Dance of Fire (14 page)

Justin had smiled easily, but he didn't take her hand. ‘Any time.'

Together the four of them had walked to Barre None, ­complaining that it was the only place nearby. ‘I would give anything to be closer to the centre of London,' Geo said.

‘I would give anything for you to go away,' Svetya said.

Inside, Justin picked out a table in the back corner, and they each took a seat.

Vanessa had just finished ordering when she felt someone tap her shoulder. She whipped around, and there was Pauline with one of the boys from her school.

‘Congratulations!' Pauline said, leaning down to kiss ­Vanessa on one cheek, then the other. ‘For making the first cut! All of you!' She waved, and Justin and Geo waved back, but Svetya suddenly seemed fascinated by her menu.

‘Congratulations to you too,' Vanessa said. ‘You're in first place!'

‘For now,' Pauline said, brushing some of her hair behind her ears. Again, Vanessa noticed the interesting pattern of freckles beneath Pauline's left eye, and decided it only made her more beautiful. ‘Oh, how rude of me.' Pauline turned to the boy at her side. ‘This is Jacques. We are going to be ­dancing the partner round together.'

Jacques gave them a tiny nod.

‘Here,' Justin said, scooting his chair closer to Vanessa. ‘Why don't you sit with us? We just ordered.'

‘Thank you,' Jacques said, taking a seat. ‘We would love to.'

‘Thrilling,' Svetya muttered under her breath.

Everyone made small talk, and Vanessa felt a sudden warmth as Justin gave her knee a squeeze. ‘Hi,' he mouthed to her.

‘I can't believe they take your head shot down immediately after you're cut,' Pauline said, resting an elbow on the table. ‘What is the rush? They could wait a few days.'

‘No, it is better this way,' said Svetya. She pursed her lips. ‘They are losers.'

Geo shook his head. ‘It wasn't our talent that got us our ranking,' he said, staring into his drink. ‘It was the mistakes of the others.'

‘I agree,' Pauline said. ‘That one dancer from the British team didn't even make it through his first few steps without stumbling.'

‘Some girls in the hallway were saying the main stage is cursed,' Jacques said.

Svetya crossed her arms. ‘It is not cursed. They just didn't dance well.'

‘I felt
something
,' said Geo, pushing his hair away from his eyes. ‘It was very odd. I walked out on to the stage and took my position. The floor felt fine then, but when I started dancing, it suddenly felt strange.'

Beside him, Sveyta let out a laugh. ‘It is your
legs
. They are too long for your body.'

Justin laughed, then turned to the others. ‘Well, at least there are fewer of us now,' he said.

‘
Oui
,' Pauline said, batting her long lashes. ‘And it is exciting to see our names in a press release!'

‘Press? Where?' Svetya said.

Pauline pulled out her iPhone and showed them all.

‘Ingrid's still in the competition,' Vanessa said softly. ‘She bumped into me after I finished my solo and said she was going to destroy me.'

Jacques laughed. ‘Really?' he said. ‘She said that?' No one else seemed to find it funny.

‘Why didn't you tell me?' Justin asked.

Vanessa fidgeted with the tablecloth. ‘I'm telling you now.'

‘Don't let it bother you,' Geo said. ‘Last year she told me she was going to put out my eyes with a fork and sell them on the black market.'

‘That's frightening,' Pauline said, putting her phone away. ‘But she wouldn't really do something like that. She meant it like a metaphor, I'm sure. You know,' she went on gently, ‘my grandmother had a saying: “Enemies can be turned into friends through generosity.” Perhaps with a little bit of kindness, Ingrid will surprise you. In the meantime, all you can do is be careful.'

‘Or stop dancing so well,' Justin said.

‘Maybe it's the demon,' Jacques said with a grin.

Vanessa could feel Justin's muscles tighten beside her. ‘Excuse me?' he said.

‘What?' Jacques said, shrugging. ‘You've never heard of the dancing demon?' He said it like it was a joke, something he'd made up on the spot.

‘No,' Justin said. ‘I haven't.'

‘It's an old legend,' Jacques explained. ‘Many dancers, especially those in our grandparents' generation, believed that if you danced a very demanding ancient choreography, you would conjure a demon. It sounds silly, but people used to take it very seriously. To her dying day, there were certain
ballets my grandmother would never watch because she was certain they were derived from old demonic rituals. Crazy, right?'

Vanessa forced herself to laugh. ‘Yeah.'

While the others joked about dancing demons and stuffed themselves as a reward for making it to the next round, Vanessa noticed an older woman clearing dishes by the bar. She had long greying hair and wore a flowing skirt that swished about her ankles, with an oversize sweater that hung loose around her thin frame. Vanessa wondered how long she'd worked here. Two years? Longer? Maybe she had seen ­Margaret come through Barre None, just like Vanessa and her friends.

Vanessa wiped her mouth with a napkin and stood up. ‘I – excuse me.'

She made her way through the restaurant towards the ­bathroom. Then, looking over her shoulder to make sure no one from her table was watching, she turned and walked over to the woman in the long skirt.

Vanessa watched as the woman ran a rag around the rim of a glass.

‘You pay at the front,' the woman said, barely looking up.

‘Actually, I wanted to ask you a question,' Vanessa said. She took a tentative step forward. ‘Have you worked here for a long time?'

The woman sighed. ‘Long enough,' she said in an accent that fell somewhere between Cockney and upper class. ‘I own this place.'

Vanessa hadn't seen that coming.

‘You can call me Coppelia,' the woman said, smiling warmly. Even though her face was weathered with age, ­Vanessa could tell that she had once been quite beautiful. She wore almost no make-up, with only the slightest hint of red on her lips, and her grey hair was tangled with strands of white, ­falling nearly to her waist. ‘It's not my name,' the woman continued, ‘but I've been called nothing else for twenty years.'

Vanessa shook her hand, which was damp from the rag. ‘I'm Vanessa.' She looked up at the wall of photographs, her gaze resting finally on Margaret's face. ‘I just wanted to ask you about one of the dancers.'

‘That could take all night, dear. There are hundreds of them, and my memory isn't what it was.' She blinked, and studied Vanessa as though she were a painting. ‘Not like when I was your age, running around the Royal School of Ballet.'

‘You were a dancer?' Vanessa asked. Nothing about the woman's wild hair, long Bohemian skirt or the baubles she wore around her neck made her look like a ballerina. And yet, as ­Vanessa ­studied her, she noticed the way she held her chin up and her shoulders square: her dancer's posture had never left her.

Coppelia put her hands on her hips. ‘Well, don't sound so startled, dear.' She stacked a handful of glasses on the shelf behind her, then began to wipe down the countertop. ‘I was in the London Ballet for years,' she said. ‘Until I was twenty-five. And I would have had a few more ahead of me, if it hadn't been for
La Sylphide
.' She frowned, as if the memory still bothered her. ‘Halfway through rehearsals, I stumbled on a landing and fractured my ankle. That was the end of that.'

Vanessa thought back to all the times she'd faltered in a spin or rolled an ankle landing from a leap. ‘What did you do?'

‘I went to physical therapy and tried to get my rhythm back, but my ankle was never the same. Even now, it still hurts when I stand on tiptoe.' Coppelia glanced at a photograph on the wall behind her, where a young woman stood at centre stage, her taut body pointed in a brisk pirouette.
That was her
, Vanessa realised.

‘After I stopped dancing, I took over my father's restaurant.' Coppelia ran her hands along the wooden bar. ‘You should have seen it before,' she said with a chuckle. ‘It used to be called Right Said Fred, like the old Bernard Cribbins song, but I changed that and everything else, made the place my own.' She motioned to the ballet paraphernalia on the walls. ‘If I can't dance any more, I can at least surround myself with the things I love.' She swept her hands forward to indicate ­Vanessa. ‘Including all the young dancers who come here. You remind me of better days.'

Vanessa pointed to the photograph of the Royal Court ­Ballet Company. ‘This girl,' she said, ‘her name is Margaret Adler. Do you know anything about her?'

Coppelia squinted at the photograph. ‘No,' she said. ‘Not Margaret, I'm sure of that.' She stroked her chin. ‘She called herself Margot.'

Margot?
Vanessa's mind raced. In Margaret's bedroom back home, she'd hung a poster over her bed of Dame Margot ­Fonteyn balancing in a beautiful arabesque, a white tutu fanning out
from her hips. Margaret had always adored her more than any other ballerina. ‘Oh, right,' she said. ‘That was her stage name.'

Coppelia studied Vanessa, a curious look on her face. ‘Your friends . . .' she said.

‘What? No, we're not friends,' Vanessa said, and then ­realised the woman wasn't talking about Margaret.

Justin and Geo were waving to her from across the room. Geo dodged around a few tables and was suddenly right beside her.

‘Ready to go?' he asked. ‘Svetya was hoping you had fallen into the toilet, and sent me to flush you away.'

Vanessa turned her back to the photograph. ‘I'm sure she did.'

‘Don't worry though,' Geo said. ‘She's just jealous of you.'

Justin and the others were standing by the cash register, putting on their coats and scarves.

Vanessa turned to Coppelia. ‘Thank you.'

‘Any time,' Coppelia said, picking up her rag again as ­Vanessa followed the others back through the door and into the night.

Svetya and Justin were already half a block ahead, walking so close together that she kept bumping him. Justin stepped away, but Svetya grabbed his arm to pull him closer, looking up at him with her smoky eyes and whispering in his ear. After a moment, he replied, then turned until his eyes found ­Vanessa.

Embarrassed that he'd caught her watching, Vanessa lowered her head.

Justin walked back to join the main group. ‘You OK?' he whispered to Vanessa, matching his pace to hers.

Vanessa felt her shoulders relax just because he was by her side. ‘I think so.'

They dropped back from Svetya, Geo and the others, meander­
ing along the pavement together. Vanessa wanted to tell him about Coppelia and how she'd remembered Margaret but called her
Margot
, but instead she and Justin walked in silence.

They took the long way around to the dormitory. Narrow brick townhouses lined the kerb above winding streets, their windows framed with quaint black shutters, the glass glowing with velvety yellow light. The city was beautiful in the snow. The fall of white covered up the gutters and grime, blanketing everything in clean, unblemished perfection.

Every so often their arms brushed each other. ‘Sorry,' ­Vanessa said, as she pulled away from him for the third time.

‘You don't have to apologise,' Justin said, drawing closer. ‘I like it.' And then, without warning, he slipped his fingers through hers.

‘Too cold not to hold hands,' he whispered.

Vanessa was so startled by his touch that it took a moment for her hand to melt into his. Would he try to kiss her? She wanted him to stop walking, to pull her into the shadows and press her against the cold brick of a townhouse. To taste his lips, feel his breath mingle with hers, feel his arm inch up her waist, making her skin prickle with goosebumps.

And yet she knew that she shouldn't – couldn't – want any of those things.

In two days, he would be her partner in the
pas de deux
. Justin was the only one at the competition who knew what had happened in New York, who knew the demon was real. She wanted to tell him that she was even more certain now that it was here, in London, and it was in her head. She wanted to tell him it had promised to bring her to Margaret, and that it had helped her dance, but she was afraid how he'd react.

And really, she wanted Justin to kiss her. But did the demon want that too?

Vanessa was about to try to explain this to him when, to her surprise, Justin said, his voice gentle, ‘Don't worry, it's just a walk. A walk with a friend.'

They drifted down the cobblestones, the icy night pushing them closer together. Justin stepped from one stone to the next, letting them guide him like marks on a stage. Vanessa followed, her shoulder bumping his, their legs tangling until they were both laughing. When a car approached, its headlights bouncing through the night, Justin pulled her out of the way, the wind blowing her hair into her face. He brushed a stray lock away from her eyes.

‘You're cold,' he said, touching her cheek.

Before she realised what she was saying, she whispered, ‘Then warm me up.'

Justin leaned forward, his hand buried in her hair as he pulled her into a kiss. Only just before his lips touched hers, he moved his head just slightly so they landed on her cheek
instead. His hands wrapped around her waist as he pulled her to him. ‘I know you're afraid of kissing me,' he said, ‘but when you're ready . . . I'm here.'