*“Is this the dance class?”
A harried-looking woman with sunglasses pushed on top of her highlighted blonde hair poked her head into the dance studio as Lindy offered her best and brightest smile—a somewhat difficult feat, as she’d been inexplicably feeling a little low this last week.
Well, not so inexplicably, unfortunately. She knew exactly why she was feeling low. She just didn’t like the reason.
“Yes, it is.” Lindy focused her attention on the girl of about six or so who was peeping from behind her mother’s legs, offering her a shy smile like a gift. She had blonde ringlets and blue eyes and was wearing a gauzy pink tutu. “You must be Emma…or Zoe…or Carys?” There were three girls and one boy in her juniors’ class so far, although she was hoping more might join in time.
“Zoe.” The woman was looking around the room a bit dubiously, frowning at the garishly bright Strictly Ballroom poster Lindy had put up on one wall. “This is a ballet class, isn’t it?”
Ballet? “No, it’s a ballroom dancing class,” Lindy corrected with another attempt at a bright and breezy smile. “Waltz…tango…foxtrot…that sort of thing.”
“What?” The woman looked alarmed and even appalled as she gazed at Lindy with something like suspicion. “Ballroom dancing for children? But I thought it was ballet!”
“No, sorry.” Where, Lindy wondered, had the woman got that idea? All her advertising, every single brochure and poster, not to mention her website, spelled out ballroom dancing in great, glaring letters. She’d even decorated it with some clip art of a waltzing couple.
“I was sure it was ballet.” Now the woman sounded accusing, as if Lindy had conspired to trick her. Great. This was not an auspicious start to her first children’s class.
She held on to her smile with some effort. “Ballroom dancing is fun,” she said in the jolly tone of a PE teacher. “And it helps with coordination and gets kids up and moving.”
The woman didn’t look convinced, but before she could respond, someone else had come in, and Lindy soon discovered she’d thought it was a ballet class, as well. Within a few minutes it became all too apparent that all four parents had thought they were signing up for a ballet, rather than ballroom dancing, class, and were all in various degrees of displeasure to realise that wasn’t the case.
“I only signed up because Twirling Tots is full,” the first woman, Zoe’s mum, told the others as she gave Lindy a withering glance. This was her fault how…?
Lindy tried to be understanding—a quick, harried glance at a brochure, the assumption that six-year-olds wanted to wear tutus and do pirouettes rather than tango or foxtrot, was understandable.
Fortunately, three of the parents were happy for their children to attend a ballroom dancing class instead, deciding that an hour’s free time while their child bounced around was good enough for them; Zoe’s mother, however, chose to leave in a huff.
“It’s just as well,” Emma’s mother, Ishbel, said with a conspiratorial smile. “She’s a bit of a nightmare, to be honest.”
“Zoe or her mother?” Lindy half-joked, and Ishbel looked at her seriously.
“Both.”
Ishbel and the other two parents soon left, happy to be footloose and fancy free on a Saturday morning, and Lindy turned to her three remaining pupils with determined delight. She’d been so excited for this class, and the fact that Carys was looking decidedly baleful was not going to dent her enthusiasm one bit.
It had been dented enough already, what with that awful, awful exchange in Tea on the Lea a week ago. Lindy wasn’t even sure why it had bothered her so much—Roger had been characteristically awkward and fairly unlikeable, but Harriet’s hushed whisper about him being unsuitable, followed with such a telling laugh, had made Lindy’s face burn with mortification.
She’d been able to tell immediately that Roger had heard, although she wasn’t even sure how she knew such a thing. He certainly hadn’t looked at them; he hadn’t even moved, and yet she’d known. He’d walked quickly out of the shop with his four cheese scones and she’d felt wretched, more wretched than she’d expected to feel. Harriet had been a bit abashed but fairly unrepentant, claiming he couldn’t have heard, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have known what the remark meant. Lindy wasn’t so sure.
She’d tried a fumbling apology to him on Monday’s class, although what she was apologising for she couldn’t even say—that she’d considered him an unsuitable person to date? That she’d said so? That her friends had laughed about it? None of it was anything she actually wanted to admit, never mind apologise for, and in the end she’d barely begun her faltering apology before Roger had cut her off.
“About the other day…” she’d started, and he’d given her a freezing look and said coldly, “I apologise for my conduct. I realised belatedly that you were off duty, so to speak. I shouldn’t have said hello, and for that I am sorry.”
Lindy had stared at him, appalled by his assessment, and she tried to protest. “No, no, it wasn’t that—” she began, but Roger had already turned away, and there had been no further opportunity to talk, not that Lindy would have even know what to say. She told herself it was silly to feel so badly about it—it had been nothing more than a moment, and no doubt Roger would find her just as unsuitable as she found him. Really, the whole thing was ridiculous, and yet a week later the memory of that moment felt like a thorn in her flesh, a slight but constant, nagging discomfort.
“Are we going to dance?” Emma—or maybe it was Carys—demanded, hands on hips, and Lindy decided it was time to stop thinking about Roger.
“We certainly are,” she declared brightly, and went to turn on the music.
An hour later, three happy children—Emma, Carys, and Ollie—tumbled out of her class, fizzing with excitement about having learned the basic box step, although most of the hour had been spent careening around the room or making faces in the mirror. Still, they’d all had fun. At least, Lindy hoped they had.
“This is such a fun idea,” Ishbel enthused as she collected Emma. “You should think about offering classes in school—I think every Year Six pupil should know how to waltz before heading to secondary!”
“There’s an idea,” Lindy answered with a laugh, and Ollie’s father, Will, looked at her seriously.
“Actually, I think it’s a brilliant idea. I’m a governor at the school—I’ll run it by the head teacher if you’re interested?”
“Oh, um…” Lindy was startled but pleased. “All right,” she said, because why not? “Thanks.”
All three parents—Ishbel, Will, and Liz—seemed very pleased with the class, and promised to return next week. Lindy’s mood was decidedly more upbeat as she headed back to Willoughby Close, although as she came into the courtyard—empty as usual on a Saturday afternoon—she felt her spirits start to, if not flag, then at least wilt just a little.
She’d been in Wychwood-on-Lea for two and a half months, and it didn’t feel like home yet, no matter how welcoming everyone had been. No place, Lindy had acknowledged, had ever felt like home, save for a tumbledown cottage nestled in the Peak District that was crammed with curios and antiques and had been brimming with love.
She sighed as she unlocked the door to her cottage, determined not to feel down. Upbeat was her thing, optimism her motto. She didn’t do sad or depressed, because it wasn’t in her nature. And it never helped, anyway.
But sometimes, Lindy acknowledged as she stepped into her sitting room, such feelings couldn’t be contained. Perhaps it was all the time she had on her hands. Back in Manchester, she’d worked from eight to six Monday to Friday, and the weekends had been spent catching up on housework, errands and shopping. Her weekly dance class and occasional drinks with work friends had been social life enough. She’d been happy.
So why had she moved? To follow a dream that felt as if it were flagging, before it had achieved any real lift-off? She’d taught all of three classes. She couldn’t give up yet, or even think about giving up. She wasn’t going to. She was just having a little moan in the quiet of her own mind, and she’d be fine in a few minutes. She always was.
Yet her lowering spirits didn’t lift as she looked around her little sitting room—pretty enough with its squashy sofa and patchwork throw, the big comfy chair she loved to curl up in facing the French windows. Admittedly, compared to the happy chaos she’d grown up with, it all looked a little bare, but that had been something of a deliberate choice. She couldn’t replicate her childhood home, and she wasn’t going to try.
There was plenty she could do now, Lindy reminded herself. She could update her website, or go food shopping, or simply take a walk through the wood or along the Lea River. Normally, she’d be content to do any of those things, yet for some reason right now she was feeling a bit restless. A bit alone.
Lindy let out another sigh as she gazed through the French windows to the postage stamp of garden outside. Olivia was working this afternoon, and Alice and Henry were away for the weekend. Emily was out with Owen, and Lindy didn’t feel she knew Harriet or Ava well enough to see what they were up to. She’d left a voicemail with Ellie last night, and so far she hadn’t had a response. Who else was there to call, to see?
She had a handful of friends from work in Manchester, and she was sure some of them would be happy to hear from her now, but Lindy knew the conversation would require some heavy lifting on her part and right now she wanted to be with someone who knew her. The kind of person you could be silent with and have it not matter.
Unfortunately, since her parents died, there had been no one like that in her life, which was a depressing thought and one she usually chose not to dwell on.
Lindy’s gaze rested on the orange-and-black-striped cat sitting elegantly on her fence post—Cass, Emily’s cat. Emily adored him, and the feeling was clearly mutual.
There was an idea, Lindy thought suddenly. What if she got a cat, or even a dog? She’d always liked pets, although they’d never been able to have one when she was growing up, because of how much they’d travelled. But why not now? She had time on her hands and was home during the day, unlike when she’d been living and working in Manchester, when a pet hadn’t been a possibility.
But now…she could have a companion; dog or cat, it didn’t really matter. She liked both equally well. The idea filled her with pleasure, and more importantly, with hope. She didn’t have to be alone. She didn’t have to sit here stewing in her cottage, struggling not to feel lonely when all she wanted was to be happy and get on with her life. Why not get a cat or dog, even today?
*
“Hey there, boy.”
Roger stroked the greyhound’s sleek head as he gave him a sympathetic smile. Toby had only just joined the rehoming centre, and he was still a bit skittish. Roger knew the feeling.
He straightened and closed the door to Toby’s kennel before moving on to the next one. He volunteered twice a month at the Blue Cross Rehoming Centre just outside Burford, and he loved the quiet hours he spent there, helping to socialise animals and occasionally dealing with people. He preferred the animals. He knew what to do with them, how to make them happy, and it was an added bonus that they didn’t talk.
He’d considered taking a break from volunteering after his mother’s diagnosis, but she’d been insistent he continue.
“You love it so much, Roger, and you’ve already sacrificed so much for me. I don’t want you to sacrifice anything more.”
Roger wasn’t sure he’d sacrificed all that much—a soulless flat in Oxford? He much preferred his cottage off the high street, just around the corner from his mother’s. Admittedly the commute was a bit more substantial, but he could live with that, and it got him on his bike, which took care of exercise…along with the ballroom dancing he’d been doing once a week.
Roger winced as he remembered Monday’s rather excruciating lesson. Lindy had tried to apologise for whatever had happened in the teashop, and Roger hadn’t been able to stand it. It had been such a small thing anyway, at least small to most people.
In any case, he’d brushed off her apology and done his best to avoid her for the rest of the class, which was somewhat difficult when she was the instructor and he was a rather poor pupil. Still, he’d managed it, and he’d wondered if Lindy had been relieved. She certainly hadn’t tried to seek him out again, which was fine. Fine.
His mother had noticed, however, and asked him if anything had happened, to which Roger had replied, rather sharply, that of course nothing had. And nothing ever would.
“You are enjoying the classes, aren’t you, Roger?” Ellen had asked anxiously, and Roger had forced a smile. Normally his nature compelled him to an often awkward honesty, but with his mother he could lie, because he loved her.
“Actually, I am,” he said, and she gave a sorrowful little laugh and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
“Oh, Roger, I know you’re not, not really, but thank you for saying so. And thank you for going to the classes with me. You’re the kindest and most loving son a mother could ever ask for.”
Which was the kind of talk that alarmed Roger, along with the C-word. So he’d muttered something about it being nothing, and his mother had just smiled, and the conversation had thankfully moved on, without Roger having to mention either cancer or Lindy, which was a plus.
Having said hello to the dozen or so animals currently in residence at the centre, Roger retreated to the front desk to greet any enquiring customers who might come through the door and also to look through the charity’s books, something he did for free since he was an accountant.
He’d been sitting there for about twenty minutes, scanning the monthly figures, when the door opened and he heard an audible gasp. He looked up, and felt that weird heart thing—a flip, a flutter, a jolt or jerk, maybe all four—as he saw Lindy Jamison coming through the door.