3: Chocolate Box Girls: Summer's Dream

by Cathy Cassidy

  ‘It’s all planned,’ Jules says. ‘Paddy has hired an assistant for the chocolate business and Kate will come over and look after the girls while you’re away …’

  ‘The film crew will be here, yes,’ Grandma Kate adds. ‘But they’ll be pretty self-sufficient, and the B&B would have to be closed anyway while they’re at Tanglewood. Come on, Charlotte … you’ve always dreamt of going to Peru!’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Mum whispers. ‘I’d love to go, of course. I’ve always wanted to, and Paddy and I have talked about it too, because of the chocolate business …’

  ‘We pay more to get ethically sourced cocoa beans,’ Paddy says. ‘But this could be our chance to take it further … support a small family plantation, fairly traded, organic. All that, and the trip of a lifetime too!’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Mum says. ‘But …’

  Paddy puts an arm round her shoulders. ‘No buts,’ he says. ‘It’s all sorted. We fly out the first weekend of the school holidays. Kate will be here, and the kids are old enough to be responsible, behave well and help out if they’re needed. Right, girls?’

  ‘Right!’ Skye agrees. ‘We’ll be fine, won’t we?’

  ‘Fine,’ I chime in, but actually I am not sure just how fine I will be if Mum and Paddy vanish off to Peru for three weeks. It sounds like a brilliant honeymoon and it’s really generous of Grandma Kate and Jules, but I can’t help wishing they’d asked us how we’d feel about it first.

  I push my dinner away, half eaten. I already have a dad who lives on the other side of the world – I am not sure I want Mum disappearing too, even if it is only for three weeks. I can’t say that, though – it would sound horribly mean and selfish.

  Besides, it looks like I’m the only one with doubts.

  ‘Wow,’ Honey is saying. ‘Mum, look, I haven’t made things easy for you lately … I probably haven’t been as welcoming to Paddy or Cherry as I could have been …’

  Cherry’s eyes widen. This is the understatement of the year, or possibly the century.

  ‘I suppose I’m trying to say sorry,’ Honey says brightly. ‘I’ve been a pain, but that’s all over now. We’ll be fine while you go on honeymoon – you have to go, Mum, you know that, yeah? When will you ever get another chance like this?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Grandma Kate says.

  I exchange glances with Skye. We’ve waited forever for Honey to sweeten up a little … but now that it’s actually happening I can’t help wondering if it’s for real. My big sister knows how to turn on the charm when she wants to, and Mum and Grandma Kate fall for it every time. Me, I’m not so sure.

  The conversation turns to passports and packing and cocoa plantations in Peru. I wish I could be excited too, but instead, I feel anxious, uncertain, adrift.

  ‘Yesss,’ my big sister whispers under her breath. ‘Three weeks of freedom. This is going to be the best summer holiday ever …’

  I have a bad feeling about this … a very bad feeling indeed.

  5

  Learning to dance en pointe is tough. It takes years and years to build up the strength, years of discipline and exercise. Even now, I try to do 100 relevés every day to keep my feet and ankles strong. Miss Elise calls them ‘killers’ and I know exactly why.

  It takes sheer stamina to make pointe work look so light, so easy, so free. The first few times I tried it, my toes blistered and bled and my toenails were bruised black and blue. I didn’t complain, though – ballerinas don’t.

  I am running through my barre work in the empty senior studio when the door creaks open and my friend Jodie walks in. Jodie lives out on the other side of Minehead and goes to school in a different town. When it comes to dance, Jodie is good. She is the only person I know who takes dance as seriously as I do.

  Once upon a time we both shared the same dreams of going to the Royal Ballet School, but of course those dreams didn’t come to anything. For me it was because I arrived late and flustered and danced badly, but for Jodie it was crueller still. The panel said that Jodie had natural grace and talent, but that her body shape wasn’t quite right for a professional dancer.

  ‘What does that even mean?’ Jodie had asked me later, her face stained with tears. ‘Do I have an extra head or something?’

  Jodie looked fine to me. She wasn’t too tall or too small, too fat or too thin. Her posture was good, her muscles strong. I wiped her tears and told her to forget it, but it turned out those experts knew more than we did. As Jodie slid into puberty, her body changed – her boobs are big, her tummy rounded, her legs strong and solid. In everyday clothes, she looks stunning, curvy and soft and sweet. The panel were right, though. She doesn’t look like a dancer.

  We stopped talking about our ballerina dreams, but mine didn’t go away and I’m pretty sure Jodie’s didn’t either. The two of us aren’t even in the same class these days – Miss Elise moved me up a grade in January to dance with the seniors, so I’m surprised and pleased to see Jodie now.

  ‘Hey,’ I grin. ‘What’s up? I didn’t expect to see you here!’

  Jodie smiles. ‘Miss Elise has asked me to dance with the senior class today. I think she invited some Grade Six students along too … someone told me she had a friend coming in to observe, and she wants to impress her.’

  ‘Oh! I wish she’d told us!’ I frown. ‘I could have prepared a little more. I hate it when she springs things on us like that. Who is this friend? D’you think it might be someone to take over Miss Laura’s class when she goes off on maternity leave?’

  ‘No idea,’ Jodie shrugs. ‘I’m so nervous, though, dancing with the seniors – I thought I’d do some warm-ups first. If I can impress Miss Elise, she might move me up, like she did with you. She says I’m just about ready to dance en pointe!’

  ‘Brilliant!’ I say. ‘I hope she does – that would be so cool!’

  ‘Does it hurt?’ she asks. ‘Pointe work?’

  ‘A little bit, at first,’ I shrug. ‘It’s worth it, though. And after a while, it doesn’t hurt any more.’

  Jodie nods. She positions herself at the bar and runs through her exercises, and by the time the others begin coming through for class the two of us have been working together for a good half an hour, companionable, focused, content.

  As Jodie predicts, a couple of Grade Six students and even one from Grade Five turn up, and Miss Elise’s visitor turns out to be a slim, graceful older woman, greying hair scraped back into a ballerina bun.

  ‘This is my very dear friend Sylvie,’ Miss Elise tells us. ‘She’s a dance teacher too, and I wanted her to observe one of our classes. I know you will dance your very best for her!’

  I stand a little straighter, tilting my chin, and when the music begins, I let it seep into me. My limbs are light as silk and as strong as steel, my body taut as wire yet supple as a tree branch bending in the breeze. In the background, I can hear Miss Elise calling out her usual commentary: ‘Lucy, watch those toes! Jasmine, concentrate – you’re losing the rhythm! Sushila, stretch that leg … push yourself! Work, Amanda! You’re dreaming! Jodie, excellent, keep going!’

  She doesn’t say anything about me, and after a while, I lose myself in the music, forget about Miss Elise and her friend, forget about Jodie, forget everything but the dance.

  Afterwards, the changing room is thick with bodyspray and gossip.

  ‘I wonder why Miss Elise brought her friend to see us dance,’ Jodie wonders. ‘I bet she’s going to cover for Miss Laura while she’s away. She looked strict, but I think she knows what she’s doing. She watched you for a long time, Summer, and she was watching me too. We both danced well today!’

  ‘D’you think she’s been a professional dancer?’ I ask. ‘She had that look about her. The way she carried herself. Perhaps she’ll take the senior class for some lessons – it might be good to have a different teacher! A challenge!’

  Miss Elise appears in the doorway. She asks Jodie, Sushila and me to come along to the office as soon as we are ready, and the three of us
exchange anxious glances as we tidy our hair and pick up our ballet bags.

  Sushila is one of the senior girls. ‘Are we in trouble?’ she wonders. ‘Miss Elise kept telling me to push myself, work harder!’

  ‘But she said Jodie was dancing well,’ I point out. ‘And she didn’t mention me at all. We can’t all be in trouble, surely?’

  All the same, there is a knot of anxiety in my belly as we knock at the office door.

  ‘Girls! Come in,’ Miss Elise says.

  It’s more of a sitting room than an office. The last time I came in here was when Mum was late paying my fees the year Dad left and we sat together on the sofa and listened as Miss Elise told us she was not prepared to lose a dancer like me, fees or no fees, and that Mum could take as long as she needed to pay. Mum sold her bicycle and paid the fees the next day, but I’ll never forget Miss Elise’s kindness. She knew how awful it would be for me if I couldn’t dance.

  Miss Elise and her friend are sitting in armchairs, sipping tea from pretty china cups. Miss Elise waves us over to the sofa and we perch awkwardly as she pours three glasses of weak squash and arranges Rich Tea biscuits on a plate.

  ‘Sushila, Jodie, Summer … I’d like you to meet Sylvie Rochelle,’ she says. ‘She was most impressed with you all in class today. Well done!’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Elise!’ Jodie says, beaming. ‘Thank you, Miss … um … Rochelle.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Sushila echoes.

  But my manners have deserted me because the name Sylvie Rochelle is one I have heard before, and when I look at the elegant woman smiling at me over her teacup, I know exactly why. It was the grey hair that confused me. In the poster on my bedroom wall, Sylvie Rochelle has black hair that falls in soft wings about her ears, a cap of dark red flowers and a tutu of crimson silk and net.

  ‘Sylvie Rochelle,’ I whisper. ‘You danced with the Royal Ballet in the 1970s! I have a picture of you in The Firebird!’

  ‘Ah, yes …’ Sylvie smiles, and her voice is slow and heavily accented, just like Grandad Jules. ‘A long time ago, of course. I danced with some of the smaller French companies after that, but for the last fifteen years I’ve been teaching, first in France and then at the Royal Ballet School.’

  ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I mean … wow!’

  ‘For a year or so now, Sylvie has been working on a project of her own,’ Miss Elise tells us. ‘An independent dance school in Devon, for boarders, like the Royal Ballet School but with a more European flavour. Sylvie has been renovating an old girls’ school, installing a state-of-the-art theatre and studios, recruiting teachers from around the world ready for the first intake this September …’

  Jodie bites into a Rich Tea biscuit, her eyes wide, and Sushila chokes on her orange squash. Me, I hardly dare breathe.

  ‘Elise ’as been a very good friend to me,’ Sylvie Rochelle shrugs. ‘She ’as been saying for some time that there is a need for a residential ballet school with a more … well, cosmopolitan feel to it? When she told me she ’ad some pupils she wanted me to take a look at, I was only too ’appy to comply. We are auditioning for the last few scholarship places at Rochelle Academy this August. I would like it very much if you three girls would try out.’

  ‘No way!’ Sushila says.

  ‘Me?’ Jodie stutters. ‘Really? Me?’

  I can’t say a thing.

  ‘It’s just an audition,’ Miss Elise points out. ‘There will be other girls going for those places too – the competition will be stiff. If you’re offered a scholarship place, be very clear – it will be on your own merits. Sylvie is looking for dedication and potential, for students who will work hard, put dance above everything else. If you’re not willing to do that, these auditions are not for you.’

  ‘We are,’ I say instantly. ‘We will, I promise you.’

  ‘You ’ave eight weeks to prepare for the auditions,’ Sylvie Rochelle says, putting down her teacup neatly. ‘Don’t waste that time. Each of you ’as talent, but I need to see more. I need to see potential, passion, hunger for success. You must convince me that one of those places should be yours.’

  My heart is racing, my eyes shining. When I messed up that audition for the Royal Ballet School, I thought it was the end of my dream, but the dream refused to give up on me. Sometimes I think it is all that has been keeping me afloat these last couple of years. I never stopped working, never stopped hoping, and I promised myself that if I was ever given a second chance, I would grab it with both hands and hold on tight.

  You’d have to be crazy to let a dream slip through your fingers all over again, right?

  6

  When I get back to Tanglewood, my twin is perched on the gate waiting. She jumps down and runs along the lane towards me, fair hair fluttering out in the breeze.

  ‘What is it?’ she wants to know. ‘What happened? Something did, I know! Something good?’

  It doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but Skye and I can still pick up on each other’s thoughts and feelings. It happened back in February when Skye was sick with flu and wandered off from our birthday party and passed out in the woods, in the snow … I could feel her, slipping away from me, and somehow I knew just where to look. Skye reckons I saved her life that night. I don’t know about that. I am pretty sure we’d have found her one way or another.

  Now it is happening again.

  ‘Is it … something to do with the film crew and the movie they’re making here this summer?’ Skye asks. ‘Has the ballet school been asked to provide extras? That would be awesome!’

  That bursts my bubble.

  ‘Nothing to do with the film,’ I say.

  Ever since we heard that a film crew was descending on Tanglewood to make a movie this summer, we’ve talked about the possibility of getting bit parts, but now I know Mum and Paddy will be away while it’s happening I’m not so keen. I’m worried the film crew will take over the house, turn everything upside down … and that things will just descend into chaos without Mum around.

  I am not at all keen on chaos, as you might have noticed.

  ‘Something to do with dancing then?’ Skye guesses. ‘Tell me, Summer, please!’

  ‘I’ve been asked to audition for a new dance school,’ I say, and even as I speak, I realize I can’t quite believe it yet. ‘A specialist boarding school, Skye. It’s a scholarship place, so it wouldn’t cost a fortune, and the principal is Sylvie Rochelle, the French ballerina from that poster I have of The Firebird! She picked me out, and Jodie, and a senior girl called Sushila … she wants us to apply. Can you believe it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Skye says. ‘You’re brilliant, Summer, don’t you know that? My super-talented sister!’

  ‘It’s an audition, not an actual place,’ I point out. ‘I’ll have to work like crazy if I’m going to stand any kind of a chance …’

  ‘You always work like crazy,’ Skye shrugs. ‘You’ll do it, I know you will!’

  You didn’t last time, the voice of doubt inside my head points out, and panic unfurls inside me. It’s a while since I’ve heard that voice, but I recognize its message loud and clear: it thinks I will fail. I take a deep breath, gritting my teeth. This time, failure is not an option.

  On Friday, when Skye, Coco and I get in from school, Mum is sitting at the kitchen table sipping tea and picking through a glossy brochure for Rochelle Academy.

  ‘It arrived today,’ she tells me. ‘Along with a letter from Miss Elise and a whole heap of forms. It looks terrific, Summer, but it would be a big change, a big commitment. Are you sure this is what you want?’

  You might as well ask me if I want air to breathe.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I say. ‘Don’t you see, Mum? I thought I’d blown my chances of a career in dance, but maybe I can still do it! Maybe it’s not just a dream!’

  ‘I’ve always said you can do anything you set your mind to,’ Mum says. ‘You’re choosing a difficult path, though, Summer. I want to be sure you’ve thought it through.’

  I h
ave thought of little else since I met Sylvie Rochelle. I have thought of little else since forever.

  ‘I have,’ I tell Mum.

  ‘Well then,’ she sighs. ‘Paddy and I will support you in any way we can. You have a talent, Summer, we’ve always known that. Of course you must go.’

  I flop down into a seat beside Mum, biting my lip. ‘It’s just an audition,’ I remind her. ‘There are only three places left, and people are applying from all around the country. I might not get in. Lots of people don’t make the grade.’

  ‘You will,’ Skye says matter-of-factly. ‘I know you will.’

  I wish I was half as sure.

  ‘It looks awesome,’ she continues, leafing through the brochure. ‘A real old country house. So pretty.’

  ‘I am so jealous!’ Coco comments. ‘Boarding school! Like Hogwarts! How cool?’

  ‘It’s cool,’ I agree. ‘But I don’t think it’ll be like Hogwarts. It’ll be more leotards and leg warmers than Potions lessons and invisibility cloaks …’

  I study the glossy photographs, the schedules of morning lessons and afternoon dance. I look at the line-up of dance teachers, most of them ex-professionals, and I wonder if I will ever actually be there, dancing in the shiny new studio, living the dream. My stomach twists with doubt.

  ‘There’s just one snag,’ Mum says. ‘According to the letter, your audition is in the middle of August … while Paddy and I are away on honeymoon. I’d have liked to be there with you, look around, talk to this Sylvie Rochelle. I want to be sure it’s the right place for you.’

  ‘Oh … you’ll still be away?’ I frown.

  ‘Your audition is on the Saturday morning – we’re home the following day,’ Mum says. ‘Bad timing, but we can’t change it. Perhaps if we called the dance school and tried to postpone the audition …’

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ I say, panicking. ‘There’ll be lots of people trying out for this. I’ll go on the official day – I don’t want special treatment.’