3: Chocolate Box Girls: Summer's Dream (12 page)

No wonder I can’t dance, no wonder I’m falling apart inside.

It feels like the end of the world.

16

I am surviving on lettuce leaves and apple slices, and the ache of hunger in my belly has faded to numbness, to nothing. I feel lighter, cleaner, buzzing with energy. I spend my days at the dance school, practising in the senior studio. Hard work always pays off … eventually. You just have to keep the faith.

In the evenings, I watch online clips of Sylvie Rochelle in
The Firebird
, looking for inspiration, ideas, while my friends and sisters hang out on the beach or by the gypsy caravans in the woods with Finch and the boys from the film crew.

‘Ease up a little,’ Skye tells me. ‘You’re getting obsessed, Summer. It’s not healthy.’

But I can’t ease up, not if I am going to take two days
out of my schedule to be an extra. I lie awake at night worrying about it, wide awake, my mind racing. Sometimes I get up and creep down to the kitchen to run through my barre exercises again because if you want to be perfect, you can never relax, never stop.

On Sunday morning I am standing in a marquee wearing a straw hat and a white cotton dress with a frilled hem. My long hair is plaited into tight braids, my feet are stuffed into worn leather boots and my face has been painted and powdered and highlighted as if I had a starring role instead of a tiny bit part in a crowd scene.

I agreed to come, but I am regretting it now. Already I’ve wasted a whole Saturday hanging around doing nothing, and Sunday seems to be going the same way. Skye is busy the whole time, styling and adjusting costumes, but the rest of us have been here for hours, waiting to be called down to the location.

‘It’ll take your mind off this whole Aaron thing,’ Millie says confidently, piling a paper plate with crusty bread and butter and soft French cheese from the buffet table. ‘Cheer you up after your heartbreak.’

‘I am not heartbroken, Millie,’ I say patiently.

‘Of course not,’ Tia agrees. ‘You’re better off without him. Oh, look, there’s Carl and Alfie and Finch!’

She drags me over. The three boys are wearing collarless shirts and waistcoats and fusty old breeches that button at the knee, and I have to admit that even if I had been pining for Aaron Jones, this would still have put a smile on my face.

Finch looks quite cool and gypsyish in his tweedy stuff. Carl looks odd but OK, like he has just wandered out of a Victorian family photograph, but Alfie looks just plain deranged. His boots don’t fit, his trousers are tattered and he is wearing a floppy brown baker boy hat with his fringe sticking out like a madman. And that’s not all.

‘Are you wearing eyeliner?’ I snort. ‘No way!’

Alfie goes a little pink, and I realize with horror that he is also wearing foundation, lip tint and industrial amounts of hair gel.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he complains, backing away into a corner. ‘Finch made us come. He said that lots of girls had signed up but not many boys, and that we’d have a laugh. Nobody said anything about make-up! They trowelled it on, seriously!’

‘It’s not pretty,’ I tell him. ‘I mean, it is … but … well, you know what I mean.’

‘I will never live this down,’ he sighs. ‘Anyone could see this film – me, wearing eyeliner and lip tint, in all my hi-definition, widescreen glory. In people’s living rooms. What will the lads at school say? I’m not even joking. It cannot be worth it, not for fifty quid.’

‘You do have nice eyes, though,’ I say, trying not to laugh. ‘You could use a little shadow on your lids to bring out the greeny-brown bits …’

‘Not funny, Summer,’ he scowls. ‘It’s all right for you, you don’t mind all this theatrical stuff. I can’t stand it. I feel like a prize poodle, trimmed and fluffed and put on show with a bow in its hair.’

‘You don’t look like a poodle,’ I smirk.

‘No, I look like a transvestite street urchin,’ Alfie groans. ‘I can’t do this, Summer. I’m serious.’

‘Get a grip,’ I say sternly. ‘You’ve just got stage fright, Alfie, minus the stage. The minute the cameras start to roll …’

Abruptly, Millie steps in front of me, her face pale, eyes wide. ‘Don’t look over there,’ she hisses. ‘Take no notice. Don’t let it get to you.’

‘Look where?’ I ask. ‘Don’t let what get to me?’

‘What are you talking about, Millie?’ Alfie demands.

‘Nothing!’ Millie says, turning me round and herding me away. ‘Nothing at all!’

I look back over my shoulder, and that’s when I finally notice Aaron. It seems unfair that he should look so handsome in a suit jacket and a faded straw boater when the rest of us are dressed as kids, but that is typical of him. He always comes out on top.

‘He wasn’t supposed to be here,’ Tia tells me, appearing at my other side. ‘The boys told him to stay away.’

I expect they did, but Aaron doesn’t like being told what to do. The lure of being in a film – and being paid for it – was probably too much for him to resist.

‘He shouldn’t have come,’ Millie huffs. ‘Especially not with her!’

I blink, and I wonder just how I could have missed the girl next to Aaron because she certainly stands out from the crowd. Marisa McKenna has crazy, curly dark hair, big gold hoop earrings and a swirly skirt. Unusually for her, it reaches down to her ankles, but her gypsy top dips down carelessly over one golden brown shoulder to reveal a whole lot more
cleavage than was usual in Edwardian Britain. Aaron seems transfixed.

I don’t blame him, of course. He has just escaped the clutches of a very dull and boring girlfriend, but it didn’t take him long to replace me. I do not care about Aaron Jones – I finished with him after all. Marisa McKenna is welcome to him. I wish her well. I hope she doesn’t feel too sick when he does his snail-trail kissy thing right down her neck.

I try to speak, try to move, but I seem to be frozen to the spot. Panic churns in my belly and the crush of people begins to blur before my eyes.

‘I have to get out of here,’ I whisper.

‘Summer?’ Tia frowns. ‘Don’t let him see he’s upset you. You’re letting him win …’

‘We can’t just leave,’ Millie says. ‘If we miss our calls, we’ll miss out on being filmed … just ignore him, OK?’

But it’s not OK; it’s not OK at all.

‘She needs fresh air,’ Alfie says unexpectedly. ‘I’ll sort it.’

A ridiculous clown-boy in a floppy baker boy hat puts an arm round me and steers me away, out of the marquee, out across the grass, down to the woods.

17

We sit down beneath the trees, and when I press my face against my knees, a dark, damp patch appears on my skirt.

‘Don’t,’ Alfie says. ‘He’s not worth it.’

‘I know,’ I whisper, but I’m not sure I am crying for Aaron Jones at all. I am crying because everything is changing and nothing feels safe any more … the life I have planned so carefully and so neatly; my hopes; my dreams; my confidence. It’s like picking a hole in an old sweater – before you know it, everything starts to unravel.

Over by the marquee, people are moving. The crew runners are leading crowds of extras down towards the village. Cherry and Honey and their friends are there, and Coco with Humbug on a leash, Carl and Finch and a whole
bunch of people from the village, old and young, all dressed up and stepping back in time for a day. My twin sister walks alongside them, tweaking shawls and adjusting hemlines.

I watch Aaron and Marisa stride down across the grass, his arm draped round her shoulder. I spot Millie and Tia, looking around for me. They shout a few times, but I shake my head silently at Alfie and stay hidden beneath the trees.

‘We could still go,’ Alfie says, handing me a big white hanky. ‘Catch them up?’

I wipe my eyes and the hanky comes away stained with pasty beige foundation and streaks of black eyeliner. ‘Nah,’ I sigh. ‘I’m not really in a fairground kind of mood. Do I look a mess?’

‘Gorgeous,’ Alfie says. ‘Almost as pretty as me.’

I laugh, and he blots the hanky against my cheek.

‘I didn’t want to be in the film anyway,’ he shrugs. ‘Fame is overrated – I saw that bloke from
Hollyoaks
in the Co-op buying sliced ham yesterday. It took him twenty minutes because he had to sign autographs for a load of kids from the primary school, as well as all the checkout ladies. It’s tough at the top.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I sigh.

‘You will, one day,’ Alfie teases. ‘You’re the “girl most likely to succeed”, remember?’

Girl most likely to fall flat on her face more like
, a dark voice inside me says ominously.
Useless
. I shake my head, trying to dislodge the words, but they are etched into my mind like barbed wire.

I don’t know what is wrong with me lately. I am working harder than I have ever worked before at my ballet, yet still I wake in the middle of the night thinking about the audition, racked by doubts and fears. I have cut out sweet stuff and fatty stuff and junk foods to melt away any last traces of puppy fat, yet when I look in the mirror, I can’t see any difference at all. I dump my boyfriend and then freak out the very first time I see him with someone else.

The voice is right. I am useless. I shiver, as if a cloud has passed over the sun.

‘Summer?’ Alfie says gently. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I don’t know,’ I whisper. ‘I really don’t know any more.’

He doesn’t ask stupid questions, which is good because I don’t have any answers, not right now. Alfie just puts an arm round me, and it doesn’t feel dangerous or predatory, the way it did with Aaron. It feels steady, warm, like
someone cares. My eyes drift shut against a sting of tears and my mind stills. After a while, I feel better, calmer, stronger. The voice in my head is silent now and the churning in my stomach has faded.

I open my eyes. Alfie Anderson has his arm round me casually, easily, like it is no big deal. He is not cracking jokes at my expense or trying to wind me up, just frowning slightly as he gazes off into the distance. This is deeply weird.

‘You’re not over him, are you?’ he asks quietly, and I blink.

‘Aaron?’ I say. ‘Trust me, I am totally, one hundred per cent over him. I ditched him, remember? Things weren’t working out – no spark.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Alfie echoes. ‘No spark.’