The Ballroom Class

by Lucy Dillon

  Frank caught her smiling, and thought his heart would burst with pride.

  ‘You’re the star turn,’ he said.

  ‘You and Mum are, you mean,’ said Lauren. ‘Well, we all are. We’re the von Trapps of Longhampton.’

  ‘We are,’ said Frank, and hummed the melody as they dipped and swayed. Bridget loved this song. He remembered her singing it to the boys when they were tiny babies, rocking them back to sleep when she thought he couldn’t hear her singing. But he could hear, standing on the stairs, looking at his wife, and his children, and knowing there was nothing else in the world a man could wish for.

  What the hell, he thought, I’ll sing if I want to.

  ‘Love, forever . . .’

  ‘Da-aa-aad,’ said Lauren, grimacing.

  ‘. . . true,’ sang Frank, and the song drew to a close.

  ‘Just us now,’ said Katie, watching the Armstrongs’ light-as-a-feather waltzes sending the crowd into a flurry of romantic sighs.

  Ross gripped her hand. ‘Katie, just so you know . . .’

  Katie’s heart started racing as the Armstrongs bowed and curtsied to each other. Any moment now the tango beat would start and then they’d be on.

  She pulled up the straps of her new dress – her own, this time, bought on a shopping trip with Jo. It had done them both good, booking a wardrobe makeover. New women, the pair of them. Hannah and Molly had some of the clothes they’d thrown out for their dressing-up box, and Lauren the internet expert was helping them eBay the rest. Very lucratively, in Jo’s case.

  ‘What?’ she asked, distracted.

  ‘We’re not doing the tango.’ As he spoke the band started playing, Angelica announced them, and Katie turned in panic.

  ‘But we practised the tango!’

  Ross grabbed her hands. ‘That’s just for us. It’s like Angelica said, some things are private. We’re going to do a social foxtrot, nothing fancy. Just you and me.’

  Katie opened her mouth to object, and Ross put a finger on her lips.

  ‘I asked Angelica for this song,’ he said. ‘It’s the wedding dance we couldn’t do when we got married. Trust me. Let me lead.’

  Before she could protest, Ross led her out onto the dancefloor.

  He looks so handsome, she thought, her heart banging even faster in her chest, as she admired him in his dark suit and buttercup-yellow shirt. Ross wasn’t a suit person, but he knew she loved to see him in one. Last year, she would have said nothing and hoped he’d somehow guess, while he’d have taken any hints as a dig about his lack of a job.

  Now, though, they’d found a compromise: he’d got himself a casual new suit – not too formal – for the meetings Jo was setting up for their web design business, and she’d promised not to nag him about ties. He looked good enough without one.

  ‘What’s the song?’ she asked, as he put his arm around her, pulling her tightly to him. Butterflies jostled in her stomach, not just because everyone was staring at them, but because if the song was wrong, somehow, it would be a million times more embarrassing than her falling over his feet.

  ‘Wait,’ said Ross, and tipped his head forward so his forehead touched hers.

  Then the romantic Gershwin melody began and she recognised it straight away. She looked up into Ross’s brown eyes and hoped he could see in hers how full her heart was at that moment. Too full to speak.

  ‘It’s very clear . . .’ sang Ross, just in case she hadn’t got it.

  But Katie had. ‘Our love is here to stay,’ she replied.

  And he led off in their simple social foxtrot, nothing fancy or showy, just the basic romantic steps that let you hold someone close enough to whisper in their ear. Steps that had led to so many weddings in Longhampton since the Hall opened. Steps that let a very modern man and wife borrow some old-fashioned stardust, for as long as the song lasted. Their love was there to stay even when the Hall was being swept and the doors were locked for the night.

  As Katie and Ross smooched around the floor, the mirrorball spun above their heads, showering them with white diamond confetti.

  Then, as at all the best weddings, the tiles of the sprung maple floor vanished from sight as the rest of the dancers took their partners and joined them.

  One of those couples was Angelica Andrews, dancing a slow foxtrot with Peggy, their heads tilted in gentle conversation as they stepped and turned in their own private world, letting the years blur and vanish around them.

  Epilogue

  The national papers picked up on the quirky story of the old building being brought back to life by ballroom dancers. It had ‘film potential’, according to one over-enthusiastic feature writer, which set Trina and Chloe off into a long, heated discussion about whether Gwyneth Paltrow could learn to dance well enough to be Lauren. Baxter had Roger Moore down for himself, although Ross and Katie thought David Suchet would be a better fit. Especially if he still had his Poirot moustache.

  One paper ran a whole page on the gala night, finding couples who’d met at the Memorial Hall, and interviewing Angelica at some length, about her starry past and her feelings about coming home, now ballroom dancing was big news again, thanks to the television. They sent a photographer, who did a gorgeous portrait of her in her mother’s sitting room, long legs crossed, in her red jersey practice dress.

  ‘Oh my God, you’re so photogenic,’ Lauren had gasped at the paper, when she and Bridget came round with Katie to discuss the next move in the ‘Save the Hall’ campaign. ‘Look at you! Not a line on your face!’

  ‘I have a portrait in the attic,’ Angelica said, with a wink at Bridget. ‘It’s a wreck, believe me.’

  That was true, too, in a way, she thought, as she cut around the photograph from the newspaper and stuck it carefully in the last page of her mother’s last album. A whole history of myself, sitting here in a box in my parents’ old house, while I went round the world trying to get away from it. And now here I am, adding to it.

  She looked approvingly at the final picture. Angelica, at home. Happy. For good measure, she stuck her wedding photo of Jerry in there too, but took out a picture for herself: one of her and Tony at the National Championships in 1977, mid-air in some complicated jive move, eyes black with liner and fixed entirely on one another.

  Angelica didn’t even remember seeing it at the time, and now it could have been someone else.

  Maybe it was better that way, remembering Tony as he was then, dark and sleek and handsome. She had no idea what he’d look like now – gone to seed, probably, with a string of divorces and a clapped-out Porsche.

  She looked at herself in the photograph again, curled up on the sofa, raising her chin to the photographer as the light fell on her cheekbones, and shadowed her long slanting eyes. It had been weeks now since she’d needed a sleeping pill to get through the night; even her creaky old knees seemed to be loosening up again.

  I’ve done all right, though, she thought, and allowed herself a gentle smile.

  In the days before Christmas, Angelica decided two things: she would get a new puppy, whom she’d love, housetrain, and not treat as a substitute baby-husband, and secondly, it was time to put 34 Sydney Street on the market.

  In her truthful moments, she wasn’t really sure that she wanted to sell, but she believed in setting things in motion and seeing what happened.

  If someone offers and I’m sad, then I’ll stay, she reasoned. But with house prices in Longhampton getting to what they were, she’d be mad not to take what she could and get back to her lovely white house in Islington, and her friends, and the cafés, and the life she’d put on hold.

  Yet, to her surprise, she found herself thinking, I could always keep it going. It’s not like it would cost much to run. I could come up for weekly lessons, keep Peggy and Baxter company at the social nights. Maybe get the formation team going again, if there was enough interest. And Jo and Katie were still on at her about children’s lessons – that was something to think about.

  It made her
smile that she could even be bothered to tell white lies to herself about it, when she was honest about so many other things now.

  While everyone else was scurrying round the precinct doing their last-minute Christmas shopping, Angelica tidied what little there was in the house, ready for the estate agent to come round to value it. She’d made a pot of coffee and put croissants on to warm, as Jo had advised. She was pouring cream into her mother’s saved-for-best milk-jug when there was a knock at the door, and, straightening her skirt, she went to answer it.

  Whatever’s to be will be, she thought.

  ‘Hello!’ she said, with a warm smile for the estate agent on the front step, and her smile broadened as she thought, he’s not the spotty youth I spoke to on the high street. So there are attractive older men in Longhampton after all.

  And then her smile wavered, and broadened, and wavered again as slowly old memories clicked together in her head, waking up from a long, long sleep.

  She swallowed, suddenly conscious of her hair, her feet, her posture, everything. Surely it couldn’t be? Really?

  ‘Hello?’ she said again, this time with a touch of disbelief, as the man standing in front of her gave her a slow, appreciative smile that reached all the way up to his jet-black eyes.

  If it was who she thought it was, he hadn’t gone to seed. He’d just matured, his youthful swagger mellowed into a rakish older charm. The red scarf hanging round his neck, over the cashmere coat, didn’t say multiple divorce, and neither did the lack of silver in the dark, swept-back hair.

  ‘Saw you in the papers, and I found you at last,’ said Tony Canero. He extended a tanned hand, with one gold signet ring on the little finger and no pale tan line on his wedding finger. ‘You’re a difficult woman to track down, Angie.’

  The gesture was so poised and balanced, so redolent of his perfect timing, that Angelica felt her feet go light, as well as her head.

  She didn’t miss the irony that he’d eventually found her here, the place she’d been running away from all the time she’d known him.

  That wasn’t irony, though. It was right.

  ‘Well, here I am,’ she said.

  ‘And you look as beautiful as ever,’ he said. ‘Are you dancing?’

  ‘If you’re asking,’ said Angelica Andrews, and he took her hand, the promise of many dances in one easy motion, and kissed it, never letting his dark eyes leave hers.