Having each other to lean on made it all bearable for both of us.

The job wasn’t quite what I was used to back home, of course. I’d had to come in on the ground floor as a sales assistant, but I knew it would be a good way to improve my English. I just wanted to get sorted as quickly as possible so I could have a bank account and rent a decent flat, which we did.

Honesty doesn’t always pay!

It wasn’t long before I was getting restless at the candle store though, and started to try to get another job, with a similar level of responsibility to what I’d had back home. I went to some really good interviews and after one of them I was told I was on a shortlist of two. When I went for the final interview, I knew I was really close to getting the job. But, when the employer asked, ‘How much would it mean to you to get this job?’ I knew I should have said, ‘It would mean everything for me.’ Six simple little words and the job would probably have been mine. But they just weren’t true, and before I knew it I was saying, ‘I would love this job and I will do my best. But I came here to dance, to fulfil my dreams, and that will have to take first priority!’ Sitting in that interview I’d realized that of course my dancing came first! It was the reason I’d left everything I loved!

I’d always thought that honesty was something that employers would value above all else. Silly me. I never did get to be a receptionist in an exclusive car dealership in Park Lane.

The job would have given our finances a terrific boost, but I’m proud that I stayed true to myself and stuck with my dream. Maybe this was a lesson sent to show me that I was meant to make that commitment, to tell me not to put being financially comfortable first at this stage, because if I had chosen that job it might have got in the way of my dream and my training.

After that it was crystal clear to me that I needed a job with less responsibility, one where I could leave work behind as soon as I walked out the door. So I carried on applying for jobs closer to home and finally got one with Mulberry in central London, the company that makes the sort of luxurious handbags that were way beyond my means. At that time!

It was a lovely place to work, but the job didn’t pay brilliantly and, when I was reprimanded for not dusting the shelves properly, I couldn’t help wishing I was back in my wonderful office in Copenhagen with all the satisfaction of sorting out contracts and going to business meetings.

A different kind of life

Doing a job I didn’t like and not being well paid, travelling in sweaty, rush-hour public transport for hours every day, living in what to me was a grotty little flat, no wonder I felt homesick and cried a lot. I hated being broke and even though I had Brendan to turn to, I missed my family and friends.

We were finally in the right place to get the training we needed – but we didn’t have nearly enough money for lessons, and even if we had, we sometimes lacked the energy to leave the flat. Tired, frustrated and living on next to nothing, unable to do what we’d moved to London to do, it’s hardly surprising that our relationship was more than a little strained at times.

Brendan had got a job as a builder, which he hated. It wasn’t the hard work, it was having to get up very early, usually after a hard night’s training, the low pay and working outside in cold, wet weather. But he was doing it for the sake of our career. And I loved him for it, even though there were times when we were both so tired and tense that stress got the better of us and we began to argue quite a bit.

Our relationship survived, but the little car we’d bought to drive to the UK from Denmark didn’t …

We had a really bad argument one night and the next morning we hardly said a word to each other before Brendan left to go to work. He was pulling out of our drive, fumbling with his seat belt, when another car slammed into him, smashing his head against the windscreen, which shattered with the impact.

The first I knew about it was when I heard an ambulance. Brendan was taken to A&E and apart from being cut and bruised was OK. The car was a write-off, though. That didn’t matter. What was really important to me and had made me sick with shock was that Brendan had suffered like that, thinking that after the row the night before and the sullen silence over breakfast I may not have loved him any more. That taught me a lesson: never let the sun set on a quarrel.

Learning London social skills

Life was very hard when we started out in London. But however low I felt at times the thing that kept me going was that light burning inside me: the dream of what could be. Every day, walking down the street I would remember and visualize my dreams, simply imagine how it would feel once I got there and remember that there was a purpose for all the hard work we were putting in.

Brendan had lived in London before meeting me and knew more about the way Londoners behave toward one another than I did. And that was something I struggled with for a while.

If one of my colleagues said, ‘Hey, how are you? We must go for a drink sometime,’ I’d reply, ‘Sorry, but I’m really busy with my training every night so I’m not sure that’s going to be possible.’ I didn’t realize I was coming across as aloof or rude. To me it was just being honest.

One day, my manager, who was a really nice lady, took me aside and gave me a little education in London social skills. ‘Camilla,’ she said, ‘when someone asks you out for a drink or something, just smile and say, “Thanks. That’d be lovely.” You see, they’re just being friendly. They don’t really mean it. They don’t expect you to say yes.’

‘How can you tell if they really mean it?’ I asked.

‘Oh, you’ll know!’ she laughed.

That was so different to the way things were done in Denmark, but eventually I got the hang of it. I also learnt to say ‘Please!’ and ‘Sorry!’ much more than we do at home. Not because we’re rude, we just don’t say the words very much. Now I find it really nice and polite and when I’m in Denmark I use them a lot – in Danish, not in English – and people sometimes look at me as if I’m from another planet, which I find really funny!

Love and respect

As well as learning my way around London etiquette, I was also taught a lesson in communication by Shirley Ballas, one of the top dance trainers in the UK. Shirley had a son who trained at the same studio as us and she often came to watch him. She was such a superstar that we yearned to take lessons from her, and eventually we asked her about it. We were gobsmacked by what she said, ‘I don’t know if we will be able to work together.’ And before we could ask why, she went on, ‘I’ve seen the way you are together, and I don’t like the way you speak to each other!’

She must have seen our jaws drop. ‘You need to take a good look at yourselves,’ she explained. ‘You don’t show each other any respect when you’re training. You argue … speak harshly to each other.’

I honestly didn’t know that we were putting out such negative energy. We must have been awful. No wonder she didn’t want to work with us. When she said we spoke like squabbling siblings, I knew she was right. When Brendan reached for my hand I’d go ‘Wha-a-at?’ We’d shrug our shoulders and roll our eyes at each other. If I gave him advice, he’d ignore it. And, I’m ashamed to say, when he spoke rudely to me, I didn’t listen to him at all. I simply blocked him! Shirley said that off the dance floor we seemed to be really nice people, but on it … that was a different story. Her words were like a wake-up call. To be told that we were so unpleasant with each other that one of the world’s top teachers wouldn’t take us on was a slap in the face. But it was a lesson we needed to learn. From then on, we started treating each other with much more respect, using a softer tone of voice, and talking the way we would like to be talked to. The good news was that it wasn’t long before we noticed that we had much more energy. Even better was that when Shirley saw the difference in our behaviour, she agreed to coach us, and that had a dramatic influence on our dancing and our careers.

RESPECT YOURSELF …

One thing you have to do in any relationship is to ask yourself if there is mutual respect. If not, you have to do whatever you can to put it there. For example: if someone speaks to you in a way that you find unacceptable, or constantly ignores your opinion about something, and if you want them to respect you instead, you have to tell them that you don’t find it acceptable. To set boundaries, you will have to let them know that you find their attitude is souring the relationship and tell them how you want them to behave if it is to survive. Maybe you know someone who is constantly putting you down about the way you look. Tell them that you like the way you look (assuming you do) and ask them to stop talking about your appearance. Or maybe your boss is constantly contacting you out of office hours in your free time at home or even on holiday. Of course, modern life being what it is, many of us take work home and we all want to be reasonable, but you must learn that just because you’ve been asked, that doesn’t mean you have to do it. Find the self-respect to set the boundary. If you don’t respect yourself, why should anyone respect you? If you are not able to establish mutual respect, then perhaps it’s time to finish the relationship, look for a new job, whatever. I truly believe that mutual respect is the foundation – whether it’s in love or at work or any great relationship – because when we have respect, we have a strong and wonderful platform to build on.