After the Last Dance

by Sarra Manning

  ‘Kensington,’ Leo had been thinking hard about what he should say but he still felt woefully unprepared. ‘Look, Jane, I’m sorry I keep winding you up.’

  ‘It’s all been a wind-up? Oh, well, that makes me feel so much better.’ She was still looking out of the window, not at him, as the cab pulled into the kerb.

  It was hard to keep going in the face of zero encouragement but that had never stopped him before. ‘I know that everything is a bit weird between us, like we’re both coming down from a bad trip, but I need to ask you a massive favour.’

  ‘Another one?’ Jane asked drily as she paid the driver. She’d changed some money at the airport while Leo had slumped against a pillar. ‘Should I start keeping a tally?’

  ‘You could, or I could argue that offering to marry you was such a massive favour that it automatically makes us even,’ Leo pointed out.

  Jane made another of her not-quite-faces as she got out of the cab. ‘I’m not agreeing to anything else until you give me the small print.’

  Leo took hold of her case again, no bitching about it this time, so Jane had to follow him to the corner of the square. It was cold enough that she was shivering and pulled her Chanel jacket tight around her though it wasn’t designed to keep out the chill. No lingering, lazy Indian summer halfway through October. At the centre of the square was a little garden, locked to keep out the hoi polloi and the homeless. The fresh green leaves of the sycamore trees that surrounded it were on the turn, yellowing at the edges and drooping towards the ground.

  Leo stared down at his shuffling feet in their worn sneakers. ‘It would really help me out if we could act like we’re married for real,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  Leo resisted the urge to grind his teeth. It was a pity he’d slept so long on the plane because it was at least twelve hours now since he’d last had a drink and he really needed a drink. ‘It’s nothing bad or illegal, I promise,’ he explained. ‘It’s just the last time I saw her we had a bit of a fight…’

  Jane’s eyes barely narrowed. ‘Her? Who?’

  ‘I told you who. My aunt…’

  ‘You mean your “great-aunt”, darling. And, no, you haven’t told me anything about her because you’ve been practically catatonic for hours.’ She hadn’t sounded like this, so querulous and tart, that lost night in Vegas.

  ‘It was a ten-hour flight. What else was I meant to do but sleep?’ He remembered he was supposed to be playing nice. ‘The last time I saw her, years ago, we had a huge argument about my lifestyle choices and obviously I’ve grown so much as a person since then…’

  ‘Have you really, darling?’

  ‘I have. I really have.’ Jane didn’t look like she belonged with a man who still dressed like an art student. She was wearing designer jeans and a stripy top with her Chanel jacket, and ballet flats but it wasn’t the polished, pulled-togetherness of her outfit that intimidated Leo, only the remote, unimpressed look on her face. ‘If I turn up with a wife who looks like you and talks the way you do and if you could flash that gigantic rock on your ring finger and smile at me adoringly every now and again, then she’ll see I haven’t done too badly for myself.’

  Jane folded her arms. ‘It’s been ten years; I’m sure she’ll be happy just to see you.’

  ‘You really don’t know what she’s like.’ Leo had a horrible feeling that if he tried to bluster about all the exhibitions he hadn’t had she’d sniff him out in a minute flat, whereas Jane was an indisputable fact. ‘Where’s the lie? We are married. There’s actual legal proof.’

  ‘Where does this great-aunt of yours live, anyway?’ Jane executed a slow three hundred and sixty degrees. ‘Is she tucked up in some little rent-protected bedsit around here?’

  ‘What? Hardly!’ Leo pointed in front of them. ‘She lives in that house. Technically it’s two houses but you can’t see the join.’

  Jane’s gaze followed his outstretched finger. Suddenly her shoulders straightened and she stopped huddling into her jacket. She didn’t say anything, but looked at the house for so long that Leo wondered if she’d turned to stone. He could have sworn that her nose twitched like the moment in Las Vegas when she’d sniffed out the Platinum Bar. Then she spun around. ‘OK, darling, against my better judgement, I’ll play the devoted wife,’ she said. He didn’t trust her reasons for suddenly agreeing to his plan, but he was too relieved to care. ‘Now, before we go in, is there anything I should know? I really don’t like surprises.’

  ‘Not even when they’re in little boxes from Tiffany’s?’ Another thing that he hadn’t learned how to do in the last ten years was to stop blurting out every single thought he had.

  Jane looked slightly affronted. ‘Well, apart from that kind of surprise.’ She gestured at the house. ‘I’m not sure how convincing we’re going to be as love’s young dream.’

  Leo hadn’t thought much beyond turning up with Jane as a totem of his successful life. But now, as he glanced at that imposing black door, knowing what lay behind it, the welcome he was likely to get, he felt nervous. Actually, nervous didn’t come close to describing the way his throat unexpectedly constricted and his guts roiled.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ he told Jane doggedly. ‘We’ll have to wing it but we’ll just do what we did in Vegas.’ Then he thought about Jane’s Little Orphan Annie shtick. They were going to be facing a tougher crowd than Barbara and Hank and the rest of the gang from Boulder, Colorado. ‘Maybe dial it down just a notch, yeah?’

  ‘Oh God, I really wish I’d walked into another bar yesterday,’ Jane muttered, but she still followed him as he walked towards the house. Up the steps. Three long rings on the bell.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ he said again.

  Jane had one hand pressed to her mouth as if she had to physically prevent herself from speaking. Her hair was gathered up in a loose ponytail. One strand had escaped and was hanging forlornly against her cheek.

  ‘Your hair…’ She had to look perfect. That was part of his plan. In fact, it was his only plan. Jane shied away as he tried to tuck the offending piece of hair behind her ear.

  ‘I can do it,’ she said as the door opened.

  Leo was ready with a rueful smile and an ‘I swear, you look ten years younger, not ten years older,’ but standing there was a young woman in uniform: a pale blue dress with white collar and cuffs.

  This girl wasn’t Lydia, who Leo was going to get onside first. Tenderise Liddy and beg her to put a good word in for him.

  ‘Is Lydia in?’ he asked hopefully.

  The girl shook her head. ‘Miss Lydia busy,’ she said with a strong Eastern European accent. ‘You want to leave a message?’

  Leo dithered. ‘Maybe we’ll come back later.’

  Jane sighed. ‘We’re not here to see Lydia. We’re here to see his great-aunt. What did you say her name was again, darling?’

  ‘We’re here to see Rose.’

  9

  They were ushered into an imposing foyer. Two enormous vases as tall as Jane, possibly Chinese, flanked the front door – nothing as prosaic as a coat rack or a little table to dump keys and post on in this house. The maid led them up an impossibly grand, intricately carved staircase, the kind that women in ball gowns swept down as the assembled company below gazed up at them in awe.

  This was not the domain of an old lady. No chintz, no stairlift, no knick knacks.

  There was no time to adjust what Jane knew of this great-aunt, which wasn’t much other than the fact that she was gravely ill, before a set of double doors were opened onto a drawing room where a drinks party was taking place, even though it was barely half past four on a Sunday afternoon.

  Though it was barely a drinks party, only six people but they were making a hell of a racket. All talking and laughing over each other and then, one by one, they sensed there were interlopers in their midst and turned to stare at Leo and Jane standing in the doorway. It was tempting to hide behind Leo until she’d got her bearings, but t
hat wasn’t possible when Leo tugged her forward so he could hide behind her.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Hi, Rose. Hello, everyone. Sorry to turn up like this.’

  There were four women and one man arranged on two huge sofas, but Leo was talking to the woman who sat in a white leather cube-shaped armchair framed by two large windows at the other end of the room. Even sitting down, Jane could tell she was tall; long legs neatly crossed at the ankle. Sat there poised and elegant like a queen on a throne.

  ‘Leo,’ she said in a clipped but amused voice. ‘Goodness, you could at least have phoned.’ She paused. ‘And shaved.’

  This was dear Great-Aunt Rose? Supposedly at death’s door? She looked very much alive and present in an elegantly draped navy blue dress with a diamond brooch pinned to her collar. Her snowy white hair was cut in a sharp and precise angled bob, lips and fingernails painted scarlet. She didn’t even have varicose veins.

  ‘We only just flew in from the States a couple of hours ago,’ Leo said and he rested his hands on Jane’s shoulders in a show of togetherness, though she wanted to wriggle free, because they weren’t together. ‘This is Jane, my wife,’ Leo added. He sounded quite defiant.

  All eyes were upon her now, but all Jane could see was Rose. She wasn’t doing much, just sitting there with a tiny smile on her face, eyebrows slightly raised, but she had presence. She also had the look of someone who could sniff out bullshit at fifty paces.

  Jane straightened, drew herself up and smiled wider. ‘Hello. It’s lovely to meet you at last. Leo never stops talking about you,’ she said and she stepped forward, out from under Leo’s tense fingers, and walked further into the room.

  It felt a lot like walking onstage, but she kept on going until she was sucked right into Rose’s gravitational pull. When she’d first met Jackie, Andrew’s mother, they’d embraced, kissed, but after only two minutes in her presence she knew not to try that with Rose. Anyway, Jane had never been much of a hugger.

  Instead she held out her hand and Rose received it like a tribute. ‘Married? I didn’t think anyone bothered getting married these days.’

  ‘Well, we were in Vegas – it seemed like the thing to do,’ Jane said as she stood by Rose’s chair, uncertain of what to do next.

  ‘Yeah,’ Leo said from the doorway where he still cowered, because he was absolutely dickless. ‘Would have been rude not to.’

  ‘Oh, stop hovering, Leo,’ Rose said sharply. ‘Why don’t you get your lovely wife – Jane, was it? – a drink.’

  A corner of one of the sofas was found for Jane, where she sat next to a striking redhead called Connie wearing an original Zandra Rhodes kaftan in greens and pinks, who ran her own landscaping business.

  There was Elaine ‘from across the square’ and Gudrun, a Swedish textile designer; Sarah who taught yoga to ‘prisoners, bored housewives, dancers, all sorts really’ and George, who was a curator at the V&A. They all introduced themselves to Jane jovially but perfunctorily, as if they were waiting to return to their scheduled programming. Jane sat there clutching a lime and soda. Even the smell of their martinis made her eyes water, and because anything less than a clear head could prove fatal.

  Leo perched on the arm of the sofa opposite with a lime and soda too. ‘I never drink this early. The sun’s hardly over the yardarm,’ he’d said, eyebrows waggling. ‘And on the day of rest too? God, what a bunch of reprobates you are.’

  Rose merely smiled in a tight, composed sort of way then looked at Jane. It felt a lot like being under a microscope, but Jane had learned how to appear as if she was at ease in a room full of strangers.

  She always imagined herself sitting on a beach, the sun warming her face, waves gently lapping, genuflecting waiters ready to bring her whatever her heart desired. When Jane thought about that, it was easy to sit there with a slight smile on her face too, her posture relaxed. Like she belonged in this beautiful room with these clever, chattering people.

  The walls were a dark, smoky grey, but the space wasn’t dark because of the two huge sets of French windows behind Rose’s chair and because everything else in the room was white, from floor to sofas to rugs to mantelpiece. Over the fireplace, there was a Warhol silkscreen of Rose. A younger Rose, face a little softer; her hair dark apart from a streak of white springing from her widow’s peak, still the same arch smile.

  Rose had style that Jane, for all her intensive grooming regimen, appointments with personal shoppers and outfits that were always either black, white or grey because she was scared of trying to match colours together and terrified of prints, could never hope to emulate.

  ‘Leo, how did you and Jane meet?’ Rose asked, cutting through a heated debate about the Turner Prize. ‘I do love hearing how people got together.’

  Leo smiled but his eyes darted round the room because he was a terrible liar. Someone who lived the way he did, hand to mouth, winging it with very occasional lucky breaks, should have been much better at faking it. ‘You tell it, baby,’ he said. ‘You’re much better at telling it than I am.’

  Then again, he was really good at passing the buck. All eyes were on Jane again. She smiled again as if she were reliving all sorts of happy memories. ‘Well, I was engaged to another man. Having dinner with him when we had one of those silly arguments about nothing that escalated into a full-blown row until he stood up, demanded his ring back and walked out.’

  Really she was doing Leo a favour when she went on to explain that he’d been their waiter, because Rose with her gimlet gaze was never going to believe that Leo was a successful artist. She had an iPad next to her on a side table. This was a woman who knew how to set up a Google alert.

  Anyway, she said, Leo had kept a discreet distance to give Jane time to compose herself then placed a slice of chocolate cake and a glass of champagne in front of her. ‘On the house, which was very sweet. I was close to tears anyway, and that pushed me over the edge.’ Jane then went on to describe how Leo had pursued her relentlessly, though she wasn’t interested in a rebound romance as her heart was ‘not broken, but bruised. Definitely bruised. Leo wouldn’t take no for an answer though and in the end he just wore me down.’

  Rose seemed to buy it because she nodded. ‘That sounds like Leo. How long have you been married?’

  There was no point in fudging that particular detail. ‘Just over a day,’ Jane said to shocked and delighted gasps. ‘We were in Vegas for work and I told Leo that I always planned to be married before I was twenty-seven, so we got married with a couple of hours to spare.’

  ‘And you decided to honeymoon in London? I can think of better places to honeymoon than London in October,’ Elaine said.

  ‘We didn’t really plan a honeymoon, what with…’

  ‘Lydia called,’ Leo said. He’d been silent up until then. Smiling bashfully in all the right places, but now he was still, his face set. ‘She said… Insisted I came home. Made it seem like… you know…’ He shrugged and stared down at his glass.

  Jane waited for a hush to creep over the room, but the atmosphere remained relaxed and convivial.

  ‘Did she tell you I was on my deathbed?’ Rose asked. ‘Well, not quite.’

  ‘But you are… you’re not… I don’t know…’ He couldn’t get his words out. All his flash and swagger suddenly gone, as if someone had let his air out. Jane couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He’d come here expecting the worst and now that the worst didn’t seem so bad, he was lost and floundering.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Rose said gently. ‘No point in being all cloak and dagger about it. This way I can have a lovely time saying goodbye to all my dear friends and do all the things I wouldn’t normally do, like having two cocktails before dinner instead of just the one. There’s no need to be upset and I really can’t see why you felt the need to hotfoot it over the Atlantic.’

  That seemed unnecessarily harsh. Whatever Leo had done to be banished couldn’t have been so terrible that he deserved to be humiliated in front of Rose’s friends.


  Still, Rose was Leo’s problem, not hers. ‘I’m sorry that we turned up unannounced,’ Jane said. ‘We really should be going now anyway, but Leo was so worried that we wanted to pop over right away.’

  Leo was already on his feet, a grateful look on his face. ‘Yeah, we’ll get out of your hair now. Need to sort out a hotel, anyway.’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. I’m sure Lydia will have got your old rooms ready.’ Rose picked up the iPad. ‘Anna will show Jane where she can freshen up before dinner and Leo, you can make us some more drinks. You did always make a mean martini.’

  Within a minute of Rose swiping at her touchscreen, the young woman who’d shown them in was back.

  ‘Go on, dear,’ Rose said kindly. ‘We’ll eat at seven. You and I can get properly acquainted later.’