When they were dancing like that, night after night, she had only been aware of the necessity to give the performance every ounce of energy she possessed. Michael had just been her partner. Not a man. Never a man.
She put on a towelling robe and went back to the bedroom to dress again. Michael was wearing jeans; she might as well wear the same.
His were designer jeans; she had recognised the style immediately; a famous name whose clothes were all beautifully cut. Somewhere she had an identical pair; they had bought them on the same day, from the same shop, at a reduced price in a sale.
Pale and slender in her panties and bra, she rummaged through the clothes in her wardrobe and finally found them, lay down on her bed and pulled them on, wriggling until she could zip them up.
My God! She had already put on weight—not much, a few pounds, but enough to expand her waistline and make her jeans fit too tightly there. She must start exercising and dieting at once.
Pulling on a white shirt, she buttoned it up, slid her feet into white moccasins, brushed her damp brown hair into the usual light curls, sat down and put on some make-up, then hurried down the stairs, smelling the coffee as she descended.
Michael poured it as she went into the kitchen and turned to give her one of his cool, assessing stares.
‘Snap!’
She blinked. ‘What?’
‘We look like twins.’ He caught her hand and pulled her over to the mirror in the hall. ‘Did you do it deliberately? ’
She surveyed their double reflection, finding it curiously satisfying to see them both again, shoulder to shoulder, two bodies which moved as one.
‘I didn’t stop to think about it. I suppose I put on my jeans because you were wearing your pair,’ she admitted. ‘I always liked them. They suit us.’
‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes veiled by half-lowered lids, a slumberous warmth in his voice. ‘They suit us.’ Did he feel that strange satisfaction in seeing them together? His eyes wandered down over her, then he frowned, staring at her waistline. ‘You’re putting on weight!’
‘I’m not!’ she lied, having hoped he wouldn’t notice. She might have known he would! Michael was nothing if not observant; he never missed the tiniest detail in production, not just the dancing, but the costumes and sets.
His hands reached for her waist, squeezed hard, making her gasp. ‘Oh, yes, you are,’ he told her sternly. ‘About an inch on your waist, I reckon! That’s what happens when you marry out of the ballet. You’ve been eating and not exercising!’
Guiltily she said, ‘It’s not a sin to enjoy yourself now and then!’
‘Oh, yes, it is, for a dancer! You’ll lose muscle tone and be unable to dance professionally if you stop training and put on weight.’
‘Michael, I’ve left the ballet! And I have no intention of coming back!’
His face hardened into a determined mask. ‘We’ll see about that.’
He was refusing to let her go. She should have known he would. Michael had always been obstinate, set on getting his own way, denying any possibility of failure.
She broke away, flustered. ‘Look, if we’re going to drive to Hadrian’s Wall and then Carlisle, we’d better drink that coffee and get on our way! Are you going to drive back to London today?’
While they drank their black coffee she wrote a quick note for Ross, explaining where she had gone and assuring him she would be back late that afternoon, and placed it where he couldn’t fail to see it, in the centre of the kitchen table. He wasn’t going to be too happy about it—but maybe she would get back before he did?
As they drove northwards Michael started a tape he had put into the car tape player. ‘Like this?’
She listened to the sweet, high pipes with pleasure. ‘Very much. It’s very unusual. What is it?’
‘Music from the Andes. Traditional, played on local pipes, but arranged by a young musician I met in London—he has his own group, formed while they were all at music college. He’s part-Peruvian. Solo, he calls himself. His wife and his brother are the other two in the group. I’m setting a ballet to their music.’
‘A new ballet?’
‘It’s going to be exciting, Dylan. Perfect for us—very original, mysterious, haunting...the dance of mountain spirits...all in white, I think...very modern in look...’ His voice was passionate. ‘I can’t do it without you, though. I need you.’
So that was why he had come. ‘Michael. . .I can’t,’ she said sadly. ‘I made my choice when I married Ross. I can’t be his wife and a professional dancer. It wouldn’t work. You’ll have to find someone else to dance with. I told you.’
‘One last ballet,’ he coaxed. ‘Surely he can’t refuse to let you dance one last ballet with me.’
‘It’s not Ross, it’s me. I don’t want to dance any more.’
‘You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? You were born to dance. You can’t turn your back on it.’
She was silent, listening to the high, lilting music, sensing just how the ballet would look, imagining the two bodies moving across the stage. She knew how Michael’s mind worked, the movements he loved, the images he found exciting.
One last ballet... she thought, then thought, No. No. It was over. All that was the past. She was moving into a future Michael could not even understand.
When they reached Hadrian’s Wall it was nearly noon; they visited the sites of several Roman forts, walked around the rough grey stone foundations in the long grass. There were few other people around; there was an eerie silence broken only by the whistle of the wind and the cry of curlews. At one o’clock they had lunch at a pub. The bar was crowded and noisy so they ate in the garden. Michael had poached salmon and salad; she ordered lasagne and salad.
‘Not at all bad,’ Michael conceded. ‘For such a remote place.’
While they ate, they gazed down over a breathtaking landscape. The south-facing views seemed to run on for ever green fields and grey drystone walls, white stone farmhouses hidden by thorn trees blown into tormented positions by the prevailing winds, a sparrowhawk with pinioned wing and white rump swooping over the hay field beside the pub, the blue sky flowing overhead.
‘I have to admit it is beautiful countryside,’ Michael said, and she laughed.
‘First the food isn’t at all bad, now you concede that the countryside is lovely—at this rate you’ll be admitting Ross is the right man for me!’
Michael’s face froze, grey eyes icy, every bone rigid with rejection of that idea.
‘But he isn’t, Dylan,’ he said fiercely. ‘And he never could be. You don’t belong with him, or up here. You belong with me, in London, dancing. Turning your back on everything you are and could be is a crime against your own nature. God gave you a great gift and you’ve deliberately chucked it away. I’ll never forgive you—or him.’
She was silent, shaken by his passion. They drank some coffee, not speaking, then drove on to Carlisle where they parted at the offices of the hire car company.
‘Good luck with your new ballet,’ she said, and Michael gave her a grim, unsmiling stare.
‘If you won’t dance it, I’ll need more than luck. I’ll need a miracle. If you change your mind ring me. I shall have to choose a new partner in the next month. God knows who! I want to go into rehearsal with the new ballet some time in the autumn, and the company goes on summer tour to the States in July, remember.’
Her mind washed with memories of other summer tours: humid New York, noisy Chicago, Kansas City, Missouri’s wonderful Spanish architecture, long nights of trying to sleep with the wail of police cars and ambulances outside in city streets.
Up early to rehearse on bare stages, the temptations of hot dogs and burgers from street sellers, the buzz of excitement on first nights, the passionate applause of audiences who had never seen them before but who were heartwarmingly generous—it had all been wonderful and exhausting.
Oh, she couldn’t deny she would miss it in some ways, but she had done that, been ther
e, got the T-shirt. It was all part of that receding life she was finished with. Sometimes you had to make choices, lose one thing to gain another. Even before she’d met Ross she had known she didn’t share Michael’s tunnel vision, his utterly focused obsession with ballet. She had loved dancing, loved the friends, the sense of comradeship in the company, loved the applause, too, and even the hard work, but she had tired of the sacrifices you had to make to stay at the top, the difficulty of a private life, the fact that you couldn’t have a child because being pregnant meant not dancing for months, meant stretching your muscles out of shape, indeed changed your whole body for ever. After years of it, she had tired of the strains and demands on your energy and attention. Ross had been the catalyst, but she knew she had no longer been so fixated on the life of a dancer before she’d met him.
Impossible to say all that to Michael. He would never understand. Standing on tiptoe, she brushed her mouth against his cheek. ‘Goodbye, Michael.’ Getting back into the flower wagon, she started the engine, gave him a last wave and drove away without looking back. It was the only way to go.
If she was lucky she would get home before Ross, she thought, as she bombed down the road home. It had been an exhausting day, physically and emotionally. For the first time ever she was happy to see the forest coming into view.
Then her heart sank as she saw Ross’s Land Rover parked on the drive in front of their garage. He was home before her. Well, at least he would have read her note and would realise why she had had to go out to drive Michael up to Carlisle.
As she pulled up outside the house the front door opened and Ross strode out, his face thunderous.
‘Where the hell have you been all this time? I was worried sick about you. I got back three hours ago. I thought you must have walked to the village so I drove there to look for you, and when everyone said you hadn’t been there today I didn’t know what to think.’
‘Didn’t you get my note?’
‘What note? I didn’t see any note.’ He stood beside the flower wagon, staring at it, his frown lifting. ‘Oh, I see—Phil brought that ridiculous object, did he? And you just had to take it out at once! Has he gone back already? Why didn’t you ask him to stay the night? He’ll be exhausted, going straight back home after such a long trip down to London, then up here, and we have a perfectly good couple of spare rooms.’
She was about to tell him that it had been Michael who’d brought her car when the telephone began to shrill.
‘That will probably be Alan. He said he’d ring to let me know there were no further problems,’ said Ross, hurrying indoors.
Dylan followed more slowly and found him just hanging up. Ross swung to stare angrily at her, eyes cold, mouth bitter.
‘That was Phil. He was ringing to check that Michael had delivered your car safely.’
Dry-mouthed, Dylan started to explain, but stammered. ‘I w-w-was j-just going to tell you when the phone rang...’
‘I bet you were! Just like you left me this mythical note!’
She looked at the kitchen table; it was bare. ‘I did leave one.’ Bending, she stared at the floor under and around the table, but the note hadn’t blown off; there was no sign of it.
‘Don’t bother with the acting,’ Ross bit out ‘I know how good at mime you are! When did he arrive? How long was he here?’
‘He got here this morning, but he didn’t stay long.’
‘You would say that, wouldn’t you. Where have you been in your car? Taking him to whatever hotel he’s staying at?’
She was torn between a desire to placate him and a resentful desire to shout back. Ross was jumping to all sorts of conclusions before he had given her a chance to explain, defend herself.
She chose to speak softly, not to fight fire with fire. ‘He’s on his way back to London—I drove him to Carlisle to pick up a hire car. He hates travelling by train; it makes him sick.’
‘He got here this morning,’ Ross said flatly. ‘He didn’t stay long. You drove him to Carlisle—you should have been there by lunchtime. So where have you been since then?’
‘W-we had lunch at a pub.’ Her stammer was back. Her skin was cold and, no doubt, pale.
‘And?’ Ross was relentless. He wasn’t letting her off the hook until he had all the details out of her.
‘M-Mi...” Under Ross’s cold eyes she could not get the name out. ‘He wanted to see Hadrian’s Wall while he was up here. He’s always been interested in Roman history; he gets some of his inspiration from history, myth...the past generally. We weren’t there long. We just walked around one or two sites, and then I dropped him in Carlisle after lunch.’
Ross took a step closer, staring into her nervous eyes. ‘Did anything happen between you?’
Heat ran up under her skin. ‘Wh-wh-what?’
‘You know what I mean—the man’s obsessed with you. Did he try to make love to you?’
‘No! Michael doesn’t feel that way about me at all. Ross, we were partners and friends—never lovers. I told you that.’
‘Yet he went to all this trouble to bring you that stupid vehicle? Drove all those miles up here! You really expect me to believe that? He must have had a pretty strong motive for doing it.’
Her anger flared then. ‘Oh, yes! He had a pretty strong motive all right. He’s planning a new ballet and he was trying to persuade me to dance it with him.’
Ross stiffened, his face grim. ‘And what did you say to him? Did you say you would?’
‘How can you even ask that? When we got married I gave up the ballet and I’ve no intention of going back—that was what I told Michael, and I meant every word.’
Ross groaned. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help being jealous of him. I know how long you and he were close—you told me yourself, once, that it was like a marriage.’
‘But without the sex!’ she hurriedly told him.
‘I know, I believe you, but I find it so hard to believe he never wanted you. You’re so lovely.’ He pulled her close, held her, his mouth seeking hers, passionate, demanding, possessive. Dylan put her arms round his neck and kissed him back, leaning against him in weary relief.
Ross sighed a few moments later, looking down at her with half-closed, glimmering eyes.
‘I’m starving—what’s for dinner?’
She giggled. ‘You’re so romantic!’
‘I am! After dinner we’ll go straight to bed and make love all night.’
‘Promises, promises!’ she teased. ‘So, how about stirfry chicken? I bought a fresh organic chicken at a farm near Carlisle. While I slice some of that, could you rush out and pick me some vegetables? Some tomatoes, a carrot, some spring onions, some nice new peas, a couple of new potatoes.’
He squeezed her waist. ‘You only love me for my homegrown vegetables!’ Dropping a kiss on her nose, he walked over to pick up the garden trug which always stood near the back door.
‘It won’t take a second. Start chopping the chicken!’
The door banged shut and Dylan sagged down on to a chair for a moment, eyes closed, breathing carefully.
That had been a difficult few minutes. She was very glad to have her flower wagon back—but she wished to God Michael had not brought it himself.
Please God, too, he accepted her decision about the new ballet, and would not be in touch again. Her silence would tell him she wasn’t going to change her mind, surely? Once Michael realised that she was not coming back he would find another partner, maybe someone far better than her. Nobody was indispensable. The world was full of brilliant young dancers. Well, not full of them, maybe—but Michael would find someone somewhere.
She couldn’t see him again. It was painful to face it—Michael was very special to her; he always would be—but obviously there was no room in her life for both him and Ross.
CHAPTER FOUR
THEY had dinner with Alan and Suzy the following week. Dylan was determined to be friendly, which wasn’t difficult as Alan turned out to be very likable. A big, burly, go
od-humoured man, with thick, bushy brown hair and sleepy eyes, he reminded her of a bear. He even walked like one, lumbering clumsily as if it wasn’t natural for him to walk upright.
‘I’ve never seen a ballet,’ he told her, staring as if she had two heads. ‘But I love dancing.’ His grin spread right across his jowly face. ‘Pity I’m no good at it!’
‘He isn’t kidding, either,’ his wife chimed in. ‘If you dance with him watch your feet. He’ll end up dancing on them.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Time for dinner soon, I think—I’ll get it started.’
‘Can I help?’ Dylan asked, getting out of her chair.
‘No need—I can manage. You stay and talk to the men. Keep them off the subject of football or they won’t talk of anything else for the rest of the evening.’
Suzy served marvellous food—salmon and asparagus mousse with toast, followed by grilled tuna steaks and new potatoes with a mixture of vegetables, then a pudding of poached slices of fruit—oranges, apples, bananas and pears—in a light syrup with vanilla ice cream.
‘I wish I could cook like that!’ Dylan sighed, helping Suzy stack the dishes in the dishwasher later.
‘So do I,’ Suzy said, laughing.
Dylan did a double-take. ‘What?’
‘I bought it all ready-prepared from a supermarket. All I had to do was grill the tuna and cook the vegetables. The rest was just an assembly job! Life’s too short to spend it slaving over a hot stove. Dinner parties should be fun, not work. I like to be with my guests, not in the kitchen.’
‘I must remember that. The food was all so delicious, it never occurred to me that you had bought it ready-made. It’s a brilliant way of entertaining.’ Dylan had been feeling very nervous about the idea of giving dinner parties. Oh, she had often had her friends and colleagues round for a meal in London, but they all knew each other very well and had light-hearted attitudes to entertaining—she would make a huge pot of spaghetti or risotto, or someone would go out for Chinese or Indian food, and they would sit around on the floor, eating and talking, drinking cheap wine. Now she would only be giving small dinner parties to a limited circle of Ross’s friends, none of whom she knew well. It was a relief to know that she didn’t have to make it an ordeal—Suzy’s way of giving a dinner party made it much easier.
The Yuletide Child Page 5