The Ballroom Class

by Lucy Dillon

  The thought of Ross moving out made her sick. But at the same time, she still couldn’t dredge up any feelings more passionate than concern and affection for him.

  And nothing was going to change; she’d still have to work, he’d still coast along, being great with the kids, but like a brother to her.

  Was that enough?

  Ross was loading the dishwasher in the kitchen, with the martyr-like demeanour of someone who rarely remembered to do it normally.

  ‘So,’ said Katie, ‘are you ready for us to talk?’

  Ross put the last dish in, and stood up slowly, then turned to face her. His expression was calm, but Katie sensed a distance between them, a separation of mental space that she hadn’t felt for years. She had no idea what he was going to say and her skin went cold.

  ‘No, I need to talk,’ said Ross. ‘I’d like you to listen, and I don’t want you to interrupt like you always do until I’ve said everything. Otherwise it’ll turn into a row and I’m past that, after today.’

  Katie opened her mouth, then made herself close it. She nodded.

  ‘Right.’ Ross gestured to the table. ‘Should we sit down?’

  It seemed ridiculous to make it even more formal, but Katie sat down anyway.

  ‘I’ve been thinking over the last few days,’ said Ross. ‘About what you said. About not loving me any more. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so humiliated or hurt in my life. I gave things up for you, and because I thought it would make you happy, and now you’re telling me that, basically, I’m not a man to you any more. And how is that my fault?’

  Katie flinched.

  ‘I’m not going to lie to you, I was . . . gutted, and I wanted to pack my stuff and leave, but I can’t do that, not now we’ve got the children to put first. We’ve got to think of what’s best for them. So I need you to give me some straight yes or no answers. Nothing else. Just yes or no.’

  ‘OK,’ said Katie, cautiously. ‘If I can.’

  ‘Are you going to move out?’

  ‘No!’ she said, startled.

  Ross mocked her startled expression. ‘Well, do you expect me to move out?’

  Katie blinked. ‘No! I mean, not unless you want to. I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know.’ He looked sarcastic. ‘I thought you’d have planned this a bit better. Done a spreadsheet agenda or something.’

  ‘Ross, I haven’t planned anything. I kept telling you.’ This is the moment, thought Katie. Take it back. Tell him you’re not sure. ‘It’s not definite, I mean, I’m not saying I don’t . . .’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Ross, his voice suddenly quite tough. ‘You can’t just say, “Oh, I only wanted to get it off my chest! I didn’t really mean it!” and expect me to forget. You’ve said it now.’

  ‘No,’ said Katie, startled by his bitterness. He was right. She had to take responsibility for what she’d started.

  ‘I’m the one who looks after the children,’ he went on, ‘so I can’t move out. And anyway, I can’t afford to pay rent – and you can’t afford to stop working or get a nanny. So we might as well just stay as we are. But . . .’ Ross spoke briskly, as if he was trying not to feel what he was saying. ‘If you’re going to treat me like an au pair, then I need two days a week off, when you can sort out childcare. I want an evening off during the week, too. And I don’t want to share a bed with you any more, so I’ll move into the spare room. That’s my space. I’ll move my computer in there, so the kids don’t think it’s such a big deal, and hopefully they won’t notice. It’s about time we stopped them coming into our bed at night anyway.’ He corrected himself painfully. ‘Your bed.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Katie, though she was beginning to feel nauseous. ‘If that’s what you want to do, then fine.’

  ‘Don’t put it back on to me,’ he said. ‘This is what you want. You don’t love me any more. You can’t bear to touch me.’

  ‘I haven’t said that,’ Katie began but Ross glared with a hurt pride in his eyes. It cut through her like acid.

  ‘You don’t need to say it. When was the last time we made love?’

  Her eyes dropped to the table; to the pine-cones Hannah had brought her, to Jack’s dummy that he wasn’t supposed to have these days.

  ‘Don’t you put it all on me – when was the last time you touched me?’ she said. ‘It’s not like you ever want to.’

  Ross let out a frustrated groan. ‘I’m not an animal, Katie. I’m not going to force myself on you when you get into bed and turn your back on me. I mean, I could understand, after Jack was born . . . but I thought eventually, you’d want me to touch you again, not just hold you while you fall asleep. But you haven’t, and you make me feel like some kind of sex pest if I do try to start anything.’

  Katie stared at him, trying to overlay the sexy designer she’d fancied so much in the pub with this cold, weary man. She was tired, constantly, but that wasn’t the only reason her desire had died. She longed to point out that the only reason Jack was conceived in the first place was because of a brief phase of freelance work Ross had taken on for the local paper; the thrill of him showing some creative spark, of taking some of the burden off her, of getting properly dressed in the morning, had led to a little holiday for the three of them – and then to Jack.

  But that would sound too cruel, and too materialistic, so she said nothing.

  ‘I miss it,’ he said softly. ‘I miss making love to you.’

  Katie gulped, unable to bear the humbled longing in Ross’s voice. ‘I do too.’

  She ached with nostalgia for a time that seemed like someone else’s memory, and for a moment, she thought Ross would put his hands over hers on the table, linking his fingers with hers, the way he used to in the days when they went out for dinner: their little sign at the table that he couldn’t wait to get her home and into bed. Sometimes not even into bed, sometimes on the stairs or the sofa, her slim legs entwined around his.

  He didn’t. He folded his hands, waiting for her to say something, but Katie didn’t know what to say. It was as if someone was desperately ill; there was so much she wanted to say, but she was too scared of using the wrong words that she couldn’t speak at all.

  Well, something is ill, she reminded herself. Your marriage, and those holding-hands-at-seventy dreams you had. It’s never going to happen, but instead, you’re going to have to live in the shell of what you thought would work, for years and years and years.

  Katie looked at Ross over the table, the pink braid still in his hair where Hannah had twisted it, his cheek swollen from Greg’s punch. The same old Ross, but different. A Ross who didn’t love her enough to argue with her any more.

  ‘I don’t want you to leave,’ she blurted out.

  ‘I’m not going to,’ he replied, and pushed his chair back from the table. ‘I’ll move my stuff.’

  Katie felt tears force their way up her throat, choking her. She wanted so hard to say the right thing, to stop all this, but her mind was blank.

  ‘Ross,’ she called out, when he was at the door. ‘Ross?’

  He turned back.

  Katie had to force herself to say it. ‘Do you still love me?’

  He paused for an agonising few seconds, then said, ‘Don’t make me answer that,’ and walked out.

  28

  Angelica stood in her mother’s small back garden, breathing in the cool November air, trying to put her finger on what had changed. It wasn’t just the weather turning nippier. It was something inside herself, sharpening up as her old lives, the different Angelicas jostled for space, challenging her to decide what was real, and what was a myth she’d forgotten she’d made up.

  Underneath. She’d never liked to peer underneath before, but now . . . Now, she realised she was almost curious to see what would be there.

  The light had nearly gone but she could make out the pale white stone that marked where Rosie was buried, appropriately enough, under a rose bush by the back wall. Full of guilt for being poolside
in Florida when she finally died (‘I’m so sorry, Angie, she just stopped eating . . .’), Angelica had sent ten rose bushes for her mother to plant in Rosie’s memory, but only three had survived, and were now all gnarled up, leafless and hunched against the coming frosts.

  Rosie had been her constant companion until she moved to Florida, and Jerry. Angelica had always claimed to hate pets, but on a whim she’d picked up the little Yorkshire terrier at the dogs’ home the first time she and Tony fell out, and Rosie, unlike the men in Angelica’s life, had never looked at her with anything less than devotion in her liquid-brown eyes.

  All Angelica’s unconditional love had been lavished on Rosie. Safer than lavishing it on a man, and more likely to come back to her.

  Selfish, she thought now. I’ve been a selfish cow. I should never have left Rosie, even if she did remind me of Tony. Maybe it was a blessing we never had children.

  Maybe.

  With a heavy sigh, she turned back into the house, and steeled herself to face the box.

  It had been delivered that morning, but Angelica hadn’t been able to bring herself to open it straight away. But now, she knew it had to be done, and mixed herself a gin and tonic to work up the courage to slit the brown tape and pull back the layers and layers of frothy bubblewrap.

  It was a huge, heavy box, that two men had carried into the sitting room for her, and it still had the markings on it from the storage unit it had been stored in for over ten years.

  ‘What’s in here, love? A body?’ one of the young men had joked, pretending to hold his back.

  Angelica had laughed because, in a way, there was a body in there: the old Angelica, and the multi-coloured, bejewelled and bedazzled skins she’d danced in. She tipped them each twenty quid, before her judgement could get the better of her, and she insisted they took the box away again.

  Most of Angelica’s life was in storage, and she hadn’t really missed it. Memento shelves weren’t her style. Until she moved into Jerry’s sprawling mansion, she’d lived in a succession of tiny Soho studios and one-bed flats that barely had a cupboard, let alone an attic. Every time one phase ended, she’d pack what she didn’t want hanging around as reminders, and lock it up in her storage unit. Her first years dancing in London, her life with Tony, her competition days, her marriage – all in boxes. She didn’t want to be reminded of the past, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to sever her connection to it either. It meant it belonged to her, which was different, Angelica thought, to her belonging to it.

  For the first time, though, she felt ready to start shedding these skins for good, and accepting the one she’d had all along. Besides which, there was something in this box that she wanted.

  Angelica took the final gulp of gin and tonic, put down the heavy glass, and pulled aside the last layer of old bubblewrap.

  A pungent, familiar smell of dry-cleaning fluid, and perfume hit her nose as she lifted the first dress out: her red ballroom dress, from her first years on the professional circuit. It was delicate but extraordinarily heavy, with hundreds of ruby-red stones set like curling flames up the bodice, and long floating chiffon sleeves that trailed behind her like angel wings as Tony swept her round the floor in the smooth, elegant patterns of the waltz and the foxtrot. Angelica held it high, to let the long skirt hang; it was fluted and cut to rise up in a cloud when they spun, moving as one, revealing her finely turned ankles in the matching crimson satin court shoes.

  They were stoned too, she remembered: tiny roses on the toe.

  Just holding the dress again made her feet ache to dance as she had done then, when she was twenty-five and had no idea about anything.

  This isn’t what you’re looking for, she reminded herself sternly, and laid the ballroom gown carefully over the small sofa.

  The next dress was from the same time, but it was for Latin, and cut tighter and higher to show off the quick, flirtatious leg movements. Angelica murmured adoringly as she stroked the shimmering scarlet satin, fringed along the slanted hem with long jet beads. It finished right up, almost on her hip, and instead of sleeves, it had scarlet armlets that emphasised her slender arms when she wound them round Tony’s neck, or flexed them in the showy Latin poses.

  Everyone said she and Tony were made for Latin; both dark, and stormy, with long limbs and snaky hips. Not that they were bad at the ballroom dances – she had the necessary grace to make the formal European dances look effortless – but the fiery Latin rhythms inspired a kind of magical lustre to their steps, as though their shoes were singeing the floor as they passed.

  Then again, the Latin dances were all about sex, she thought. And she and Tony were all about sex. None of those dirty glances and seductive stroking were faked with them, not like some of their competitors. At first Angelica had pitied the girls who had to feign grand passion with partners who were more Liberace than Valentino off the floor, but in the end, she had to admit that, like the deep tans everyone sported, keeping things artificial was by far the safest way.

  She lifted out another short, thigh-skimming samba confection: gold, this time, with silvery flowers appliquèd on the bodice, and virtually no back to it at all, just silvery chains. Tony had a silver shirt to match it, peacock that he was. They’d won a national title when she’d worn this dress – or ‘what little there was of it’, as her father had apparently commented when she’d sent the photos home. She’d only found that out last year, when her mother had been rambling in her memories, and Angelica had relived those years again, at her side.

  Angelica’s breath stopped in her chest as she held it in her shaking hands. Feeling the fabric, instead of looking at flat photographs, made it all vivid, as if the emotions were soaked into the material along with the old sweat and smoke and body oil and the smell of the Empress Ballroom, Blackpool. She felt the agony in her calves and toes, and the exhilaration and the triumph of that final, flexed pose that said, ‘we’ve won’.

  If she’d known then it was going to be her final dance with Tony, she would never have sent it to the cleaners. She’d have kept it, just as it was, with his fingerprints and aftershave and quick breaths still on it.

  She carried on delving into the box, and laid out one dress after another over the sofa, until it was piled with net and sequins and trailing chiffon floats, most in glowing shades of red – tomato, scarlet, lipstick crimson. The box was huge, but still held only seven of her sumptuous, complicated dresses. Angelica knew there were at least ten more in storage, thousands of pounds’ worth. She always had more dresses than anyone else, and they were always more twinkling, more beaded, more unusual. Then again, she’d always eaten less than anyone else, gone out less than anyone else, and spent virtually every penny she made on her gowns and shoes.

  Everything else, she knew, someone would buy for her. But Angelica made it a rule that she, and only she, paid for the gorgeous clothes she danced in.

  The dress at the bottom of the box was the one she was looking for: her favourite tango dress.

  Well, she corrected herself, stroking the sequins on the thin shoulder straps, her second favourite, competition tango dress.

  Her favourite tango dress was the one she wore to dance the Argentine tango with Tony, and that was their own dance, their private dance that wasn’t for judging, that they danced in the milongas, the hot tango salons. It was more like foreplay, and fighting, than a dance. And that dress was the one he loved: simple and tight and sexy, with none of the gaudy embellishments you needed to shine under the unforgiving spotlights and the judges’ critical eyes.

  This, though, was the formal dress she’d worn for the exhibition tangos they danced in ballrooms round the country, as well as for one or two smaller competitions. It wasn’t very forgiving, to put it mildly, and even back then, when she could count each velvety rib, any sign of PMS-bloat meant Angelica didn’t bother trying to squeeze into the tight, back-laced bodice. It was cut on the bias, from coal-black satin, with a long, narrow skirt, slit up the thigh to allow for th
e sinuous strides that characterised the ballroom tango. Angelica had insisted that her dressmaker – a patient woman who lived in Tooting and was used to the feverish demands of half-starved dancers – lined it with blood-red satin, so it would flash as she slid and twisted her body into the dramatic turns.

  That red lining was her way of bringing a little of the teasing, hot-breathed Argentine tango she and Tony danced in private to the rigid formality of the competition style: the Europeans in their dinner suits and polite tea dances might have smoothed the raw edges, formalising the steps until it was a sleek, polite parody of Latin seduction, but the secret crimson splashes were her sign to Tony that she knew what was beating at the heart of their ricochet head-turns and straight armholds.

  She sighed, feeling the mesh against her palm. She half wanted to try them on, knowing she wasn’t so much bigger now than she was in her best dancing days, but she was scared to, of seeing how much had changed in her face.

  The right dress made such a difference. Not just to the dance, but to everything. The magic of those sequins and stones and cleverly cut skirts: they bestowed a fairy-godmother touch of glamour, a VIP pass into a Technicolor world where everyone’s eyes were on you. You couldn’t be your normal everyday self in a tiny scrap of satin, held on by flesh-toned angelskin fabric so it seemed, from the audience, that only air and the speed of your steps was keeping it up. You couldn’t shuffle, or stoop, when hundred of sequins glittered with every move you made, and yards of chiffon swirled around your feet. You weren’t just Cyd Charisse or Ginger Rogers in your mind, you actually looked like Ginger Rogers, and the music playing for you was just the same as was played for her. The dress and the dance and the music, all together, meant you could turn a daydream into something real, for those three minutes on the floor, his hands holding yours, your knees brushing his thigh. You could be a dream woman, and your partner could be the man of your most romantic fantasies.