‘Sure, what?’
‘Is there anyone else?’
‘Of course not, no!’ I answered far too quickly to be believable.
‘I knew it! I knew, Mia Foster! You’re in love with somebody!’
I went beetroot.
‘What are you on about Carl?’ I only ever think about dance, I haven’t got time to be in love.’
The more I tried to deny it, the more flustered I became, and the more I felt my cheeks burning.
Carl started nudging me. ‘Come on, fess up, who is it?’ I won’t leave you alone until you tell me!’
‘There is no one, I told you.’ I protested, refusing to look at him.
‘I think I know who it is,’ he said.
I suddenly felt uncomfortable.
‘Oh yes? And who might that be?’ I asked, with a nervous laugh.
‘If I know you, you’re not the sort of girl who would be interested in just some boy from school, and I’ve noticed how Nina is always talking about her older brother as though he was the perfect man. And we all know that you and Nina agree about everything, so my theory is that you’re in love with Patrick.’
It was as if a thunderclap tore through the silence.
‘Pa. Patrick?’ I replied in a strangled whisper.
‘I’m right, aren’t I? I knew it. I should be a detective,’ he sighed, running his hands through his hair.
I hesitated so long trying to come up with a plausible denial, that I might as well have given him a full confession.
I took a deep breath before answering. If Carl knew, then surely Nina knew as well, and if he still wanted revenge for being rejected, he could announce it all over the school.
‘Carl, I.’ I tried to think of something reasonable to say, but suddenly I felt tired. ‘Who else knows?’
‘Nobody. It was just a guess.’
‘You haven’t said anything to Nina?’
‘Of course not! Why would I?’
‘Why wouldn’t you?’
‘Because even though I’ve been behaving like an arsehole, I’m not an arsehole. That’s the sort of thing Thomas would do.’
I played with my hands, embarrassed.
‘See? You’re nervous! You keep twisting your hands and touching your ears!’
‘Alright, Sherlock!’ I muttered, embarrassed.
‘Your body language gives you away,’ he said, evidently very pleased with himself. ‘So go on, how long have you liked him?’
‘Why should I tell you?’
‘Because nobody knows. True?’
‘Only a friend of my mum’s’
‘It might do you good to talk about it with a boy. Maybe I can help, even.’
‘How do I know that you really want to help, and you’re not going to off and tell everyone and make me look stupid?’
‘Because I have no reason to. I’d rather be your friend than nothing at all. I know I’ve been rude and idiotic but that’s really not me. Look at me: if I was lying I wouldn’t be able to look you in the eye, and I would raise my shoulders involuntarily!’
I rolled my eyes.
Alex poked his head out of the door to see where we’d got to.
‘We can talk about it later. I’m going to see how Nina is doing, but you should eat something.’
‘Carl,’ I caught his arm, ‘You do really like Nina, don’t you? You’re not messing her around?’
‘I wouldn’t do that! Nina’s amazing. Her only problem is that she’s almost too perfect. But she doesn’t know it!’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘If you’re worried that I went out with her to get back at you, I think. Honestly that was partly it at first. But now I’ve got to know her, I couldn’t be without her. Besides, even if you had liked me back, you’d have made life impossible for me. Everyone knows what dancers are like!’ he laughed, messing up my hair.
‘And what are dancers like?’ I asked indignantly.
‘They love dance more than anything else in the world. It’s not even a choice to them. Dance wins every time.’
He entered the house leaving that phrase floating in the air.
He was wrong. I loved Patrick as much as I loved dance, but I wasn’t able to choose either of them.
The next morning I was awakened by Nina’s hand tickling the underneath of my foot. I had fallen asleep on the sofa, fully clothed. I hadn’t dared go upstairs to my cold room, even if it was where Pat used to sleep. I grumbled and snuggled further under the blanket, but she kept poking me.
‘Come on lazybones, I’ve made you a cup of tea and I found some old biscuits from last year! Yummm!’ She waved a sad-looking digestive under my nose.
‘Mmm. Nina, let me sleep, please. I was up until two to watching Alex rehearsing his bit for Mamma Mia. If I have to listen to that song again, I’ll throw up!’
She pulled the blanket away from my face and sat down next to me. She still looked a bit groggy from the night before, but she had some colour back in her cheeks, at least.
‘Did you sleep on the sofa?’
‘Yes, it’s the only room in the house where the temperature’s above freezing.’
I tried to sit up, and felt a piercing pain starting from my neck, going down my back, crossing my right leg and lodging itself like a spear in my left foot.
I screamed.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Everything hurts! I can’t move my neck or my back! ‘
‘You slept on the Sofa of Doom! It always happens to Dad when he falls asleep there, too. One time he couldn’t move for a week! ‘
I was completely stuck and wracked by stabbing pains. I was quite used to aches and pains, and sprains and tears, there wasn’t a day that something didn’t hurt me, but I had never been in so much pain that I couldn’t move. I was overcome by panic, it had never occurred to me that my body might just stop working. I had always considered it to be a faithful ally, capable of being pushed to the limit, not a cowardly traitor who allowed itself to be beaten by a sofa!
Nina summoned Alex and Carl who came in yawning in their pants. I looked up at them all helplessly, motionless from the neck down.
‘Come on, baby, we’ll help you, won’t we?’ Nina asked the boys, who were still half asleep. She motioned to them to say something.
‘You must have got cold last night sitting outside,’ Carl said.
‘It must be your sciatic nerve. My Mum has trouble with hers. She has to keep having injections!’ Alex went on.
I started to cry.
‘His mum is old, though!’ Carl said, ‘You just need to stay in bed for a week and have some painkillers and it will soon pass!’
I started to cry even louder.
Nina sent them away and helped me get up.
I looked like an old woman, too, and I thought of my grandmother Olga who was seventy-one and still going water skiing in Cancun. I hobbled along, bent forward and taking tiny steps. I couldn’t turn my head at all and it felt like someone had planted a long knife right in the middle of my back.
Maybe it was Carl.
‘Let’s take her to the spa!’ Nina said, suddenly.
‘The spa?’ I said. She might as well have said ‘to the gallows.’
‘Yeah, it will do you good to keep warm.’
‘Oh god, not the baths! They remind me of when we were children and there was always stuff floating in the water. And it smells all eggy…’
‘No, Nina’s right, it will be good for you!’
I looked at them all in terror.
‘You hate me, don’t you?’ I said to Alex and Carl, begging them with my eyes. ‘This is a conspiracy to take me down.’
‘No, we all love you!’ said Alex.
‘Despite everything!’ echoed Carl.
Nina put my shoes on my feet and tied them for me. For someone who liked to pretend I didn’t need anyone, it was less than ideal.
I already knew what Claire would have to say about it: that I didn’t take care of my
health, that a real dancer should treat her body like a temple, and always protect her muscles from the cold. And Mum would probably agree with her. She hadn’t wanted me to come, even though she couldn’t stop me.
The others seemed delighted with the whole thing. You’d think England had won the world cup, to see how excited they were, while yours truly dragged myself miserably along behind them, cursing through clenched teeth.
Once we arrived, Nina flirted with Carl, covering him with kisses and caresses, while Alex had to take care of me, who couldn’t even get myself into a sitting position in the jacuzzi. It was all exactly as I remembered it, a Roman-style spa, surrounded by waterfalls and fountains, that gave off a disgusting sulphurous smell. Spas were for old people, not teenagers, although at that moment I did feel about ninety. Alex tried his hand at a shoulder massage, but if anything it just made me even more tense. I didn’t much like physical contact with strangers, but I did appreciate him keeping me company while he pretended not to look at Nina half naked.
She was ridiculously beautiful; graceful and natural, with perfect boobs that were the envy of the girls and a perfect bottom that was the secret desire of the boys. And with that cascade of blonde hair, big grey eyes and pouting lips, only someone without a pulse could fail to notice her. Her only problem was the blind trust she placed in others. I would have to keep my eyes open and watch over her. Carl seemed genuine at the moment, but experience had taught me that things could change suddenly.
We spent the afternoon soaking like hippos and when they got tired of smooching and whispering in each other’s ears, we finally headed for home. Just to complete my day, they decided to sing along to Abba’s entire back catalogue on the way back. I would rather have written two essays of one hundred and fifty pages each on Othello than spend another day like that one.
We arrived home at nine o’clock. Mum was worried and anxious as I was helped carefully through the door. I was feeling sad and vulnerable and I wanted her to hug me and take care of me. She seemed instinctively to realise it, because she hurried off to make me a hot water bottle and took me up to my room. She helped me put on my pyjamas and lie face down on the bed, with the hot water bottle resting on my back. It had been years since I had allowed her to treat me like a child, but seeing me so helpless, she automatically reverted to her role.
‘My poor baby.’ she said softly, rubbing my back, ‘It’s nice to be able to take care of you a bit. Even if you are all grown up, you will always be my little girl.’
It was true. Despite the impenetrable barrier I had built between me and the rest of the world, there was nothing that made me happier than a hug from my mum, and at the same time, there was nothing that made me sadder than the awareness that I wasn’t a child any more. I propped my chin up on my hands and stared into space. What would I do if I injured myself so badly I needed help going to the bathroom?
‘Mum. I’m afraid.’
She was silent for a moment.
‘I know, baby, I know. Life never turns out how we imagine it, and when we begin to realise that we can’t control things, fear takes over. What if we don’t make it? What if we’re not good enough? What if we say the wrong thing and can never take it back?’
‘Are you afraid too?’ I asked, with tears running down my nose, partly from the pain, and partly through sadness.
‘All the time. And especially for you. I wish you were happy, that you never had to suffer, and that your life was perfect.’
‘My life is not perfect at all!’
‘It will be Mia, it will be one day.’
There was a knock at the door. ‘Can I visit the patient?’
It was Betty.
‘Paul can’t find the wok, can you come and help him?’
Mum rolled her eyes and went out, and Betty took her place by my sickbed.
‘Here you are, I’ll give you a shiatsu massage, and you’ll be right as rain tomorrow. Come on now, relax.’
Why not? Everyone else had had a go. The only thing we hadn’t tried was acupuncture and a magic ritual. I closed my eyes and tried to relax, even though I was a bundle of clenched nerves.
‘Any news with Patrick?’ she asked me.
Well, that was one way to distract me from pain. ‘We do talk a bit more often, and, I don’t know… sometimes I feel almost as if... but I know I must be wrong!’
‘You feel like what?’
‘That he likes me, but he’s just always so nice to everyone, I’m probably reading too much into it,’ I answered with my mouth muffled against the pillow, unable to turn my neck to the side.
She lowered her voice, ‘Do you want me to read your cards?’
‘Yes, okay!’
‘But don’t tell your Mum, she’ll kill me.’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die!’ I said, drawing a vague cross on my left shoulder.
She already had the cards in her coat pocket.
‘I brought them up, just in case…’
I shuffled them with difficulty and she arranged them on the carpet, but from my position I could not see them all.
Only one was familiar to me.
‘What a mess, my darling.’ she began.
‘I know.’
‘Tension, arguments, anger and friction with everyone. you’re not an easy person to get along with at the moment.’
‘It’s not me, it’s everyone else,’ I mumbled into the pillow, ‘Come on, hurry up, Mum’s coming back.’
‘There is still that man who is interested in you, in fact there are two, now, but one more as a brother, and the other as a lover.’
‘I’m sure the brother is Patrick and the lover will be Carl, or Alex.’
‘The older boy is the one in love. He is strong, brave and confident.’
I looked at her with a mixture of hope and disbelief.
‘And that tower again? What does that mean?’ I asked, pointing awkwardly at the cards.
‘Oh, The Tower is just difficulties in general, you know. Exams, probably.’
‘And what’s that one that I can’t see?’
She gathered the cards quickly and gave them back to me to reshuffle.
‘Come on, one more go and then I’m leaving.’
‘Can’t you tell me something good!’
‘Yes, Mia. I see love.’
13
A few days and several injections later I started walking again. The doctor had warned me to get plenty of rest and not put myself under any unnecessary strain, but the doctor didn’t know dancers and above all he didn’t know Claire, who had made me understand in no uncertain terms that I had no time to lose, and that perhaps now I had learned my lesson, that the body is sacred and there are no spare parts.
I had experienced, even if only for a short time, what it meant not to be self-sufficient, not to be able to bend, sit, or walk, and that feeling of helplessness had made me more aware of my limitations. I realized that I had to take better care of myself and learn to accept help from other people.
But one thing at a time. My immediate priority was to take advantage of my back pain to call Patrick (in a faint voice) and tell him all about my dramatic injuries. He seemed gratifyingly concerned, and took care to give me the number of a trusted chiropractor who he had personally used. I was, as usual, torn between drifting off into wild fantasies about the two of us who rolling naked on a windswept beach and simply remembering him as he was: a wonderful boy who had dedicated his life to protecting others.
Weeks passed. The show was approaching and so was my solo, along with a mountain of other things that I still had to sort out, including my coursework, which continued to mount up. Rehearsals for Mamma Mia! occupied every free moment, and even those of us who weren’t on stage for most of the play had to attend and help members of the crowd scenes, like Alex with their cues.
I had choreographed my solo for The Winner Takes it All without showing it to anyone, not even Claire. That way I felt free to express myself without being judged, and I had eve
n dared to insert some contemporary dance step that Claire would certainly not have approved. I practised in the gym at lunchtime and sometimes after school. To say it was the first official piece of choreography that I created, I was quite pleased. Patrick would be home at Christmas and I could hardly contain myself. He was coming to the show and, with some luck, I might even get to spend some time alone with him.
Claire, meanwhile, had decided to increase the difficulty of my audition piece, which now bordered on madness. And of course the problem remained that we were counting our chickens before they had hatched, working under the assumption that if I was accepted, I would somehow or other be able to attend the Royal Ballet, but we had no idea how, and above all, who would pay the fees. We were like children, confidently expecting Santa Claus to deliver everything we asked for on Christmas Day.
One morning Nina arrived at class with a dejected air.
‘Patrick can’t come home for Christmas,’ she said, disappointed.
It was like a punch in the stomach.
‘Oh really? Why not?’ I asked, trying to sound less upset than I was.
‘They’ve cancelled all shore leave and they have to sail off to God knows where with the utmost urgency. I keep forgetting he’s in the navy and not just off at University somewhere…’
‘But do you think it’s dangerous?’
‘I don’t want to think about it. He says not, but I know he doesn’t want us to worry. The fact is he’s trained for combat, not saving kittens stuck in trees,’ she said bitterly.
I was trying my best not to think about it either
‘Even if he doesn’t come back at Christmas you’ll see him soon after,’ I said, more to myself than to her.
‘He doesn’t even know when they’ll let him come back.’
The fact that he hadn’t told me was the thing that bothered me most of all. Okay, I couldn’t hope to be the first person he thought of, but we had agreed that he would come to the show and he could at least have troubled himself to send me a message to say he couldn’t make it. Or was Jack Sparrow holding him hostage, threatening to throw him to the sharks?
I decided not to say anything and to wait for him to contact me. After all, there were still ten days to go.
If I Can't Have You Page 19