3: Chocolate Box Girls: Summer's Dream

by Cathy Cassidy

  Mum relaxes, and Paddy’s shoulders slump in relief. ‘Harry knows what he’s doing in the chocolate workshop,’ he says. ‘He should keep that side of things ticking over nicely, but if there are any problems …’

  ‘There won’t be,’ Skye promises.

  ‘It’s all under control,’ Grandma Kate tells Mum and Paddy. ‘Stop worrying! The girls and I will manage just fine, and Harry will run the workshop with military precision. All you two have to do is go off and enjoy yourselves!’

  ‘But three weeks …’ Mum sighs. ‘I don’t know. Anything could go wrong …’

  ‘Nothing will,’ I promise, but there’s a sad, empty ache in my chest that tells me things are going wrong right now. I want to hang on to Mum and hug her hard and beg her not to go, but I don’t, of course. That would be childish and selfish and cruel. Wouldn’t it?

  ‘Summer, I so wish I could be here for your audition,’ Mum is saying. ‘I know how much it means to you. I’ll be thinking of you, wishing you luck every inch of the way. I’ll text whenever I can, I promise.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ I drag up my best stage smile, think bright, happy thoughts. Let’s just say that if my dancing career falls through, I could have a great future in acting.

  Mum squeezes my hand and I have to turn away, tears prickling the back of my eyes without warning.

  Next morning, we are up at dawn to say goodbye. The suitcases have been packed into Paddy’s minivan and Mum is frantically looking around in case she’s forgotten anything. ‘You’ll walk Fred and feed the ducks, won’t you, Coco?’ she asks. ‘And make sure Humbug is shut safely in the stable every night?’

  ‘You can rely on me,’ Coco promises.

  ‘Call me if there are any problems,’ Mum says. ‘I’ll have my mobile switched on at all times, in case of emergencies …’

  ‘There won’t be any emergencies,’ Grandma Kate says firmly, but Mum doesn’t seem to be listening.

  ‘There’s lentil soup, home-made steak pie and sausage casserole in the freezer,’ she says. ‘Remember not to overstack the dishwasher. Keep an eye on The Chocolate Box website and log orders as they come in … bank the business payments at least once a week … water the veggie garden …’

  ‘Relax, Charlotte,’ Grandma Kate says gently. ‘Time to switch off, enjoy the honeymoon.’

  Mum hugs us all hard, and Paddy tousles our hair as if we are bouncy puppy dogs and not soon-to-be-abandoned children. They jump in the car and Paddy revs the engine while Mum leans out of the open window. ‘Do everything Grandma Kate tells you … and stick to the curfew, OK?’

  They drive away fast in a screech of gravel.

  ‘We’ll cope just fine,’ Grandma Kate says briskly, turning back towards the house. ‘Let’s hope they have the best honeymoon ever. Now … let’s get this show on the road! Who’d like some of my special French toast for breakfast?’

  ‘Me,’ Coco whoops.

  ‘Me too,’ Skye echoes, hooking an arm round Cherry’s shoulders. ‘Can we have that every morning? It’s my favourite! If you’ve never had my gran’s French toast, Cherry, you have not lived. It has cinnamon and butter and a drizzle of maple syrup … gorgeous.’

  ‘Cool,’ Cherry says.

  A few weeks ago I’d have thought it was cool too, but now I am just vaguely irritated that a high-calorie breakfast is meant to make me feel better about Mum going away. My stomach growls with hunger, but I am getting to like that empty feeling. It makes me feel light, clean, strong.

  The others troop back into the house. Honey yawns and says we must be crazy to even think about eating when it’s practically the middle of the night, and that she is going back to bed, possibly until lunchtime.

  I am left alone, standing on the empty driveway, staring into the distance long after the car has gone.

  12

  I am in the studio at the dance school, running through my exercises and working on the set piece we have to perform for the audition. The clock on the wall says I have been practising for two hours, but I’m not happy yet with the way it’s going.

  I need it to be smooth, light, effortless, but today it’s not working. I feel dull, leaden, lost. I need the music to fill me up and take me away from this place, somewhere timeless, magical, where dance is the only thing that matters.

  I look towards the window. A plane cuts through the cloudless sky, leaving a soft, white surf-like trail in its wake. Are Mum and Paddy on that plane? I have no way of knowing.

  All morning my mobile has been buzzing with messages from Mum. Almost at Heathrow, she texted while I was on the bus to town: Checked in, all well, as I was getting changed; Through security, as I bent to reset the CD; At the departure gate, as I stopped to re-dip my shoes in the rosin box; and, finally, for the last twenty minutes, silence.

  Mum and Paddy will be in the air right now, heading for Peru, maybe on the plane I glimpsed, or on another plane like it, far away. I am happy for them, so pleased they are getting the honeymoon they deserve … but I can’t help feeling anxious too.

  I can’t remember being away from Mum for more than a couple of nights before, on sleepovers or rare, long-ago trips to London to see Dad, or that weekend Mum spent in Glasgow when she was first seeing Paddy. There was a school trip to Wales the year Dad left, an outward-bound type of thing with abseiling and hillwalking, but it seemed wrong to go when Mum was so cut up about the split, when money was short and our family seemed to be falling to pieces. Skye and I binned our application forms without even showing Mum.

  I know I’m grown-up enough to manage for a few weeks. It is silly to feel uneasy about it all – we can manage fine, and Grandma Kate is kind and sensible and very organized. It’s not like we have been left to fend for ourselves. So I have no idea why worry curdles in my belly like sour milk.

  The studio door swings open and Jodie appears, dressed for practice. She seems surprised to see me.

  ‘You’re early,’ she grins. ‘I thought I’d be the first here today!’

  I decide not to mention I have been here for two hours already. I’ve been practising more than usual over the last few weeks, but I don’t want to appear too keen, too desperate, too weird.

  ‘Won’t it be amazing if we get through those auditions?’ Jodie says. ‘Come September, we could be at ballet school full-time. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m going to practise every day until the audition.’

  ‘Me too,’ I say. ‘I’d do anything to get a place, anything at all.’

  Jodie frowns. ‘Me too,’ she says. ‘But it’s destiny, right? If we’re meant to get a place, we will. If not … well, it just isn’t meant to happen.’

  Anger flares inside me. Fate and destiny weren’t exactly on my side last time, were they? Surely Jodie isn’t willing to leave something as important as this down to fate. Is it enough to dance your best and hope that the panel is feeling kind enough to give you a chance? I don’t think so. I think you have to do everything possible to make sure you shine.

  ‘It is meant to happen, though,’ I frown. ‘It has to. We’ve wanted this since we were kids, Jodie. If we try hard enough, we’ll get through! We have to!’

  She shrugs and smiles and starts running through her warm-up exercises, but I get the feeling Jodie thinks I may be trying a little too hard.

  She doesn’t know the half of it.

  At teatime, Jamie Finch arrives at Tanglewood wearing a vintage army jacket and a pair of red Converse, his dark hair a tangle of unruly waves, an outsize rucksack on his back. Nikki drove up to London to collect him, then got ambushed by one of the production team the minute she returned, leaving her son adrift.

  He wanders into the kitchen, where we have fruit smoothies and angel-wing meringues waiting. ‘Good to meet you, Jamie,’ Grandma Kate says. ‘Welcome to the madhouse!’

  It probably does look a little crazy. Coco is sitting on the draining board playing her violin, which is why Skye is wearing pink fluffy earmuffs as she irons some of her vintage dress colle
ction to take down to Jess the wardrobe manager later. Cherry is curled up in the armchair by the Aga writing haiku poetry and even Honey is sitting at the kitchen table making quick ink sketches of everyone.

  I’ve just unplugged my iPod after running through my ballet exercises one last time, a baggy T-shirt over my leotard and leg warmers. I didn’t dance well today in class, and I am determined to smooth out the glitches if it kills me. I am not leaving the audition to fate, no matter what Jodie says.

  Fred the dog and Humbug the lamb watch it all, curled up together on Fred’s cushion in the corner. We don’t always cram into the kitchen together like this, but today is different. We need to be together because Mum and Paddy are gone and everything feels slightly out of balance.

  Jamie Finch laughs, taking the chaos in his stride. ‘Thank you for having me,’ he says politely. ‘I’m so excited to be out of London for a while – Mum’s never let me help out on a shoot before. It’s going to be cool! By the way, just call me Finch … everyone else does.’

  ‘Finch then,’ Grandma Kate amends.

  Coco puts down her violin, blinking, and Honey raises one perfect eyebrow at the idea of a boy who thinks that Kitnor might be cooler than London. I glance across at Skye. She has been counting off the days until Finch’s arrival, yet now looks totally amazed to find him standing in the middle of our kitchen.

  ‘Hey,’ he says when he catches sight of her. ‘Skye … how’s it going?’

  My twin blushes a dark shade of pink and seems to have lost the power of speech. She may not actually have heard his words, what with the pink fluffy earmuffs, but she takes them off carefully now and drops them carelessly into the fruit bowl where they nestle alongside a nectarine and three green apples. She grins and Finch grins back, and when the rest of us notice a faint smell of burning, it’s hard to tell for sure whether it comes from their sizzling gaze or from the iron Skye has abandoned face down on one of her best vintage petticoats.

  ‘Skye, be careful!’ Grandma Kate says, unplugging the iron and holding up the ruined petticoat, which now has an iron-shaped scorch mark right in the middle.

  But Skye can’t take her eyes off Finch, not even to survey the frazzled slip. He is just as smitten. It’s like watching one of those cheesy movies where everything goes slo-mo and soft focus and your toes begin to curl with embarrassment. I have always thought those scenes were exaggerated because it’s seriously not that way at all when I am with Aaron.

  ‘Hello?’ Grandma Kate says, bemused. ‘Skye? Better leave that ironing now, pet. Finch, why don’t you go and find your mum and tell her there’s a nice pot of tea here for her. Then I’ll show you to your room, and I’m sure the girls will help you to settle in, make you feel welcome …’

  ‘Ah … OK.’

  Finch finally drags his eyes away from my twin sister, grins sheepishly and lopes off to find Nikki, and Skye snaps out of her trance and looks down at the ruined petticoat, frowning slightly as if she can’t quite work out what just happened. I am not sure I know either, even with my trusty twin-telepathy on full alert, but I know that it is major, a life-changing event, a catastrophe even, like an earthquake or a tidal wave.

  It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. My twin sister is nuts about Jamie Finch, and he seems to feel the same way about her. I’m pleased for her, truly I am, but I cannot shake the feeling that life as we know it will never be the same again.

  I bite my lip so hard I taste blood.

  13

  Tia and Millie burst into our kitchen on Monday morning brandishing a flyer that invites interested locals to earn £50 by appearing as extras in a couple of crowd scenes in the film.

  ‘We could be famous!’ Millie declares, eyes wide. ‘We could shoot to stardom and end up winning Oscars and strutting down the red carpet with Robert Pattinson!’

  ‘Get a grip,’ I say. ‘Robert Pattinson isn’t even in this film!’

  ‘No, but that bloke from Hollyoaks is,’ Tia points out. ‘And he’s quite hot, in a non-sparkly kind of way. Millie’s right, we have to do it. They’re not auditioning or anything. We just turn up on Saturday for costume fittings. Awesome!’

  ‘Awesome indeed,’ Skye says. ‘I’ll be helping with the costumes, so I can make sure you get a cool hat or a parasol. Finch says it should be a lot of fun.’

  ‘Oh, well, if Finch says so,’ I tease, but it comes out a little snippier than I mean it to. I don’t think Skye notices, though. Nothing seems to burst her bubble these last few days.

  I have to admit that being an extra might be cool. It’s not every summer a movie gets shot right in your backyard, but right now, I don’t have time to think about teen-boy actors or dressing up for some retro-themed movie. I am focused on pliés and jetés, and today I have promised myself a whole day in the studio to work on my expressive dance for the audition. I sling my ballet bag over my shoulder and stand up.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Skye asks. ‘You don’t have ballet lessons today!’

  ‘No, but I want to use the studio to practise,’ I say. ‘I have to go through possible music clips, come up with something for my expressive dance. Something good.’

  ‘But … we’re going to the beach!’ Tia argues. ‘It’s the first Monday of the holidays … we were going to celebrate, hang out and swim and sunbathe! I told Aaron, and everything! He’s got a footy match, but he said he’d definitely come down afterwards. You have to stay, Summer! Relax a little!’

  I bite back my annoyance. This is the FUN Tia asked me to schedule in this holiday, but I don’t have time for it. My priorities for the next few weeks are all about dance; chilling out in the sun and dressing up in straw hats to help fill out the crowd scenes in a film just do not figure. And what’s with inviting Aaron? Seriously, that’s all I need.

  ‘Summer?’ Millie says, cajoling. ‘C’mon. You know you want to.’

  ‘I’m busy,’ I snap. ‘Too busy for swimming and sunbathing. Sorry.’ I swing out of the kitchen, letting the door slam shut behind me.

  It’s only once I’m at the dance school that the churny feeling in my stomach begins to subside. It’s stress, I tell myself. Stress about the audition, stress about my expressive dance, stress about Mum and Paddy being on the other side of the planet.

  And hunger maybe because today I am running on Coke Zero and indignation. Food, like fun, has been sidelined.

  I can’t expect Tia and Millie to understand, of course, and I can see that Skye has other things on her mind right now. I’ll apologize to them, tell them I’m under a lot of pressure, maybe go along with them on Saturday to the film thing.

  Fun … I guess I can try to make room for it on my rota.

  Just not today.

  Miss Elise is surprised to see me, but when I explain that I want to work on my expressive dance, she hands me a box of ballet and classical CDs to look through.

  ‘You should find something there,’ she tells me. ‘If you choose the right piece of music, the rest should fall into place. This is the one piece I can’t really help you with, but it’s probably the most important part of your audition because it will tell Sylvie something about you. Good luck, Summer!’

  I go upstairs to change, then pull on a loose T-shirt and pad through to the studio. I run through my barre exercises and my pointe work, then sit down beside the little CD player, flicking through Miss Elise’s CDs in search of inspiration. It doesn’t come. After a while, the music begins to blend into one, endlessly light and bright and airy. I bite my lip. I need something different – something dramatic, powerful, strong.

  I remember the poster on my bedroom wall, of Sylvie Rochelle as the Firebird, and scan through the CDs until I find Stravinsky’s soundtrack to the ballet. This is better – vivid, energetic, exciting. I skip through the CD until I come to a section that makes my heart beat faster … a crazy, chaotic crescendo of sound. I do not like chaos usually, but this music fills me up like oxygen. It feels right.

  Checking the cover notes, I se
e that I’ve chosen something called the ‘Infernal Dance’ – a frenzied dance which the Firebird curses the evil wizard’s creatures to perform. I listen to it again, smiling. The expressive dance segment of my audition should be my strong point. I love putting sequences together, interpreting music, and now that I have found the right piece of music perhaps I can do that. It’s a challenging piece, but Sylvie Rochelle will like that, I know.

  All afternoon I try out steps and turns, but nothing seems quite right. I keep trying all the same. I dance until my muscles ache, until my stomach growls with hunger and my toes feel bruised and blistered.

  I dance to the point of pain and beyond, as if punishing myself will make everything fall into place.

  14

  I check my mobile on the late bus home, and find four missed calls and eleven unread messages. One message is from Mum, who reports that she and Paddy are now in Lima, the Peruvian capital. The others are from Skye, Millie, Tia and Aaron, informing me that their lazy day at the beach has snowballed into a full-on bonfire party, and to get myself down there pronto.

  I groan. By the time I get down to the beach the sun is starting to dip down in the sky and the party is in full swing.

  ‘Finally!’ Aaron yells as I approach. ‘I thought you’d never get here!’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I lost track of time, you know how it is …’

  His arm snakes round my waist as I survey the party. Shay Fletcher is playing guitar, Cherry at his side; Coco is toasting marshmallows and Honey is holding court to JJ, Chris and Marty. Tia, Millie, Sid, Carl and Alfie wave and shout hellos at me, but I’m looking for my twin, and I can’t see her anywhere.

  ‘Where’s Skye?’

  ‘Over there with that Finch kid,’ Aaron says. ‘Slush central … boy, do those two have it bad.’

  Skye and Finch are sitting on a driftwood log behind the bonfire, so close they are almost touching. They must be exchanging life stories or something because they are talking non-stop. I don’t think they’d notice or care if the rest of us just tiptoed away and left them to it. I try not to feel hurt that after all her frantic texts, my twin hasn’t even noticed that I’m here.