by Lucy Dillon
But as she read on, she realised her mother’s unusually careful language was inching towards something she couldn’t speak aloud, and Angelica drew in a sudden, involuntary breath.
Although we could not have loved you any more if you were our own daughter, I must tell you that, in fact, we are not your birth parents.
Here the ink darkened, as if Pauline had put down her pen for a few minutes searching for the right words to start again.
We hoped and prayed for a little baby to complete our family for many years after we married, but we were disappointed. I had given up hope of ever having children, when a lady we knew from our ballroom club told us about a young friend of hers in a terrible situation. This poor girl was expecting a child that she was not able to bring up, for personal reasons, but she did not want to take it to an orphanage, as she could not bear to think of it being looked after by strangers.
I knew at once that we could give that tiny baby a loving home. We met the girl, who was happy for us to adopt you as our own, and from the moment you were placed in my arms, you were our Angela. I wish I could describe to you the joy I felt, feeling your little hand curl around my finger, and seeing your lovely face looking up at me in your cot. You had so much hair for a little baby, like a day-old chick. Angela, that was the happiest moment of my whole life, a happiness I’d given up wishing for. You made us into a proper family at last.
Perhaps you will be wondering why I am only telling you this now, so many years later. Your father and I often discussed it, and he felt you should have been told before you left home. I know your dad and yourself had a difficult relationship while you were growing up, and that you sometimes felt he was not as affectionate as you would have liked. The truth is that he knew how much you meant to me and was afraid that one day you would find out, and want to leave us to find your birth parents. I am a very selfish woman, I know, but I think it would have broken my heart.
It is very hard to love someone as much as I loved you, and to know that, at any moment, they might be taken from you. My consolation was that your real mother – I find that very hard to write, Angela! – had two more children after you, and so enjoyed the same happiness your dad and I did.
Tears welled up in Angelica’s eyes, and the letter blurred in front of her. She put it down, and covered her eyes with her palms, unable to put her mother’s face out of her mind. She didn’t feel angry, just intensely sorry for her, having to keep that secret festering away in her heart so many years. How many times must she have started this letter, and then screwed up the paper, fearing that it would break the fragile links, of care rather than blood, that held her daughter to her? How often must she have looked at her and wondered if now was the right moment to say something? Or now? Or now?
There would never have been a good moment. But worse than that, there would never be any moment for Angelica to take her mother’s hands in her own and tell her that it didn’t make a shred of difference. Pauline was the only mother she’d known – how could she love her less?
Those quiet months of looking after her mother as she slowly faded had brought them both to an understanding they’d never have had otherwise. Taking care of someone who needed your strength, and cheerfulness, and kindness had taught Angelica a patience she’d never needed before, or knew she had in her. Ironically, she supposed, it had taught her about being a mother. Angelica thought then that she was making up for the years she’d spent away from Longhampton; in fact she was doing exactly what Pauline had done for her, as an unwanted baby. Those years of trying to please her unbending father, resenting the way her overtures were rejected, vanished with the simple acts of making her mother comfortable.
And she had felt needed. That’s what had moved her most.
‘I’m holding you back,’ her mother had murmured when she stayed in to keep her company, watching old MGM musicals on days when the sun sparkled on the canal. ‘You should be out, doing things.’
‘I’d rather be here with you,’ Angelica had said, and by the fourth time she said it, she really meant it.
She made herself pick up the letter again, uncertain if she wanted to read to the end or not. Would it make a difference – now – to know whose family she was part of? It wasn’t as if she needed to discover who she was. All her life she’d been independent, self-contained. Angelica wasn’t even sure if she wanted some stranger to be able to claim her. Coming back to Longhampton had been about stripping back the versions of herself until only Angela Clarke remained, and now it seemed she wasn’t even Angela; but at the same time, she was getting a clearer view of herself than she’d ever done before.
I am a changeling, after all, she thought suddenly. It wasn’t me just being selfish when I couldn’t see myself in Mum or Dad. Maybe they were seeing someone else they knew in me, and I never even realised.
Who was it they were seeing?
Curiosity got the better of her, and she read on to the end of the letter, past the apologies and explanations, and on to the bare facts of what other life Pauline had rescued her from. And when she turned the page, and read her real mother’s story, her tears blurred Pauline’s diffident handwriting, and dropped, blotting the old notepaper.
13
By the time Katie and Ross turned up for the third dancing class, it already felt like a habit. They hung up their coats on the same dolphin-shaped brass hook, exchanged the same polite smiles with Baxter and Peggy, who were already changed into their ‘proper’ dancing shoes, and listened to Trina’s acid commentary on her latest speed-dating antics in Newtons, Longhampton’s supposedly cosmopolitan wine bar.
‘Ooh, that place makes my flesh crawl!’ said Chloe, shaking her mass of curls so hard the velvet flower nearly fell out.
‘I know,’ agreed Lauren. ‘The only thing cheesier than the men in there is the music they play.’
‘No, I mean the hygiene.’ Chloe’s eyes widened. ‘The glasses are filthy! You could catch anything in there!’
Lauren had seen what some people could catch in Newtons, direct from the nurses’ mouth, but she didn’t think it was wise to say, not with Trina there.
Angelica seemed distracted when they arrived, but got them straight into a vigorous cha-cha introductory session ‘to get the blood flowing’, demonstrating the gyrating Latin steps with Ross, until they were all pink with exertion from the strutting and spinning.
‘At least it’s music we know,’ whined Trina, as Angelica absent-mindedly put ‘Lady Marmalade’ on for the second time.
‘What? Sorry . . .’ Angelica ejected the CD. ‘Social foxtrot!’ Then she put her Frank Sinatra album on, pushing them through their social foxtrot steps over and over, until for the first time ever, Ross and Katie had almost managed a perfect box corner.
It wasn’t a big thing, but to Katie it was like walking on water. She and Ross were moving almost as one, to ‘Come Fly With Me’. OK, they were the basic steps and no fancy stuff, but it was starting to fit together. The smile of amazement was just spreading on to her face, when the parping brass solo came to an unexpected halt. The hall was left in silence, bar the shuffle of feet, and the sound of Lauren counting, ‘One, two, three, noooo!’ at Chris.
‘Stop, stop, stop!’ yelled Angelica, clapping her hands together. The sound echoed like gunshots in the high-ceilinged room.
Katie stumbled over Ross’s suddenly stationary foot, and swore under her breath as she fell into him.
‘We nearly had it then,’ she hissed into his chest, resentfully. ‘What does she want to stop for, the stupid cow?’
‘Shh,’ said Ross, knitting his brows together in a warning as he looked over her head.
Katie turned round and caught sight of Angelica’s tight expression, which was a study in furious dismay. Her dark eyes were half closed and she seemed to be breathing heavily, directing her gaze back and forth around the room.
Angelica’s been in a funny mood since the beginning of the class, thought Katie. Distracted, and snappy. It wasn’t li
ke her to miss Chris nearly twisting Lauren’s ankle, and then she’d really had a go at Greg for not turning his phone off – although Katie had to concede that it was a bit workaholic to take business calls after eight at night. And, she thought, he could have apologised to Jo, rather than just dropping her hands and rushing out.
She cast a sidelong look at Jo, who still seemed rather pained. Katie wondered if there was a reason Greg had insisted on taking the call outside. Was there some problem with the business? It was a bit late for that, but Greg did work all hours. They were both looking daggers at each other, but that might have been because Jo had had to dance with Chloe for twenty minutes during the cha-cha-cha session.
I quite like the cha-cha, thought Katie unexpectedly. It felt do-able, all shimmying shoulders and jazz hands, simple enough to make everyone feel a little better about their abilities, after the toe-squashing complications of the social foxtrot. The music helped, for a start – the party rhythms made her feet do the cha-cha-cha side-shuffle instinctively and her knees bent as if the music was telling her what to do.
For once, the younger ones had had the advantage (‘It’s in the knees!’ as Angelica kept shouting) and Chloe’s bronzed cleavage had taken on a life of its own, especially in the low-cut pink wrap dress she was wearing to comply with Angelica’s dress-up code. Jo’s hadn’t been far behind. There were, Katie thought, as Ross twirled her around and the class spun before her, six of them in that dance: Jo, Chloe and their freestyling bosoms.
Unfortunately, as soon as they moved on to the revision session on the social foxtrot, it had become apparent that everyone bar Ross and the older couples had pretty much forgotten everything they’d learned in the previous two weeks. That was when Angelica’s mood had turned from absent-minded to positively dark.
‘Katie!’ hissed Ross, pulling her attention back to the strop unfolding on the other side of the room. ‘She’s looking at us!’
‘Oookaay,’ Katie whispered, then swallowed as she realised that the lighthouse beam of Angelica’s annoyance was indeed directed at her and Ross. This probably wasn’t the moment, she thought, to point out their ten seconds of flukey success.
‘Katie,’ said Angelica, drumming her red nails on her folded arms. ‘Be honest with me here. If this was WeightWatchers, do you think you’d bother to turn up if you’d spent the week stuffing yourself with crisps?’
‘No?’ she replied.
‘So why – why do you all turn up here without having bothered to so much as tap your feet from one week to the next?’ Angelica demanded, her voice rising. She uncrossed her arms so she could spread them wide in a dramatic gesture of despair. ‘How do you expect to get any better if you don’t practise? It’s not just about learning the steps, it’s about feeling the music! Feeling it guide you round the floor! I mean, you look so awkward! If you weren’t married,’ she went on, flinging her arms towards Katie and Ross, ‘I’d wonder if you so much as held each other from one week to the next!’
Katie felt Ross flinch next to her, and she knew her own face would be turning bright pink beneath her foundation. They hadn’t. Or rather, they didn’t.
How come Angelica could tell that instantly, whereas Peter at the counselling sessions couldn’t, she wondered. Angelica’s beady blue eyes cut straight through the happy-happy image Katie tried to keep up when she and Ross were out of the house. Presumably it came from her lifetime’s experience of couples faking chemistry competitively in these dances of pretend courtship and passion.
Fortunately, Angelica wasn’t in the mood to linger on their shortcomings. She had already moved on to poor Lauren, standing next to them.
‘And you two! Lauren! Chris!’ She put her hands to her head in despair. ‘What’s going on? You’re both young, you’re not married yet, so presumably there’s some chemistry somewhere? Right? So where does it go when you’re dancing? It’s like watching someone trying to set up a deckchair. You’re never going to learn to dance like partners if you don’t practise!’
‘We try!’ protested Lauren, glaring furiously at Chris. ‘But some people are never in of an evening! Some people don’t even call to say they’re coming to class.’
‘Some people have . . . commitments in the evenings,’ retorted Chris, with a nervous glance at Bridget and Frank. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? Give me a break, Loz.’
Ross nudged Katie. ‘Eh? What’s going on there, eh? Sounds like a domestic to me. And in front of the in-laws!’
‘Shh,’ she frowned, but felt a little relief that it wasn’t just her and Ross with bickering issues. She saw Bridget’s expression twitch, as if she was struggling to keep her face neutral. What was going on there, she wondered?
‘Commitments? What commitments are more important than learning to dance with this beautiful girl?’ demanded Angelica, taking a step nearer Chris. He took a scared step back. ‘Because if you don’t start taking this seriously, she might as well do her wedding waltz with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of you! She’d stand less chance of falling over it!’
‘Thank you!’ said Lauren, crossing her own arms and glaring at Chris, who looked stunned, then sulky.
Angelica looked at Bridget and Frank and pointed between Chris and Lauren, her skinny eyebrows raised in high dudgeon. ‘Am I right? Did you two dance like you do without practising?’
‘I don’t even remember learning . . .’ began Frank, but Bridget cut in diplomatically.
‘Well, we didn’t have much else to do. And it’s not music they’re familiar with, is it? It takes a while to get the hang of it,’ she said, patting his arm. ‘Frank was no Gene Kelly to begin with, were you, love?’
‘I bet he never nearly broke your toe, though, did he, Mum?’ demanded Lauren. ‘I bet he never—’
‘All right, Loz! Stop going on about it!’ snapped Chris, and Katie felt a flash of sympathy for his discomfort.
She’d been paired with Chris for a few songs, and although she wasn’t much better, she was beginning to have some sympathy for Lauren’s frustrated feet. Neither she nor Chris had much sense of rhythm and the overall effect was of two people in leg-irons trying to shuffle away from a chain-gang.
‘Come on!’ she protested on his behalf. ‘Not everyone picks physical things up so quickly!’
‘And no bloke likes being compared with his father-in-law,’ added Ross, but with enough of a nod to Frank to defuse the tension.
Chris smiled gratefully at her, and she gave him a twisted smile back; malcos together.
Angelica’s attitude seemed to soften a little, as if Katie’s outburst had brought her back from wherever her bad mood had taken her.
‘Well, that’s very true. But it’s why you have to practise. Now, Lauren, your mum and dad dance very well. But if you want to dance like them, you’ve got to put the hours in,’ she went on. ‘All of you!’ She turned her attention to Chloe and Trina. ‘Enthusiasm’s all very well, but if you think you’re going to impress a bloke flailing around with sloppy step sequences, then . . .’
‘If one ever turns up,’ Trina started, belligerently, but Chloe nudged her into prudent silence.
Katie looked sideways and saw Greg looking at her. He rolled his eyes. She didn’t roll hers back. For the first time ever, she was rather unimpressed by Greg. He’d been late, even before his phone call break – ‘stuck in traffic on the ring road’ – and wasn’t exactly putting his back into it now. It was disappointing, thought Katie. Not his commitment to work – that she could understand – but his obvious air of sufferance at being here. She couldn’t even admire his suit with the enthusiasm that she would normally, knowing he was moving so woodenly inside it. She’d thought that he’d be as easily competent at dancing as he was at everything else, but she had to admit that Ross was picking this up faster than Greg.
In fact he’d picked up the cha-cha so fast she was beginning to wonder if it was on that teach-yourself-to-dance DVD. He even had the camp hand gestures right. Ross had danced with Jo, and Angelica aske
d the two of them to demonstrate a new spin step, which had made Jo’s handkerchief hem float up like flower petals round her curving calves. They’d moved around each other really easily, linking and dropping hands, falling in and out of the holds, and Katie had felt a tiny stab of jealousy that Jo’s relaxed swing brought out a new kind of confidence in Ross. He was leading her; she was happy to be led. Their over-the-top Latino struttings had been the performance of the evening.
Angelica’s voice cut through her thoughts. ‘You’re never going to enjoy doing it until you’re confident about where your feet are going. I want to see a bit more involvement! More passion! More instinct!’ She swept a dramatic hand around the room. ‘Please! Think of me here! At least get a Glenn Miller CD out of the library and listen to the rhythms.’
‘But it’s hard practising on my own at home,’ protested Chloe. ‘I don’t have enough room, or a partner, and I don’t know what music’s right and the people below me have been complaining about the banging on my floor . . .’
‘Right!’ said Angelica. ‘Starting this week, you’re all coming to the Friday night social dance here.’
Everyone stared at her.
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘It’s a great chance to get dressed up and see what those steps look like when they’re done properly! Seven-thirty till eleven, four pounds a head, free orange squash. You’ll see quicksteps and waltzes and jive and foxtrots, lots of people who know what they’re doing, you’ll learn plenty just watching. Baxter and Peggy go sometimes already, don’t you? I’ve seen you two there.’
Of course they go, thought Katie, as Peggy bobbed her roller-set obediently. Baxter probably rules that dancefloor like a basking shark in built-up heels.
‘And can we dance with other people?’ asked Trina hopefully.
‘If you want to dance with Chloe all evening that’s up to you,’ said Angelica. ‘But I think you’ll find that two lovely young girls like yourselves will be in high demand. And the rest of you . . .’ She paused and gave them a little wink. ‘You might find that seeing your partner dancing with someone else will make you want to raise your own game a bit. Just make sure you book them in for the first and last dance. Isn’t that right, Peggy?’ she added with a wink.