Ballroom Class a Form

by Lucy Dillon

  Then Jo stopped laughing, and she heard Ross say, ‘Oh, here we go’, and something ambiguous in his tone made her look up.

  Hannah was standing in the doorway, her golden-brown hair tousled adorably around her heart-shaped face, her too-big pink Angelina Ballerina pyjamas wrinkling over her feet. She blinked in the light of the dining room, like a surprised mole, and clutched her Beanie sheep, Baalamb, once white and now grimy grey, in both small hands.

  Katie’s heart turned over once, with pride at the gorgeousness of her own daughter, then turned over again with frustration as she felt the final threads of a grown-up evening slip from her hands. Just an hour or two, at home, off duty, with her friends – was it so much?

  ‘No show without Punch, eh?’ said Greg, giving her a sympathetic look and topping up his wine glass. ‘Molly’s just getting to this stage too. Got to nip it in the bud, I reckon, otherwise you’ll never get a moment to yourself.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s easier said than done,’ sighed Katie.

  ‘Daddy!’ Hannah announced when all the adult attention had turned to her. She put one hand melodramatically over her forehead. ‘I just can’t sleep!’

  ‘I just can’t’ had become one of her favourite phrases lately. Where she’d got it from, Katie had no idea. Ross did seem to watch lots of films while she was out at work.

  ‘Can’t you?’ said Ross, in the same melodramatic tones. ‘Why ever not?’

  Hannah sighed. ‘Bad dreams. Can I sit here with you?’

  ‘No,’ said Katie, before Ross could humour her. All the baby behaviour books said you shouldn’t engage children in conversation at bedtime; she’d tried from the beginning to stick to one routine so they didn’t get confused. It would help if Ross wasn’t so inconsistent. Hannah hadn’t had any trouble sleeping until Jack started waking up, but she was sharp enough to see the attention it got him and had started getting to be a real pest about it. Especially with an audience.

  Katie looked at Ross, but he was only gazing proudly at his charming daughter, so she pushed back her chair, as a sign to Hannah that a return to bed was nigh.

  Hannah’s lower lip jutted and she glared at her.

  Katie saw Hannah’s considerable tantrum mechanisms were now semi-engaged and braced herself. ‘Come on, Hannah,’ she said. ‘Bed.’

  ‘Daddy, I need a glass of milk,’ she whined, ignoring Katie. ‘To sleep.’

  ‘Oh, we know that one, don’t we?’ said Jo easily, glancing sideways at Greg. ‘Magic sleep milk.’

  Hannah widened her eyes, and brought Baalamb’s ear up to her mouth to chew.

  Katie looked at Ross. They’d talked about the chewing. He’d agreed it wasn’t good. But something about it made Hannah look so much smaller, younger than her princess-y daytime self, that it was hard to be firm.

  You have to be firm, Katie told herself. Someone has to be.

  ‘Hannah,’ she said, and leaned over to remove it from her mouth. Hannah pulled away, and ran over to lean against Ross’s knee. Automatically, Ross’s arm went around her, making a little barrier.

  Hannah and Daddy against Mummy, thought Katie, with a stab through the heart.

  ‘Well . . .’ he said, visibly weakening.

  Katie could see Jo was melting too, and felt irritated. Yet again, she was going to look like the mean one.

  Greg, she was pleased to see, wasn’t joining in.

  ‘Come on, Hannah,’ he said, firmly. ‘You’ll be all tired and grumpy in the morning if you don’t go up to bed now. Molly’s sleeping like a good girl, isn’t she?’

  ‘Exactly. And this is grown-up time,’ Katie said, getting to her feet. ‘Molly and Rowan are asleep, aren’t they? And Jack?’

  ‘They’re babies,’ said Hannah, nuzzling further into her father. ‘I’m a big girl.’

  ‘Even big girls have to go to bed,’ insisted Katie and held out her arms. ‘Come on, I’ll carry you upstairs. Say night night to everyone.’

  The effect was instant.

  ‘Daddy!’ roared Hannah, bursting into heart-wrenching sobs. ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Daddy take you then,’ said Ross, swinging her into his arms and getting up from the table.

  ‘Stop it, Hannah!’ said Katie, as lightly as she could. ‘You’re just making a show of yourself.’

  Greg, she saw out of the corner of her eye, snuck a glance at his watch.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Jo, which was worse.

  5

  ‘Oh, Lauren, you look . . .’ Bridget put her hand to her mouth as Lauren stepped out from behind the changing-room curtain, her lanky frame turned magically doll-like by a frothing cloud of pearl-strewn tulle. Her long, pale arms seemed elegant, the milky softness of her shoulders exaggerated by the stiff strapless bodice. She even held herself differently, as the corset pulled her out of her usual self-conscious slouch, making her tower like a catwalk model over the cooing shop assistant.

  Bridget’s throat tightened as a powerful, complicated emotion swept through her. Her little girl, her own tiny unexpected baby, standing there looking just like she’d done on her own wedding day, only taller, more beautiful, more confident. Like one of the white roses in their garden, perfect and velvety and just beginning to open up.

  I’m the mother of the bride, thought Bridget, with a pang that took her by surprise. And for a second, she saw her own mum in her own wedding album, sitting with Frank’s mother, May, knees clamped together, frame handbags on laps, scowling suspiciously at the camera like two owls in their C&A suits and Deirdre Barlow glasses. That’s me now, she thought. I’ve moved up a generation.

  Good God, she thought, blinking, when did that happen?

  Bridget was nearly sixty, but in her own head she was nowhere near that. Somewhere along the line, the timeframe of her life had got a bit jumbled. She’d been a young mum to Billy and David, both born before she was twenty-five, and she and Frank had taken the late nights and early mornings in their stride, barely needing much more sleep themselves. Life had settled into a routine, and her teaching had fitted in neatly around them. Then unexpectedly, just after David’s first day at secondary school, she’d realised her ‘funny tummy’ wasn’t down to garlic bread at all. It was Lauren. And then she’d met a whole new generation of mums, mostly in their thirties, like she was, and, although she’d never have admitted it to a soul, least of all Frank, having a tiny blonde angel girl after two scabby-kneed lads was like discovering a different kind of motherhood, just when she’d begun to think life’s surprises had finished for her.

  The kids at school, of course, had thought she was eighty-three, even when she was twenty-nine. Teaching the same class every year, always five, never aging, helped her forget time was passing, and though she was technically a granny, Billy and David lived so far away she didn’t have the same constant reminders as some of the grans who picked up the Rosies and Harrys at the school gates. She and Frank were still as daft about each other as they had been, after nearly forty years, though obviously now Lauren was back at home and screeching about mental anguish every time they had a bit of a cuddle, they’d had to tone that down.

  But now, seeing Lauren in her elegant white gown, a bride as she’d been, about to be a woman and have a family of her own – that made Bridget realise that time was passing. Had passed, in fact. It made her throat close up in shock.

  Lauren’s confident smile slipped a little, and the chunky, very unladylike toe of her biker boot peeped out from beneath the silvery hem. ‘Mum?’ she said. ‘Say something. Do I look all right?’

  Bridget gazed at Lauren, and the brief chill of sadness vanished as her heart filled up with love, just as it had the moment she’d held her extraordinary bundle in her arms at the hospital. ‘Don’t be daft! I just can’t find the words. You look like . . .’

  ‘She looks like a princess,’ supplied the shop assistant, with a knowing nod to Lauren. ‘If I had a pound for every mum who’s been all choked up the first time they’ve seen their daughter in a wedding dre
ss, I’d have enough for my own special day.’

  Bridget tried not to grimace at the Special Day.

  ‘Well, plenty of time to get used to it, Mum,’ said Lauren cheerfully. ‘This is just dress number one. Do you mind if she takes a quick snap, Yvette?’

  Lauren seemed to be on first-name terms with every bridal shop in the county, thought Bridget, pulling herself together.

  ‘Go ahead. Do you want me to pull you in a bit more?’ asked Yvette, grabbing the silver strings of the corset. ‘I’ve pinned it at the back. Of course, when you order your own dress, they’ll make it to your own measurements.’

  ‘I’m planning on losing a bit of weight before the wedding, though,’ Lauren pointed out with a quick glance at her mother.

  ‘I keep telling you, you don’t need to, Lauren . . .’

  ‘Ah, well, if I had another pound for every bride who said that, I’d be honeymooning in Barbados!’ Yvette gave Lauren a mighty tug. ‘It falls off anyway, in the run-up . . .’

  ‘Mum? Can you take a picture?’

  Glad of the distraction, Bridget rummaged in her big handbag – past tatty packets of paper hankies, her phone, an apple, a marker pen, the swatch of satin Lauren had liked for bridesmaids’ dresses, a sock – until she found Lauren’s digital camera and her own notebook.

  ‘Let’s be methodical about it,’ she said, opening it up at a new page. Irene wasn’t the only one who could make notes.

  Not, she reminded herself, that she was getting into a competition with Irene.

  ‘Dress one is called?’

  ‘What’s this one called, Yvette?’ asked Lauren, adjusting the crystal tiara stuck into her pinned-up hair as she looked at herself in the 360-degree mirror.

  Those lovely shoulders, thought Bridget. Like a china milkmaid. She has no idea how lovely she is. But then does any twenty-two-year-old? Did I?

  ‘It’s Margarita, by Chanelle l’Amour. The bodice is twelve five oh, and the skirt is seven nine five. It’s the detailing, you see, all that hand embroidery.’

  ‘That’s not too bad, Mum,’ said Lauren, as Bridget’s hand wobbled. ‘Look, it’s even got a little loop for the train, so I don’t fall over it when we do our first dance.’

  She demonstrated with a graceful step, which ended abruptly as she trod on the other side of the dress, nearly bringing down a display of table favours.

  ‘Careful now!’ said Yvette.

  ‘So, what do you think?’

  Bridget felt flattered that Lauren wanted her opinion, and tried to come up with something fashion-orientated, even though it wasn’t really her thing. ‘I think it’s very . . . fairy-tale. Romantic. I can see you waltzing in that one. The skirt would swing beautifully when you do your big reverse turns.’

  Lauren’s forehead creased doubtfully. ‘Reverse what?’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll get on to those,’ said Bridget, hastily. ‘It’s very Cinderella, that one!’

  ‘Yeah, totally. I like the way the bodice gives me a proper waist. Look!’ She put her hands on her hips to demonstrate. ‘Tiny!’

  ‘Mmm. Did we decide on a budget for the dress?’ Bridget asked with a discreet lowering of her voice, although she already knew the answer.

  ‘Under two,’ said Lauren. ‘Dad did say if there was something really special . . .’

  Under twelve hundred, thought Bridget, though it was hard to say that when Lauren was twirling and smiling at herself like she used to do when she went to her ballet classes in that pink tutu Frank’s mum had made for her. Back in the days before Lauren had got all self-conscious about her height and refused to go to ballet any more.

  ‘You can always get the skirt dyed and shortened and wear it again,’ suggested Yvette. ‘With a cashmere cardie, for the Grace Kelly look.’

  ‘I love that!’ nodded Lauren, as if the Grace Kelly look was something she regularly aimed for. Bridget was pretty sure Lauren had no idea who Grace Kelly was, apart from as some vague fashion style that involved big skirts.

  ‘Are you OK with the camera, Mum? Do you need me to show you how it works?’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine,’ said Bridget, raising it to eye level. What was the point in spoiling Lauren’s lovely trying-on session? She didn’t have to get that actual one. I’ll have a quiet word with her later, she told herself. Show her the budget again.

  Lauren immediately adopted a serious expression, and when Bridget had taken one snap, turned ninety degrees.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ she said, as Bridget hesitated. ‘I need all the angles. And from behind too.’

  ‘That’s where your lace detailing comes in,’ elaborated Yvette. ‘You’ll need some wow factor there for the congregation, won’t you, because that’s what they’ll be looking at for most of the ceremony.’

  Bridget mentally added ‘The Wow Factor’ to ‘Your Special Day’ on her list of irritating wedding phrases, but bit her tongue because Lauren was nodding in delighted agreement.

  ‘Aw. Making you all nostalgic, Mum?’ asked Yvette.

  Lauren stopped twisting and turning in front of the mirror. ‘Awwww. Did Nanna go with you to choose your dress?’

  ‘Um, no. No, I went with Dawn, my chief bridesmaid,’ said Bridget. In those days, she wanted to say, it wasn’t the same three-ring circus it is now: it was about the vows, not the favours. But she held her tongue and only said, ‘Took all of one hour, if I remember, from Laura Ashley, and then we went to the cinema.’

  Lauren and Yvette both made an indulgent clucking sound, then Lauren said, ‘Still, I suppose you didn’t have the same sort of choice,’ as if clothes rationing had just finished.

  Bridget sighed. ‘No. I didn’t.’

  ‘Cool! OK, dress two!’ And Lauren vanished into the changing room again, tugging the curtain so hard two of the rings pinged off.

  Yvette and Bridget looked at the dislodged rings, then at each other.

  ‘She’s very excited about her wedding,’ said Bridget, apologetically. ‘And she’s always been a little bit . . .’

  Her brain scrambled for the polite adult adjective – she wanted to say ‘malco’ like the children at school. ‘Fingers and thumbs,’ she finished.

  ‘I can tell. Shall I get you a cup of tea while she’s changing, while . . .’ Yvette dropped her voice, ‘there’s nothing for her to spill it on?’

  ‘Good idea,’ murmured Bridget.

  Lauren tried on three more dresses – a tall satin column that Bridget thought made her look like Nicole Kidman, a strapless meringue that Lauren decided was ‘the most gorgeous dress ever, ever, ever’, and a dramatic lace flamenco-ish dress that plunged to an alarming degree at the back ‘for church wow factor’.

  The biggest ‘wow factor’ for Bridget was that real, everyday girls in Longhampton could afford to spend thousands on one dress, for one day, in the least flattering colour known to woman.

  ‘Do you two girls mind if we have a break for lunch?’ asked Yvette at one o’clock. She was clutching an armful of veils that Lauren had requested to ‘complete the effect’.

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ said Bridget. ‘I think we could all do with a pause.’ She turned to her daughter, who had returned to normality in a pink velour tracksuit top and tight jeans. It was startling, but quite reassuring to see the normal Lauren again. ‘Shall we pop round the corner to that deli place?’

  ‘So long as you don’t let me eat a whole pudding,’ warned Lauren.

  Bridget didn’t think an armed guard could stop that happening. The chocolate biscuits at home had started disappearing at twice the usual rate since Lauren moved back in.

  Though the precinct bore all the worst hallmarks of the 1950s love affair with concrete, and had its very own Siberian wind tunnel effect, the shops that faced on to the high street had started to smarten up in the last year; here and there were signs of new life in Longhampton, springing up like green shoots between the grey solicitors and mobile phone shops. The deli was one of the new wave of fresh, ambitious cafés, all retr
o glass cups and whooshing coffee machines. They reminded Bridget of the old coffee shops that had been knocked down to make room for the precinct in the first place.

  ‘Now,’ she said, looking at the menu, ‘I think I need a coffee.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ said Lauren, then she leaned over and stroked Bridget’s hand. ‘Thanks for coming with me today! It’s just how I always imagined it would be, you and me, trying on my wedding dress.’

  ‘Really?’ Bridget had to admit she loved spending time with Lauren. The last time they’d done something like this, Lauren had been twelve; the last time, in fact, she let Bridget buy her clothes.

  Lauren nodded, and sighed happily, tucking her long blonde hair behind one ear. ‘I felt like a real princess in there! It’s amazing, those corsets, and net and all that. And the head-dresses and tiaras and veils . . .’

  ‘But you don’t want the dress to be wearing you, now, do you?’ said Bridget, tactfully. ‘Less is more, you know.’

  ‘Not on your wedding day, Mum,’ said Lauren, looking at the menu. ‘When else can you have a train? Might as well go for the dream dress.’

  Bridget watched the diamond on Lauren’s engagement ring – so much bigger than her own modest sapphire – glint in the sun as she raised her hand to attract the waitress. Lauren’s wedding was something she and Frank had started saving for as soon as she’d begun rehearsing it with her Bridal Barbie, but even with that money set aside, Bridget wasn’t sure they were going to have enough. Not when Lauren seemed to be getting most of her inspiration from Hello! magazine, rather than the local paper.

  Still, she thought, as Lauren ordered for them, most of it’s that Irene, putting stupid wedding show ideas in her head. Lauren was a sensible girl, with a job. She’d understand about being realistic, now she was over the initial thrill of it all.

  No time like the present, Bridget told herself, as Lauren got out her white satin notebook.

  ‘Laurie, love,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘I’ve been wanting to have a chat with you . . . about the wedding.’