Save the Last Dance

by Fiona Harper

  ‘I can relate to that,’ she said, sighing. ‘My whole childhood was a rhapsody in pink. Pink tights, pink shoes, pink leotards… It got to the point where I would positively avoid it unless I was in class or on stage.’

  He watched her as she trailed off and gazed into the fire. Pink was okay. Beautiful in a sunset or a rainforest flower. But life was made to be full of colour. Surely that amount of uniformity couldn’t be good for a soul?

  They really came from two different worlds, didn’t they? He was always on the move, always filling himself up with new experiences from one day to the next, and yet she had got where she was by staying. By doing the same thing over and over until she reached perfection. How did she do it without going stark raving mad?

  She leaned forward and rested her chin on her fist. ‘He must be really proud of you.’

  Finn sat down on the opposite end of the log. ‘Who?’

  She smiled gently. ‘Your grandfather.’

  He found he couldn’t look at the softness in those blue eyes any more and turned his attention back to the crackling logs. Why had he dropped that stick? He really needed to prod those logs with it and now he had nothing to hand.

  ‘He died when I was fifteen.’

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, but Finn could feel her sympathy radiating towards him along the log. He knew she’d suffered worse, knew she’d understand, but he still didn’t want to share it with her. Letting her in meant he’d have to visit that place himself, and he’d boarded it up and marked it ‘no entry’ a long time ago.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  There it was. That beguiling compassion made into words. It made him feel as if a thousand spiders had just started climbing his legs.

  He stood up. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, not looking at her.

  She shouldn’t. He never did.

  Why buck the trend? He hadn’t thought to worry at all that Christmas they’d spent the whole week at Grandad’s. Hadn’t paid a lick of attention when his grandfather had hugged him goodbye and said, ‘See you in the summer’. On the next visit to Skye, only a few short months later, hiking boots and waterproofs had been traded for a dark suit and smart shoes. Wild heather and open skies had been replaced by wreaths and the claustrophobic stillness of a tiny chapel.

  He should have worried, though.

  He should have realised how much his only living grandparent had been an anchoring point for him throughout his childhood. Should have realised how set adrift he’d feel once the old man was gone.

  People thought the wilderness was empty. They were blind. It was full of life—plants, trees, creatures big enough to swallow you whole or so small they were almost invisible to the naked eye. Absent of human interference, yes, but not empty.

  No, emptiness was standing at a graveside and not even being able to look at the coffin because all you could see was the hole. All you could feel was the hole. Blackness so complete that it wiped out all life before it. That was emptiness.

  Not a place he ever planned on visiting again, thank goodness.

  Allegra stood up. For a moment he thought she was going to move closer and hug him. He was very glad when she didn’t.

  ‘Some people leave big spaces when they go,’ she whispered, almost to herself rather than to him. ‘Shoes you can never—’

  She paused for a moment.

  ‘Sorry. I meant holes you can never fill, no matter how hard you try.’

  Finn walked over to a bush and broke a decent-looking branch off it, then he stripped it of all its smaller twigs and plunged it into the licking orange flames. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to agree with her. That would be lying.

  He’d filled in all his holes a long time ago. You could hardly tell they’d been there in the first place. Anchors made holes. Roots made holes. But he’d learned since then that if he moved fast enough he could avoid those kinds of cavities entirely. As a result, his life was always full, never empty.

  But then he made the mistake of glancing up at her. Just the look in her eyes ripped something inside of him. And he couldn’t have that. Those tiny breaches in the shell were how it started.

  He glanced towards the shelter. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for sleep,’ he said and, before Allegra could answer he dropped his stick, clambered over the log and headed for the palm leaf mattress.

  Something was gently nudging Allegra’s shoulder. She rolled over to escape it and crashed into something solid. Something warm. Something that was whispering her name…

  She slowly heaved her eyelids open and tried to focus on the shape directly in front of her face. She thought it might be Finn. Her racing pulse told her it was but, instead of having two eyes, this Finn had one large fuzzy one in the middle of his face.

  ‘Good morning,’ the eye said.

  Allegra tried to answer, but the only thing that escaped her lips was a string of consonants, none of them logically connected to the previous one.

  ‘I take it you slept well.’

  More consonants. Ones that were supposed to string together to mean: ‘Maybe not well, but better.’

  Some part of Allegra’s brain that had still been dozing suddenly decided to sit up and take notice. She was nose to nose with Finn McLeod in the semi-dark! How had that happened?

  ‘It’s time to catch breakfast,’ he said.

  ‘Smoked salmon bagel and a cappuccino, please,’ she said in a scratchy voice, not quite ready to pull away from him.

  ‘Funny lady,’ he said, and the eye grew smaller and clearer and separated into two.

  Come back, Allegra wanted to whisper. Come back and place your lips close to mine again. Let me believe they were just about to touch.

  She didn’t, of course, despite the fact her sleep fog was making her want to do things she wouldn’t normally do. Or wouldn’t normally admit to wanting to do.

  ‘You were right about the fish part, though,’ Finn said. ‘This is a good time of day to catch them hiding in the shallows.’

  Allegra’s brain told her to say, Stuff the fish! and hold out for the bagel. Her stomach, however, mounted a rebellion and made her push herself up to sit cross-legged on the mattress of ferns and palm leaves.

  ‘Come on,’ Finn said, and reached across to ruffle her sleep-styled hair further. And then he launched himself out of the shelter and started coaxing the still-glowing embers from the previous night back to life.

  She closed her eyes and resisted the urge to howl in frustration.

  He sees me as a kid sister! she wailed inside her head. Nothing more.

  And why should he? You’re far too young for him. And he has a fiancée.

  Allegra squeezed her eyes closed harder and clenched her teeth. I know, I know. Shut up!

  Then she opened her eyes and saw Finn striding down the beach, spear in hand. It felt as if her foolish heart jumped straight out of her chest and scurried on down the beach after him, like a waggy little dog.

  Silently, she called it back, even though she knew it was no use.

  She sighed and buried her face in her hands. She’d thought she’d known what longing was before she’d reached this island, had she?

  Wrong!

  So totally, totally wrong.

  And now she recognised that emotion for what it was, knew its depths, she had the feeling it had the power to turn this island paradise into a living hell.

  Allegra had never known damnation could be so sweet. Despite the rigorous physical work it took just to eat and drink and live on this island, she pushed herself to stay awake as long as possible in the evenings, because that was when she and Finn would talk about anything and everything. And she forced herself to consciousness early in the mornings, just so she could snatc
h a few extra minutes with him before the crew arrived. And he seemed to enjoy her company as much as she enjoyed his.

  Her body complained, of course. She ignored it. She was used to pushing it to its limits. At least ballet had given her that.

  Every second with Finn counted, because now they were practically halfway through their week together. From now on, time would haemorrhage, slowly leaking away, until the helicopter appeared on the horizon to separate her from Finn. Possibly for ever.

  Yes, it should be for ever. She knew that.

  He had a fiancée to go home to, and seeing him back in the real world would just be too difficult, so she was going to go cold turkey once the filming was over. All she could have was this perfect little bubble of time with him, and have it she would.

  It was day four and they had just climbed out of the shelter to start the day. First job was to get the fire started, using the wood they had collected and heaped up in readiness the evening before. Finn was trying to teach Allegra how to do it on her own. A useful skill, he’d said.

  Useful for him, maybe, Allegra had thought.

  She could imagine the outrage she’d cause amongst her Notting Hill neighbours if she decided to start a campfire in the leafy garden square outside her father’s house.

  That didn’t stop her, though. She wanted to learn this. Not just to impress Finn, but to prove something to herself.

  The materials were ready—tinder, kindling, larger logs for fuel—and she’d placed it all just-so, ready for an ember to ignite. Finn had declared it a perfect set-up. But could she get the knife and flint to generate a spark to set it all off? No, she could not. And it was driving her crazy.

  She placed the flint on the tinder once again and struck the knife against it with force. Nothing. She wanted to scream.

  Finn, who was crouching down beside her, laid a hand on her arm. ‘You’re really close, but why don’t you let me finish off?’

  ‘No!’

  Whoops. That had come out a little more stroppily than she’d intended it to. She’d better get herself under control; the rest of the crew would be here shortly, and this was not how she wanted the world to see her—as a spoilt little princess having a paddy. Running away without telling anyone would have created that impression of her, anyway, and she wasn’t about to do anything that might give the press fuel for their fire.

  ‘I want to do it myself,’ she said, a little more graciously.

  ‘And I want to eat today,’ Finn muttered good-naturedly, but he removed his hand from her arm and sat back down on the thick log they’d dragged beside the fire pit for a bench.

  So she tried again. And again. And another twelve times after that.

  Finn’s tone was far too reasonable when he said, ‘You’re trying too hard.’

  She put the knife down and swivelled on her haunches to face him.

  ‘Yesterday you said I had to stop—and I quote—“messing around with it”. Make up your mind!’

  When she’d finished snapping at him she clamped her mouth shut. What was wrong with her today? She couldn’t seem to get a handle on her frustration as she usually did.

  Luckily, Finn being Finn, he saw the funny side. And he didn’t seem to be insulted in the least by her sulky outburst.

  After a few more tries, she joined him on the log and handed the tools over. Then she propped her elbows on her knees and sank her face into her hands and watched him get to work. He made it look so easy. As if it was like breathing for him.

  ‘What I mean is—’ Finn broke off as he concentrated on striking knife against flint. Sparks flew. Lots of them. Not something Finn McLeod was short of, obviously. Within a few seconds he was juggling a loose ball of dry grass and flames were licking through it, threatening to scorch his fingers. He dropped it carefully in the fire pit and began assembling the wood around it, talking as he did so.

  ‘I know it seems strange to put it like this, but I’ve always thought of fire as a living thing. Making fire is more than just following instructions; you need a bit of instinct, too—knowing just when and where to strike the flint, and how hard. Knowing when to trust the ember you’ve got and blow, or knowing it’s not strong enough and the only thing that blowing would do is put it out.’

  Great. Instinct again. Inner spark. The stuff Allegra was all out of. Maybe she’d never get this right.

  She tried not to care about that as they fished and ate breakfast. She tried not to care when the film crew arrived and Dave pointed his all-seeing lens at her. Most of all she tried not to care when they took their daily hike through the thick vegetation to fetch water from the pool.

  But she did care. A lot.

  Because Finn had said spark was important, the thing you needed in spades if you were ever going to survive. And Allegra had the feeling she hadn’t been surviving. Not even when she’d been back in London.

  On their journey they walked past the tree stump that Finn had plucked the grubs from the other day. He looked over his shoulder and gave her a cheeky grin, raised his eyebrows in a question. She scowled at him and shook her head. The crew behind her chuckled.

  But as she continued to follow Finn, Allegra began to consider something she’d forgotten—Finn McLeod thought she had spark. He’d said so.

  He could be wrong, of course. Mistaken. But she’d eaten the darn bug anyway. Surely that had to count for something?

  She desperately wanted it to.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe it was all locked away inside and she didn’t know how to get to it any more. Perhaps that was why she was so obsessed with creating fire. If she could do that, maybe she could believe she could take all the other things Finn had taught her home and put her mess of a life into order.

  Or was that just a hopeless fantasy? As pathetic as yearning for a future with Finn. The dread plagued her all the way to the pool, cramping her shoulder muscles and tensing her jaw. Even the multitude of insect bites dotting her skin seemed to throb and itch more insistently.

  After they’d filled their various containers, Finn suggested a detour back to the top of the island. Now they knew the way, it would only be another twenty minutes hiking. Allegra nodded and trudged after him. Maybe getting out of the oppressive heat and humidity of the jungle and standing in the fresh air and sunshine would improve her mood.

  It didn’t.

  As beautiful as it all was, it didn’t. She stood on the edge of the small cliff, staring out at the lush landscape, the shimmering sea, and it didn’t help one bit.

  ‘Hey,’ Finn said from right behind her, practically whispering in her left ear.

  See? This proved just how off-kilter she was. She hadn’t even sensed his approach.

  ‘You’re as rigid as one of these rocks,’ he said. And then he placed his hands on her shoulders and began to knead. Oh, my, he began to knead. Firmly. Smoothly. Expertly.

  Allegra closed her eyes, glad none of the crew had a shot of her face, and stifled a whimper.

  Was it better to pull away and deprive herself of this, never to have a hint of what it could be like, or would it be better to savour it while it lasted, even if it was sweet torture? She didn’t know. And the indecision paralysed her body while making her head spin. And Finn’s hands…? They were slowly turning her muscles to heated, sticky marshmallow.

  Why had fate dangled him in front of her before pulling him away again? She wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all.

  Her eyelids had drifted open a little and she spotted the small outcrop Finn had stood on the other day. She didn’t decide to move; she just did. She ran to the little pointy bit of rock, planted her feet where his had been and let all the frustration and self-pity that had been building in her like a pressure cooker out in one long howl.

  Time did something strange. She
lost all awareness of how long it took the sound to leave her body, the air to vacate her lungs, and yet she became hyper-aware of the accompanying physical sensations—the heat at the back of her throat, the contraction of her intercostal and abdominal muscles, the way the air seemed to come from right down behind her belly button instead of her chest.

  After all that noise, the following silence was thick and complete. She suddenly remembered where she was and—oh, no—who she was with. Was there any chance they’d been changing tapes while she’d had her moment of insanity?

  She glanced round to find the entire crew staring at her, some of them with their mouths open. So she hitched her chin, tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear and fixed her eyes on the one solid thing in her universe at the moment: Finn McLeod. He was also staring, but his eyes were laughing and that did something strange to her.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, surprising herself by sounding as cool and poised and elegant as a ballerina was supposed to. ‘I do feel better now.’

  And then she began to vocalise what she saw in Finn’s eyes. She began to laugh. No gentle, polite tittering, either. Big, helpless, gulping peals that made her feel dizzy.

  Somehow Finn was standing beside her, joining her, laughing just as hard as she was. Before they’d fully recovered, he sputtered out a question: ‘You want to do that again?’

  She nodded.

  That was all he needed. He grabbed her hand and they both rose onto their tiptoes, threw their heads back and yelled.

  Finn felt as if he could leap off the cliff and fly. Surely, with this soaring feeling inside it would finally be possible? Not even gravity could stop them. The wind would carry them and the warm thermals would buoy them up. He and Allegra could just close their eyes and dive off the cliff into the ultimate freedom. Because he knew he wanted her with him.