‘She is oppressive and overbearing and she has taken over my life.’
‘But?’
‘But I’m having such a great time!’
‘Really? You think it was the right choice?’
‘Yes, one hundred percent. It is difficult sometimes because she doesn’t let you breathe and she always has to be in the right, but actually, she does seem to know what she’s doing. She’s getting things done and I love her for it.’
‘I will not repeat this part even under torture.’
‘She wouldn’t believe it anyway!’
My phone vibrated on the bed.
We looked at each other awkwardly, then Paul got up and left like an embarrassed dad.
‘Pat?’
‘Baby! How did it go?’
‘Amazing! If you didn’t persuade me to go back to that school, it would have been the biggest mistake of my life. I actually liked her, she gave me the perfect audition piece, she’s taught me so much already! And she says I’m doing a good job …’ I chattered away excitedly, without pausing to catch my breath.
‘I’m so happy for you, I knew you’d make a great impression!’
‘I danced for you! I imagined you were sitting in the chair instead of my teacher’s fat old bum and I pulled out stuff I didn’t even know I had, it was like, oh God, I don’t know how to explain it in words, but it was as if all the passion I feel when I’m with you just exploded out of me, you know? I felt fire running through my veins, my heart pounding and… oh Pat I want to make love with you!’
‘Me too Mia, I’m going crazy thinking about it!’
‘Let’s do it when you come back.’
‘Yes,’ he said, a little breathless, ‘I promise you it will be special.’
And from that moment on, nothing could make me afraid any more.
My grandmother’s phone calls became more and more frequent and urgent, but I never stopped focusing on my goal, and I soon found that everything else was losing its importance. I studied with Mrs Sinclaire every afternoon for four hours, and I spoke on the phone with Pat whenever he could get away. The rest of my time was devoted to schoolwork and a few hours with Nina here and there when Carl could spare her.
One evening when Mum was out with Paul to celebrating her new job, I invited Nina to sleep over. Carl was away with Alex at some conference or other. They’d got it into their heads they were going to become social media consultants after their A-Levels, so Nina was free for once. She was obviously happy to be there, but I did notice she couldn’t stop looking at the clock.
‘Are you okay Nina? Do you want me to get some water or a wet towel? That’s what they do in films when people are having withdrawal symptoms!’
‘Cow! You wait ‘til you’re in love.’
If only you knew.
We went out to take York for a walk and went into the corner shop to get a bucket of caramel popcorn, some M&M’s, a Toblerone, a box of doughnuts and a copy of Heat. We had changed, but it was more fun now that we were beginning to behave like adults. Plus it was time for me to seriously address the subject of sex, and Nina was the only one of my close acquaintances under forty.
‘So did you and Carl do it then?’ I asked nonchalantly.
She coughed with her mouth full of popcorn.
‘In a way.’
‘What do you mean ‘in a way’?’ I asked, intrigued.
‘Okay, so, the week after we went to Bath we were going to do it in my room when my parents were out. I lit some vanilla candles, put on some music, and I had bought this super sexy new underwear…and when he came into the room and saw me like that he got all excited, and he couldn’t stop telling me how beautiful I was, that I looked like a picture, and so on, and then he just stood there complimenting me for like ten minutes instead of getting to the point! So I thought I’d take the initiative and I started to unbutton his shirt and pants. You can imagine me lying on my bed in my tiny little bra and pants while he struggles with his shoes caught in his jeans. Romance eh?’
‘I can’t believe it, and then?’
‘Then he was down to his boxers and socks, and I was pretending not to look down, you know, but obviously I was.’
‘Obviously! And?’
‘And nothing! He said that maybe he was too emotional because I was so beautiful, so he had a… performance crisis!’
‘So you didn’t even.’
‘Nothing at all! He was too embarrassed to try again. It’s my fault, I intimidate men,’ she sighed.
‘Bollocks! Where have you got that from?’ I said, biting off a huge chunk of
Toblerone.
‘There’s no other explanation, Thomas used me, and Carl treats me like a porcelain doll and he can’t bring himself to defile me! I hate men!’
‘Here, eat!’ I told her, handing over the chocolate.
‘I’ll turn into a whale, then I’ll never get a shag.’ She threw a handful of M&Ms dejectedly into her mouth.
‘Anyway, what about you? I know you must have your eye on someone…’
In a parallel dimension I would have told her the truth, she would hug me and start writing up a list of wedding guests. But when you start lying to someone, even if you think it’s for their own good, you become so familiar with your version of the facts that you almost convince yourself.’
‘I am in love only with dance and never until now have I felt reciprocated,’ I said opening the front door with a theatrical flourish.
The sound of her phone startled us awake. It was Carl, who had left the convention and wanted to pick her up.
‘Oh, damn is that the time?’ she exclaimed, rising abruptly and spilling M&Ms onto the carpet.
‘I thought you were staying over?’
‘No, I’d better not, there’s school tomorrow,’ she said folding up her blanket and replacing the cushions on the sofa. It was like the party was over and we were waiting for her dad to pick her up, but this time it was a voluntary choice.
We sat in silence pretending to watch a documentary about monarch butterflies, waiting for Carl to arrive, when my phone, which I had somehow ended up sitting on, rang.
It was Patrick.
We watched the word Angel flash up on the display.
‘Who’s Angel?’ asked Nina.
‘Nobody, you don’t know him, it’s for a school assignment.’ I gasped
‘A school assignment? Of course I’ll know him then! Hmm, let me guess…’
She snatched the phone from my hand and answered.
They were the longest and most distressing seconds of my life. I began to sweat, as I shouted, hopefully loud enough for Patrick to hear, ‘Come on, Nina, give me my phone back!’
‘Hiya! Is that Angel? Tell me who you are, I’ll find out anyway!’ she sang into the phone.
‘Give it back, I would never do that to you!’
‘All right, you can have it’ she held it out towards me for a second, before putting it back to her ear and shouting: ‘I’d recognise that heavy breathing anywhere, Virgil Dickinson! Come on, out with it! Mia is practically my sister!’
She gave me the phone back and I stared at it silently.
I cleared my throat and said simply, ‘I’ll call you back later!’
I could have killed her. She had been so close to catching us!
While I was still trying to slow down my heartbeat, Nina continued to torment me.
‘Virgil is cute! How long has it been going on? And why do you call him Angel? Hey, we could all go out together one night!’
‘Nina, there is nothing between me and Virgil Dickinson, I’ll swear on whatever you like. Angel is a guy I know from dance school, and he’s gay actually, so you can stop looking at me like that! But he’s just split up with his boyfriend, so I guess that’s why he called me.’ I concluded, slightly annoyed.
I was so convincing that I almost believed it too.
She seemed disappointed.
‘Oh well, apologise to him from me when you see him, I j
ust… I don’t know, he seemed so familiar to me.’
Carl arrived a few minutes later. We said goodnight at the door and I watched them go off, hand in hand. Just as she was getting into the car, Nina turned back and said, ‘Do you know that you and Patrick have exactly the same phone? There’s even a scratch in the same corner!’
A second later I had closed the door, ran upstairs, threw myself on the bed and called Patrick.
‘We have to tell her!’ we said, both together.
‘I know!’
‘I was scared to breathe!’
‘How do you think I felt? I thought I was going to have a heart attack!’
‘When I come back we’ll have to have a chat with her. I don’t like going behind people’s backs, especially not my family. I’m sure after the initial shock she’ll be happy for us, and I think now she’s got Carl she won’t feel so pushed out.’
‘I hope so, because I thought I was going to die when she snatched the phone out of my hand.’
‘I like the idea of giving me a code name though! James Bond would be proud! But why am I Angel?’
‘Because you’re my guardian angel! Every time I have a problem you come along and solve it.’
‘And, er.who’s Virgil Dickinson? Out of interest, you know…’
‘Just a boy at school.’
‘A boy at school who has a crush on you?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Not that I know of,’ I answered evasively.
‘Would you tell me if he did?’ he persisted.
‘Why, would you be jealous?’ I teased.
‘Yes, very!’
‘No, there’s nobody else chasing after me, and anyway you’ve always been the only one for me.’
I was touched by the thought that even Patrick, who seemed so calm and in control, had some insecurities, and I was very flattered to be the cause.
‘I love you Mia.’
I would never get used to hearing him say it, every time I felt a pang in my heart, a mixture of awe and disbelief, combined with the pain of not being able to have him with me.
‘I miss you, Pat.’
‘When I get back, I could take you to Skegness. I know a place where they do the best fish and chips in the world, and there’s a very nice little hotel just off the seafront where we could sleep... if you want?’
I hesitated a moment before answering. Here we were, planning my first time, and I was attacked by a wave of anxiety. It was true that I had asked him and that I wanted him so badly, but the idea that was actually going to happen, and soon, scared me to death.
What if I didn’t know what to do? If I was self-conscious and awkward? What if I couldn’t go through with it? But at the same time, just the thought of making love with him left me breathless. I knew it would be amazing, that he would be tender and patient, and let me take all the time I needed. And above all we would have privacy, without the fear of parents bursting in. In a hotel by the sea where we could go back each year to celebrate our anniversary for the rest of our lives.
‘I can’t wait, it will be wonderful.’
Later I heard Mum and Paul come back, and went down to greet them. She was a bit tipsy, and smiled at me instinctively, before remembering she was supposed to be angry with me and trying to look stern.
‘We brought you some cake,’ she said.
‘Thanks, but Nina was here earlier, so I’ve eaten loads already.’
‘Isn’t she staying over?’
‘No, Carl came to get her, her bodyguard.’
‘I thought Carl liked you?’ she asked with a frown.
‘He was,’ I said with a shrug, ‘But men are…what is it you always say? Fickle.’
Her curiosity had got the better of her, which meant she was forced to talk to me, while Paul grinned happily behind her, motioning for me to go on.
‘Oh they are! Extremely fickle. Present company excluded,’ she corrected herself.
‘Of course,’ echoed Paul.
‘And … the ballet? Is everything going okay?’
‘Yes, although I can’t study with Claire anymore.’
‘I know, she called me, she was very sorry, but that’s what can happen when you ask your grandmother for help, you lose all rights. but maybe it will do you good, who knows... it doesn’t necessarily follow that what happened to me it must happen to you... we’re not the same.’
Paul nodded encouragingly, proud of our progress.
I knew she had suffered from not having a real relationship with
her mother, but she had done everything to keep me safe and happy and I didn’t want her to think I was ungrateful.
‘It’s only for a while, Mum, I don’t want to be a burden to everyone. I hope soon I will be able to take care of myself and make you proud.’
‘You’re not a burden,’ she said, taking my hand, ‘You’re just a very ambitious young woman, and that’s not a bad thing. Maybe if I had played my cards better, if I had been less impulsive and stubborn... or more diplomatic …’
‘You wouldn’t have had me,’ I said, hugging her tight.
‘And you wouldn’t have met me,’ said Paul, surrounding us both with his big arms.
It felt like we were a family again. Or perhaps we were starting to be a family for the first time.
19
I couldn’t have been happier with life at dance school. I had already made two new friends, Bryan and Corinne, who were both new like me, and I often stayed with them after class to attend professional trials.
It was so nice to finally be able to talk about dance, steps and variations without sounding like an alien. In fact, dance was all we did talk about, but perhaps that was inevitable. As dancers, we had decided to devote our entire lives to tirelessly perfecting our bodies in preparation for our debuts on the big stage. What else would we talk about?
We stayed in the rehearsal room for hours warming up our muscles, doing splits, practicing at the bar or sharing advice. From the outside, it might have seemed like a claustrophobic life, but for me, for all of us, there was nothing more exciting than spending the day immersed in our natural habitat.
Bryan was two years older than me and had studied at the Royal Academy, while Corinne was my age and had recently moved from Bordeaux. The three of us stuck together and sheltered each other from the suspicious looks and gossip that inevitably followed new arrivals.
My Esmeralda piece was coming along really well, and I could tell that Mrs. Sinclaire was pleased. As I progressed she made fewer comments and smiled more. Now I had mastered the piece and could perform it through to the end I was dying to show it to Patrick and, more than ever, to the jury. I felt prepared and confident. With all that work, and a little luck, I could really do this. There were twenty-two days left until the audition and seventeen until Patrick’s return and I was dizzy with happiness at the thought of the two most important First Times in my life begin so close.
I certainly wasn’t going to be distracted by petty things like coursework or tests.
My grandmother’s chat with the school principal meant that most of the teachers were aware of my audition looming, and they were mostly happy to accommodate me, granting extensions for coursework and generally leaving me in peace. But Mrs Meyer, the English teacher, had expressed concern about the standard of work I was turning in.
‘I know you can do better than this, Mia,’ she said sternly, taking me aside after class. If you keep on handing in sloppy work like this, you’re not going to get the grades you need.’
The fact was that I was already projecting myself into the future, wearing my beautiful blue uniform to study with the best teachers in the world in the splendid halls of the Royal. Anything in between then and now seemed trivial and unimportant.
‘Don’t think you can ignore your schoolwork,’ Mrs Meyer warned me, ‘I know you’re just scraping by in History and in French, too, and if you don’t get the grades, all this ballet training will have been useless.’
I secretly though
t that my grandmother could have persuaded them to take me on even without the grades, perhaps by offering to pay for extra English tuition until I was able to resit, but it didn’t seem wise to say that to Mrs Meyer, and it would certainly have been easier if I passed first time.
‘I’m sorry Mrs Meyer, I’ll do better next time.’
‘I should hope so.’ she said.
I decided to ask Nina for help. Apart from anything else, studying together seemed like the only way I might be able to spend some time with her without Carl hanging around like a bad small. I hadn’t spent any time alone with her since the night of the sleepover that didn’t happen. It seemed like nothing had changed. Carl was even starting to make decisions for her. I couldn’t risk making an enemy of him, though, in case he decided to tell Nina about my feelings for Patrick. We were less friendly these days as it was, presumably because I hadn’t been keen on them getting engaged.
‘Nina, Mrs Meyer is breathing down my neck about my coursework. She thinks I can’t be bothered about schoolwork because I’m too busy thinking about the Royal.’
‘And aren’t you?’ she asked ironically.
‘Well yes, obviously, but can you help me? I guess I still need the grades.’
‘I’m supposed to be going with Carl to look at an office he and Carl want to rent for this social media consultancy thing. Why don’t you come with us? Then we can go back to mine and spend the rest of the evening studying.’
‘With him? What is he, your shadow?’
‘Miaaaa!’ she scolded me.
‘Fine, if I have no choice.’
After my dance lesson, I waited outside for the perpetually-late lovebirds, and eventually I saw Carl come running, out of breath.
‘Nina couldn’t make it, she had to go somewhere with her mum, but I’d still like a second opinion, would you mind having a look?’
‘I don’t know anything about offices!’
‘Well no, but you’re arty, aren’t you? I just meant for a general sense of how the place feels.’
People had weird ideas about being ‘arty’, I thought, but I agreed to go anyway. We walked through the streets of Leicester, Carl rushing ahead as usual, with me trotting along behind trying not to lose sight of him.
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