3: Chocolate Box Girls: Summer's Dream (5 page)

I stand a little straighter, tilting my chin, and when the music begins, I let it seep into me. My limbs are light as silk and as strong as steel, my body taut as wire yet supple as a tree branch bending in the breeze. In the background, I can hear Miss Elise calling out her usual commentary: ‘Lucy, watch those toes! Jasmine, concentrate – you’re losing the rhythm! Sushila, stretch that leg … push yourself! Work, Amanda! You’re dreaming! Jodie, excellent, keep going!’

She doesn’t say anything about me, and after a while, I lose myself in the music, forget about Miss Elise and her friend, forget about Jodie, forget everything but the dance.

Afterwards, the changing room is thick with bodyspray and gossip.

‘I wonder why Miss Elise brought her friend to see us dance,’ Jodie wonders. ‘I bet she’s going to cover for Miss Laura while she’s away. She looked strict, but I think she knows what she’s doing. She watched you for a long time, Summer, and she was watching me too. We both danced well today!’

‘D’you think she’s been a professional dancer?’ I ask. ‘She had that look about her. The way she carried herself. Perhaps she’ll take the senior class for some lessons – it might be good to have a different teacher! A challenge!’

Miss Elise appears in the doorway. She asks Jodie, Sushila and me to come along to the office as soon as we are ready, and the three of us exchange anxious glances as we tidy our hair and pick up our ballet bags.

Sushila is one of the senior girls. ‘Are we in trouble?’ she wonders. ‘Miss Elise kept telling me to push myself, work harder!’

‘But she said Jodie was dancing well,’ I point out. ‘And she didn’t mention me at all. We can’t all be in trouble, surely?’

All the same, there is a knot of anxiety in my belly as we knock at the office door.

‘Girls! Come in,’ Miss Elise says.

It’s more of a sitting room than an office. The last time I came in here was when Mum was late paying my fees the year Dad left and we sat together on the sofa and listened as Miss Elise told us she was not prepared to lose a dancer like me, fees or no fees, and that Mum could take as long as she needed to pay. Mum sold her bicycle and paid the fees the next day, but I’ll never forget Miss Elise’s kindness. She knew how awful it would be for me if I couldn’t dance.

Miss Elise and her friend are sitting in armchairs, sipping tea from pretty china cups. Miss Elise waves us over to the sofa and we perch awkwardly as she pours three glasses of weak squash and arranges Rich Tea biscuits on a plate.

‘Sushila, Jodie, Summer … I’d like you to meet Sylvie Rochelle,’ she says. ‘She was most impressed with you all in class today. Well done!’

‘Thank you, Miss Elise!’ Jodie says, beaming. ‘Thank you, Miss … um … Rochelle.’

‘Thank you,’ Sushila echoes.

But my manners have deserted me because the name
Sylvie Rochelle is one I have heard before, and when I look at the elegant woman smiling at me over her teacup, I know exactly why. It was the grey hair that confused me. In the poster on my bedroom wall, Sylvie Rochelle has black hair that falls in soft wings about her ears, a cap of dark red flowers and a tutu of crimson silk and net.

‘Sylvie Rochelle,’ I whisper. ‘You danced with the Royal Ballet in the 1970s! I have a picture of you in
The Firebird
!’

‘Ah, yes …’ Sylvie smiles, and her voice is slow and heavily accented, just like Grandad Jules. ‘A long time ago, of course. I danced with some of the smaller French companies after that, but for the last fifteen years I’ve been teaching, first in France and then at the Royal Ballet School.’

‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I mean … wow!’

‘For a year or so now, Sylvie has been working on a project of her own,’ Miss Elise tells us. ‘An independent dance school in Devon, for boarders, like the Royal Ballet School but with a more European flavour. Sylvie has been renovating an old girls’ school, installing a state-of-the-art theatre and studios, recruiting teachers from around the world ready for the first intake this September …’

Jodie bites into a Rich Tea biscuit, her eyes wide, and
Sushila chokes on her orange squash. Me, I hardly dare breathe.

‘Elise ’as been a very good friend to me,’ Sylvie Rochelle shrugs. ‘She ’as been saying for some time that there is a need for a residential ballet school with a more … well, cosmopolitan feel to it? When she told me she ’ad some pupils she wanted me to take a look at, I was only too ’appy to comply. We are auditioning for the last few scholarship places at Rochelle Academy this August. I would like it very much if you three girls would try out.’

‘No way!’ Sushila says.

‘Me?’ Jodie stutters. ‘Really? Me?’

I can’t say a thing.

‘It’s just an audition,’ Miss Elise points out. ‘There will be other girls going for those places too – the competition will be stiff. If you’re offered a scholarship place, be very clear – it will be on your own merits. Sylvie is looking for dedication and potential, for students who will work hard, put dance above everything else. If you’re not willing to do that, these auditions are not for you.’

‘We are,’ I say instantly. ‘We will, I promise you.’

‘You ’ave eight weeks to prepare for the auditions,’ Sylvie
Rochelle says, putting down her teacup neatly. ‘Don’t waste that time. Each of you ’as talent, but I need to see more. I need to see potential, passion, hunger for success. You must convince me that one of those places should be yours.’

My heart is racing, my eyes shining. When I messed up that audition for the Royal Ballet School, I thought it was the end of my dream, but the dream refused to give up on me. Sometimes I think it is all that has been keeping me afloat these last couple of years. I never stopped working, never stopped hoping, and I promised myself that if I was ever given a second chance, I would grab it with both hands and hold on tight.

You’d have to be crazy to let a dream slip through your fingers all over again, right?

6

When I get back to Tanglewood, my twin is perched on the gate waiting. She jumps down and runs along the lane towards me, fair hair fluttering out in the breeze.

‘What is it?’ she wants to know. ‘What happened? Something did, I know! Something good?’

It doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but Skye and I can still pick up on each other’s thoughts and feelings. It happened back in February when Skye was sick with flu and wandered off from our birthday party and passed out in the woods, in the snow … I could feel her, slipping away from me, and somehow I knew just where to look. Skye reckons I saved her life that night. I don’t know about that. I am pretty sure we’d have found her one way or another.

Now it is happening again.

‘Is it … something to do with the film crew and the movie they’re making here this summer?’ Skye asks. ‘Has the ballet school been asked to provide extras? That would be awesome!’

That bursts my bubble.

‘Nothing to do with the film,’ I say.

Ever since we heard that a film crew was descending on Tanglewood to make a movie this summer, we’ve talked about the possibility of getting bit parts, but now I know Mum and Paddy will be away while it’s happening I’m not so keen. I’m worried the film crew will take over the house, turn everything upside down … and that things will just descend into chaos without Mum around.

I am not at all keen on chaos, as you might have noticed.

‘Something to do with dancing then?’ Skye guesses. ‘Tell me, Summer, please!’

‘I’ve been asked to audition for a new dance school,’ I say, and even as I speak, I realize I can’t quite believe it yet. ‘A specialist boarding school, Skye. It’s a scholarship place, so it wouldn’t cost a fortune, and the principal is Sylvie Rochelle, the French ballerina from that poster I have of
The Firebird
! She picked me out, and Jodie, and a
senior girl called Sushila … she wants us to apply. Can you believe it?’

‘Of course,’ Skye says. ‘You’re brilliant, Summer, don’t you know that? My super-talented sister!’

‘It’s an audition, not an actual place,’ I point out. ‘I’ll have to work like crazy if I’m going to stand any kind of a chance …’

‘You always work like crazy,’ Skye shrugs. ‘You’ll do it, I know you will!’

You didn’t last time
, the voice of doubt inside my head points out, and panic unfurls inside me. It’s a while since I’ve heard that voice, but I recognize its message loud and clear: it thinks I will fail. I take a deep breath, gritting my teeth. This time, failure is not an option.

On Friday, when Skye, Coco and I get in from school, Mum is sitting at the kitchen table sipping tea and picking through a glossy brochure for Rochelle Academy.

‘It arrived today,’ she tells me. ‘Along with a letter from Miss Elise and a whole heap of forms. It looks terrific, Summer, but it would be a big change, a big commitment. Are you sure this is what you want?’

You might as well ask me if I want air to breathe.

‘I’m sure,’ I say. ‘Don’t you see, Mum? I thought I’d blown my chances of a career in dance, but maybe I can still do it! Maybe it’s not just a dream!’

‘I’ve always said you can do anything you set your mind to,’ Mum says. ‘You’re choosing a difficult path, though, Summer. I want to be sure you’ve thought it through.’

I have thought of little else since I met Sylvie Rochelle. I have thought of little else since forever.

‘I have,’ I tell Mum.

‘Well then,’ she sighs. ‘Paddy and I will support you in any way we can. You have a talent, Summer, we’ve always known that. Of course you must go.’

I flop down into a seat beside Mum, biting my lip. ‘It’s just an audition,’ I remind her. ‘There are only three places left, and people are applying from all around the country. I might not get in. Lots of people don’t make the grade.’

‘You will,’ Skye says matter-of-factly. ‘I know you will.’

I wish I was half as sure.

‘It looks awesome,’ she continues, leafing through the brochure. ‘A real old country house. So pretty.’

‘I am so jealous!’ Coco comments. ‘Boarding school! Like Hogwarts! How cool?’

‘It’s cool,’ I agree. ‘But I don’t think it’ll be like Hogwarts. It’ll be more leotards and leg warmers than Potions lessons and invisibility cloaks …’

I study the glossy photographs, the schedules of morning lessons and afternoon dance. I look at the line-up of dance teachers, most of them ex-professionals, and I wonder if I will ever actually be there, dancing in the shiny new studio, living the dream. My stomach twists with doubt.

‘There’s just one snag,’ Mum says. ‘According to the letter, your audition is in the middle of August … while Paddy and I are away on honeymoon. I’d have liked to be there with you, look around, talk to this Sylvie Rochelle. I want to be sure it’s the right place for you.’

‘Oh … you’ll still be away?’ I frown.

‘Your audition is on the Saturday morning – we’re home the following day,’ Mum says. ‘Bad timing, but we can’t change it. Perhaps if we called the dance school and tried to postpone the audition …’

‘No, don’t do that,’ I say, panicking. ‘There’ll be lots of
people trying out for this. I’ll go on the official day – I don’t want special treatment.’

I like to stick to the rules – I don’t want those rules to be bent for me. That might seem childish, unprofessional. What if Sylvie Rochelle thought I wasn’t committed enough, that I was too scared to dance without my mum there?

I dredge up a smile. ‘Mum, it’s not a problem,’ I insist. ‘There’ll be time to look around if I actually get a place. Miss Elise can take me, and Jodie and Sushila will be there.’

Mum sighs. ‘I know, I know. But … are you sure you’ll be OK on your own?’

She doesn’t say it out loud, but I know what she’s thinking . . .thinking
After last time?

Well, yeah. Last time, when Dad was in charge and I arrived late and flustered and let the chance of a place at the Royal Ballet School slip through my fingers.

It was my own fault, of course. I should have known Dad would be too preoccupied with his own life to put me first, but back then I still thought I could fix everything, glue our broken family back together. I wanted Dad to see me dance, to be proud of me, to love me so much he’d change his mind about the divorce.