The Vintage Summer Wedding (22 page)

By the time
The Nutcracker
was announced, Anna’s star was shining bright. Graceful and glittering. She would add the perfect amount of shimmer to the Waltz of the Snowflakes. It was there, the opportunity, dangling, ripe from the tree.

But then, poof, Lucinda Warren walked in. Flame hair slicked back, thick liquid eye-liner flicks, black mesh top over hot-pink leotard and matching leg-warmers. Fresh from a transfer from New York, no mere star, but a boiling, raging, beaming ball of sun.

‘Miss, should we go again?’ Billy stepped forward.

‘Erm.’ Anna scratched her head. Could she get Lucinda out the room? ‘Did you want to chat about the job? Should we go outside?’

The job. New York. Her ticket out of here.

‘Oh no, honey,’ Lucinda’s mouth curved up, ‘I came for the total experience. I want to see what these kids can do.’

Anna glanced back at the motley little crew. The pin in the balloon of her New York dream.

Kim scraped a chair over from the side and sat, legs crossed, puffing on her cigarette, while Hermione made an awkward face of apology at Anna and Lucinda strutted over to the piano where she leant gracefully against the closed lid, legs crossed at her perfectly sculpted ankles, and watched.

‘OK.’ Anna sighed and nodded to Matt to hit the music. If it was going to happen, they may as well get it over with. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, her voice sounding tinny and bland. Then she saw Lucy shoot her an odd look and felt an immediate stab of guilt. She was taking their hope and she knew it and she couldn’t help herself.

The music boomed out, Anna felt herself shudder, Lucinda tapped the lid of the piano, a smile playing on her lips in anticipation, but then Lucy missed the first step which meant her arm was outstretched as Peter turned her way and her fist connected hard with his cheek making him reel back, clutching his face in pain. Matt glanced over his shoulder to see why Peter was swearing, which meant he lost his timing and then tripped over his shoelace which stumbled him back into Clara, who, never one for keeping going, pushed him back and said, ‘Get out my fucking way.’ Mary tried to stay in time but was on her own, as the rest of them clattered about around her. Lucy, flustered, tried to save it with some spontaneous twerking, which made Hermione burst out a laugh. And then, after the whole thing fell apart and Peter had skulked off to the side, Billy slapped out of a handstand cracking down onto his hip. Matt swore, his jaw locked rigid, and Lucy stalked off to sit on the edge of the stage while Mary looked guiltily at Anna from under her fringe.

‘I did warn you,’ Hermione sighed.

Anna couldn’t look at anyone, just stared down at her hands. She could feel both Lucy and Lucinda watching her.

When Lucinda Warren danced, she blinded people, hypnotised them with energy, grace, confidence and perfection. Anna’s spirit ‒ her passion, her quirk, her style ‒ crumbled next to this girl who danced as if the world had been created just for her. Anna was no stranger to falling from a height, but this was by far her greatest drop. She landed awkwardly, uncomfortably, stripped of her new confidence, like Cinderella at midnight, as the spotlight of favourite refocused on this perfect redhead.

And Anna, who had got used to the warmth of the limelight, didn’t respond well to finding herself in a shadow. She would watch with fury boiling inside her as Lucinda practised, precision personified. She changed the way she danced to try and be better. She stopped laughing, stopped sleeping, she lived off adrenaline, off jealousy, off determination, wired by a desire to be better. To be the best.

Anna glanced over at Lucinda, who had walked round to the front of the piano and was engrossing herself in the keys and the sheet music, clearly embarrassed. Hermione and Kim were whispering next to her. She could feel the boring gaze of Lucy straight ahead of her.

‘That was shit, Miss, wasn’t it?’ Lucy whispered.

Matt skulked over to stand next to Mary, who looked like she might be about to cry.

‘Probably quite a good thing though, Miss, isn’t it?’ Lucy carried on. ‘To know we go to pieces in front of an audience. Takes the edge of the nerves.’

Anna looked up and met Lucy’s narrowed eyes, her brow raised in challenge, her heels banging on the stage.

Anna’s mum had said,
This is what it’s all been for, Anna. This is it. Don’t waste this. There’s nobody better than you, do you hear me. If you believe that, you’ll get what you want. No ‒ I don’t want to hear it, it’s just excuses. Anna, I mean it, I don’t want to hear it. Anna! Fine, if you don’t get it, don’t come back. How’s that for an incentive?

‘I just have to‒’ Anna pointed out to the back of the hall. ‘Just take a minute, everyone. I’ll be one minute.’ She could feel her brow sweating as she turned and jogged to the doors at the back of the hall. Pushing through them she stood outside in the warm, sun-drenched air and leant her head back on the brickwork, closing her eyes and remembering the feeling of standing on the edge of that
Nutcracker
audition. They had all waited in the corridor to audition in front of a panel of Madame LaRoche, Mr Hadley, director of the EBC, and the resident choreographer, Barnaby Adams.

Anna’s diet had consisted of protein and Prozac for that last pre-audition month, her hands shook so she sat on them as she waited, her skin was sallow, her muscles trembling like a bull wound up ready to fight, her cheeks hollow, her hair thin, her tired eyes sore, but her audition so perfect, so practised, so focused that she could have danced anywhere, slice her feet off and they would have kept on dancing. She had sat staring at a spot on the floor, a black dot of dirt on the white linoleum, looking at no one, nothing, just fixed, doing all her breathing techniques for calm, for focus, for confidence. Her body straining at the bit, ready. Her mind was visualising walking through the flat door that night, seeing her mum, waiting, trembling, apprehensive, and Anna would smile and her mum would leap up and hug her and she could finally exhale.

Leaning against the wall, she tried to search her mind for those relaxation techniques now. To lean forward and turn the dial in her mind that would release her endorphins and adrenaline, that would focus her and cut out the chatter.

But instead she saw her face making its biggest mistake. Saw it peering through the round window in the door just before she was called in for her audition. Saw it watch Lucinda glide across the space like she was made only of air, saw the muscles in her back ripple as they arched, saw the slick of red across her lips as she smiled, saw that this was hers. That whatever Anna did, she couldn’t compete, she had lost before she had begun. And, as she watched, her adrenaline seemed to trickle out of her, her muscles held so tight just loosened and gave up, the exhaustion that was hidden by determination threaded through her and left her limbs like lead. So, when she walked into the room, she was already defeated. She had never felt so tired in all her life.

Across the square, Anna could see Mrs Beedle outside the shop taking in the chairs and other bits and pieces that had been arranged out the front. She saw her look up, shade her eyes and glance over in the direction of someone walking across the square. Anna’s father. He took off his sunglasses and the two of them stood chatting, laughing. She watched him pick up a side-table and help carry it inside.

Before
The Nutcracker
audition, he had told her a story over the phone of a girl he’d seen on TV. A violinist. She’d picked up the instrument at four years old and been announced a prodigy. But, at twelve, when she’d started moaning about practising, her father had made her give it up. Made her put the violin away and told her that if she picked it up again, she picked it up for her. For no one else. No more moaning at him. And, four months later, she had opened the case and played and never stopped. Her father had told her the story and then paused and Anna had said sarcastically,
‘I take it you’re trying to tell me something.’ ‘No.’
He had said,
‘I was just making conversation.’

‘Miss?’ Mary pushed open the door next to her, ‘Are you coming back in? It’s just no one’s quite sure what to do.’

Anna turned her head to look at the mousy-haired girl, unable to look up from the floor mere weeks ago. She looked at her baggy T-shirt, leggings and the Converse hastily pulled onto her bare feet. ‘Why do you do this, Mary?’ she asked.

Mary did a little snort-like giggle. ‘I don’t know, Miss. I just do.’

Anna pushed herself off the wall and stood facing her. ‘No. No, there’s a better answer than that. Why do you come here?’

‘I don’t know, Miss.’ She pushed her over-long fringe behind her ear. ‘I suppose because I couldn’t do it at school…’

‘Why not?’

‘They do ballet but they told me I wouldn’t fit their criteria.’ She did a self-conscious giggle. ‘They’ve all been doing it for years and, well, I just didn’t fit.’

‘And here?’ Anna asked, watching as she tugged on her T-shirt, clearly embarrassed and wanting to get back to the safety of the hall.

‘It’s just an opportunity. You know...to dance.’

Anna licked her lips, watched Mary shrug. ‘How does it make you feel, Mary?’

Mary paused, swallowed, glanced down at the floor, at the sandy gravel and then back up at Anna, the tips of her cheeks pink, and said, ‘It makes me feel beautiful, Miss.’

Anna was caught, she opened her mouth to reply but realised she had no answer.

‘Can I go back in now, Miss?’

‘Yes. Yes. Of course. Thank you, Mary. I’ll be one minute and we’ll go again.’

‘OK.’ The girl stepped back. ‘Is that what you wanted to know, Miss? Was that the right answer?’

‘There was no right answer,’ Anna said, and laughed. ‘There’s just how it is.’

She had no memory of losing the part. Of actually being told. Her memory was only of unlocking the door of the flat and walking in and the whole place being filled with roses. Hundreds of them, every colour under the sun, yellow with pink trim next to heady white blooms and vibrant orange flowers in vases with deep, deep scarlets, ones so dark they looked black and others so pale they were like skin, crawling with dark veins, and almost see-though in the light. And the smell...dense and heady, overly sweet like bathing in burnt sugar, encroaching on Anna’s battered senses and making her woozy.
Darling.
Her mum had stood, arms outstretched. Arms that had fallen in slow motion and at the same time knocked the closest vase, white porcelain smashing across the wooden floor, water splashing up on her mum’s skirt, and yellow roses, heads heavy and useless, slapping to the floor.

The panel had asked her why she danced. She had reeled off her practised answers. The privilege, the buzz, the feeling of perfection when every movement she made was made and held identically to the person’s next to her. It was in her heart, in her blood. It was her passion. My dad would tell me that I’d go to bed clutching my ballet shoes, she’d laughed.

Why did she dance? As she leant back on the warm bricks again, she thought it had been because she loved it, but one reason more than any other gnawed at her.
I wanted to make her proud.

In the blue expanse above her, Anna watched a gull swoop lazily, buffeted on the warm air and thought, but how do I make me proud?

Her dad and Mrs Beedle were laughing, he had his hand on her shoulder, really guffawing at something. The sunshine was thick in the hazy air, clouds dotting shadows on the pavements.

On the other side of the square was the T-shirt in the window of Presents 4 You.
Paris, Milan, New York, Nettleton.
New York. Where was the flutter in her tummy when she thought of it?

The noise of her dad and Mrs Beedle’s laughter echoed towards her and she found herself smiling at the sound. Because, in that moment, she realised, like the girl’s violin, she had picked up Razzmatazz for her. However crap they were, they were hers. And she had made the decision to give them hope. And bloody hell, she wasn’t going to be the one to take it away from them. She knew what it was like to have someone ashamed of you, what it felt like. And she wasn’t going to fill a room with roses and then smash them to the ground.

Taking a deep breath, smoothing down her T-shirt, Anna turned away from the square, pushed open the doors, strutted as confidently as she could to the front of the hall and said, ‘It wasn’t shit, it just started off badly. It’s nerves. We all get them, we’ve all messed up because of them, now just be damn well grateful that it didn’t happen at the audition. Get up, get into place and do it again.’

The whole group just sat there, glaring at her. Anna planted her hands on her hips. ‘GET UP!’ she shouted.

‘Why should we?’ Lucy sneered.

‘Because you care.’ Anna said, her voice sharp, ‘Because…’ She paused, looked along the row at them, at their flushed faces, big eyes, tight lips, and said a touch more quietly, ‘Because I care.’

Mary looked down at her hands. Anna felt her heartbeat pulse in her temple. ‘There are people here who want to see just how good you are. Now you either piss this chance away or show how much bloody work you’ve done. Now!’

She watched as heels bashed against the stage, watched as lips muttered and shoulders stiffened, felt the gaze of Hermione, Kim and Lucinda at her back, and then she caught a glimpse of Lucy’s mouth as it tilted up into the vaguest of smiles.

‘OK, let’s go,’ Lucy said, with a flick of her Farah Fawcett fringe, and jumped up, bashing Matt on the arm who gave a bit of a shrug and then loped over to the iPod.

And Anna closed her eyes for a millisecond and thanked god, and then turned and walked back to her seat as if this was all completely normal and as it was meant to be.

‘I thought that was awesome. Awesome.’ Lucinda clapped her hands, strutting over to stand next to Anna. ‘Just the best. I’ve never seen so many styles in one routine. I was super-excited.’

Anna found her lips twitch in a smile as the group tried to hide their pleasure.

‘You thought it was OK?’ Lucy said, from beneath her fringe.

Lucinda swept her bright-red curls back and said, ‘I thought it was the best. Some technical errors but,’ she waved a hand, ‘it made me smile, and that’s gotta be the aim, yeah?’ She looked at Anna.