Prima Donna (56 page)

‘I felt it was time to come and say hello. I’m actually really very excited you’re here. It’s been somewhat . . . frustrating having to keep beating you from
afar.’

Slowly Pia turned to face her. Ava was fractionally shorter and much thinner, with snow-white papery skin barely covering her muscles of steel. Pia looked voluptuous by comparison, and fresh off
the beach. Again, their choice of variations matched and they were both wearing their peasant costumes. Ava’s Giselle was in the classical brown, like Cinderella before the ball; Pia’s
a more Romantic-period pale blue.

‘You’re not winning this one, Ava. We were both on twenty-two points, last time I looked.’

‘I guess this next round will be do or die, then,’ the Russian smiled but her eyes were as cold as the snow in Moscow. ‘Here,’ she said loudly, offering her hand.

Pia stared at it, the insincere civility an insult to everything Ava had stolen from her –
The Songbird
, the ChiCi, Adam, Sophie – and everything she had sabotaged: her
Patek Philippe contract, the Cartier campaign.

‘What? You won’t look me in the eye and shake my hand?’ Ava said, loudly enough to enable the loitering crew, who’d been too scared to stare outright, to turn and
watch.

Pia shook it, perfectly aware of the lighting guy filming the scene on his iPhone and transmitting it to YouTube. ‘Don’t think I don’t know it was you who detached the ribbons
on my shoes,’ she said, her face a mask. When she’d reached her dressing room twenty minutes previously, she’d found every single pair bar one had had their ribbons – which
she sewed on herself to ensure the perfect fit – unpicked. There’d been no time to fix them.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Pia. I’ve come straight from my hotel room. The dressing rooms here aren’t to my taste,’ she added preciously. ‘It
must have been some of the other dancers messing with you. You’re not the most popular person here, you know.’

‘But you are?’

Ava shrugged. ‘There’s only one person’s popularity contest I want to win.’ She tipped her head to the side. ‘Weren’t the flowers he sent just
divine
?’

Pia’s eyes narrowed but her stomach lurched. She was lying. She had to be. There was no way Dimitri Alvisio would have sent Ava flowers and not her. She’d been the front runner, his
favourite, for so long. Surely Ava hadn’t stolen the march to that extent?

She pulled her hand away and turned around. She had to keep focus, but Ava saw that the damage was done. Her confidence was shaken.

The music started up and Pia closed her eyes, blocking out Ava from her thoughts. She knew Ava was deliberately trying to break her concentration. The very fact that she had chosen now to make
her approach . . . everybody knew how sacrosanct these final golden minutes before curtain-up were, and for her most of all.

But there was no time to think now. Her cue was coming up. She opened her eyes again and looked out past the lights, not even needing to count the beats. This was it.

She launched into her
ballottées
, springing lightly like a hopping robin. Her head filled with the music and the story, and she felt Ava’s insidious poison begin to roll
off her. Her rival was irrelevant out here, insignificant. Dancing in front of the spotlights was where it mattered. She would show the Russian exactly what she could do. Ava’s plans of
sabotage, this time at least, had been gauche and naive. Pia thanked God she had gone backstage when she had. This stage was where justice would be served.

Pia felt untouchable as the dance enveloped her and she swept down into an
arabesque penchée
, then defiantly up! –

– an agonizing sharpness rocketed up from her right foot as she stood on
pointe
and she felt the white glare of the lights begin to spread with the blinding spasms. Her body kept
moving, years of discipline drilling her forward through the pain, but every step took a tungsten strength of will to block out the pain and she felt her mime begin to falter.

She knew that her leg was over-extending in the
fondues
for a true Romantic line, that her neck had stiffened and her fingers were getting spiky, but these were details beyond her reach
now. It was all she could do just to keep going.

As Pia
pirouetted
past the wings, she saw Ava watching, gloating. The cut ribbons hadn’t been a threat, a prank, naive or gauche, after all. They’d been strategic.
They’d forced her into the one pair of shoes she had left – the pair with the tacks sprinkled inside.

Pia was still soaking her feet in a bowl of salted water when there was a knock at the door. Everyone had long since gone, but as usual she’d been left alone the second
she shut her dressing-room door. Her only visitor was Sophie and she wouldn’t be coming tonight now she knew Will was taking Pia to dinner.

‘Come in,’ she said. The sobs had abated as the water had cooled, but the hot angry tears had left their mark, pulling her make-up down with them.

Will’s eyebrow cocked at the sight of her. She looked tiny sitting there in her dressing gown, her feet in a bowl of red water. ‘It wasn’t that bad,’ he said, shutting
the door behind him. ‘You’re still through.’

Pia felt the tears well up instantly. It wasn’t enough to be through, limping over the finish line. Alvisio wasn’t going to just
settle
.

She watched him shrug off his dinner jacket and settle into the tub chair that Sophie had claimed as her own.

‘What did they give me?’ she asked, not able to look at him.

‘Nineteen.’

‘Nineteen?’ She half screeched, half hiccuped. Nineteen was the minimum pass mark.

‘Well, what did you expect? Your legs were all over the place. I half expected you to go into the cancan . . . Your
retirés
were floppy . . . Your—’

‘What did
she
get?’

‘Who?’

‘Who do you think, Will?’ she snapped. ‘We haven’t been apart that long.’

There was a pause. ‘Twenty-four.’ One mark off flawless. ‘And actually it feels like an age since you left. To me anyway.’

‘Oh please don’t ask me to believe that you’ve missed me,’ she said. ‘Last I heard you’d taken up with Violet.’

Will looked up at her sharply and she recoiled from his stare. ‘And who told you that?’ he asked quietly, pulling off his bow tie and folding it into his pocket. He sat back and
rested one ankle on his knee.

‘Just gossip I picked up,’ she replied, suddenly worried about bringing up Tanner’s name. ‘Is it true?’

‘Do you even care?’ he countered casually.

Pia looked at him. He wasn’t going to capitulate quickly. She’d obviously hurt his pride walking out on him so publicly, and if she wanted him to counterbalance Ava’s inside
man she was going to have to change tack. This wasn’t the time to act up, especially now she was trailing so badly.

‘I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t,’ she said, more mildly.

He shrugged his eyebrows but didn’t answer her question.

‘So are you – together, I mean?’

‘That depends,’ he said, looking straight at her, and she felt a sudden chill at the prospect of having to get close to this man again, of having to bring him back into her life when
she’d done everything she could to keep him out of it. But it was different here. It wasn’t his arrogant control that repelled her now, not his puppet-master routine that was so
determined to break her and have her dancing to his tune, but the thought of Tanner’s reaction when he found out. And she had no doubt he would. The universe had a way of making sure that the
worst secrets were always let out.

The water was chilly around her feet. She gave a little shiver and pulled them out. She pulled her right leg up over her left thigh – the dressing gown falling open over her legs as she
did – and examined her foot. The deepest cut was over the bridge of her toes, where a pin had embedded itself as she rested her body weight upon that narrow five-inch span.

She waited for him to question her about it, to open up the discussion about Ava’s dirty tricks.

‘Ow,’ she said quietly.

He said nothing.

‘See this?’ she asked finally.

Will didn’t bother to examine it. ‘Just another day at the office, surely,’ he replied. ‘Bleeding feet are par for the course.’

‘Bleeding, yes; haemorrhaging, no.’

‘You always were overdramatic,’ he said, with a hint of a grin.

‘I would hardly call an open wound overdramatic,’ she replied. ‘I’d call it sabotage.’

Will raised an eyebrow, bemused rather than aghast. ‘Are you making an allegation against a fellow dancer?’

‘Formally, no. But off the record . . . you know what I’m saying.’

‘I don’t think I do.’

Pia sighed. He was being deliberately naive. ‘Ava’s responsible. She put tacks in my shoes.’

Will stared at her for a long time, clearly not believing a word of it.

‘She did!’

‘Okay,’ he shrugged. ‘So report her.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I can’t prove it. And, besides, I’m going to show her I’m the better dancer. I’ll beat her even with pins in my shoes.’

‘You didn’t in this round.’

‘The competition’s not over yet.’

His shrug was loquacious. ‘She’s going through to the final with the highest mean score.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Whose side are you on anyway?’

‘Depends,’ he said again.

Pia swallowed, surprised by the sudden intimation that he was a floating voter. She’d just assumed she had his support, that he’d do anything to get her back. But, when she thought
about it, he had good reason to vote against her. It would no doubt be a satisfying revenge for the way she’d humiliated him. ‘Do you hate me?’

He hesitated for a moment, clearly torn between pride and desire. ‘Why would I hate you?’ he echoed.

‘Because of what I did . . . running out on you like that.’

There was a long silence and he had to look away. ‘Why did you go?’ he asked eventually.

‘Stage fright,’ she lied.

‘I don’t think so,’ he countered, looking back at her.

Pia didn’t say anything, just shrugged a little. There was no way she was going to tell him that Tanner had blown the whistle on him – both about his orders in St Moritz and about
having rescued her.

The gesture angered him. ‘Aside from the compensation I had to pay out – to the television companies, the advertisers, the travel companies and the ticket-holders – do you have
any idea what it was like for me to have to get up on that stage and tell everyone that you’d done a runner?’ he asked.

‘I’m so sorry, Will,’ she said, startled by his anger. ‘I didn’t realize. I never thought for a moment . . . It was just too soon for me. I didn’t have . . .
I didn’t have my nerve back. I was so frightened of landing badly on it. Doing further damage.’ It was half the truth at least.

Will looked away, his eyes taking in the lack of flowers and good-luck cards. ‘So where did you go?’

‘Back to Brazil.’

‘To Paolo Almerida.’

‘No!’ she said, shocked that he knew. ‘That was just the papers screwing me over – as usual.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I went back to the Bolshoi. My teachers
there have been training me, getting me ready for this.’

He watched her rub her foot. She seemed to have forgotten how small the polo circuit was. She stood up and put her weight on her foot. The bleeding had stopped now. Most of the damage was across
the top of it, meaning it was fine to walk on, but completely raw up on
pointe
. It had four days to heal before the final round.

‘It was a surprise to find out
you
were here,’ she said in a quiet voice, pressing down on the ball of her foot.

‘I’ll bet it was.’

‘I’m sorry, Will. You only ever showed me kindness and I repaid you with—’

‘As far as I’m aware, you haven’t repaid me yet,’ he said quietly, a slow smile beginning to cross his lips.

She looked up at him, startled, as he came and stood next to her. Instinctively she held her breath. She heard the buzz of the light bulbs from her mirror and caught sight of her own frozen
reflection.

Casually, he hooked a finger into the belt of her dressing gown. The bow untied easily, the weight of the loose ends pulling the edges away from each other. He looked down at her, at the
revealed peach-skin dip between her breasts, the silken run of her abdomen.

‘Why did you really ask me back here tonight?’ he asked.

‘I wanted your help,’ she said in a tiny voice.

‘Oh so
now
you want my help,’ he drawled, his eyes still heavy upon her.

She nodded almost imperceptibly, trying to ignore the sarcasm in his voice. ‘I think Ava’s bribing one of the judges.’

He paused at the accusation. Sabotage and now bribery?

‘Only one?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. She felt his eyes travel down her again and tried not to shudder.

‘She’s beating you fair and square at the moment.’

‘Not fair and square,’ Pia said, daring herself to meet his eyes. ‘She disabled my second-round performance.’

He drew his breath in slowly and she heard it whistle round his teeth. ‘The finals are in four days’ time,’ he said. ‘What do you think I can possibly do?’

‘Counteract the vote,’ she said quietly. ‘Give me a top score – just to neutralize her advantage.’

He shook his head doubtfully. ‘Tricky, without raising suspicion. She’s going to go out there and dance the dance of her life.’

‘So am I,’ she said, pleading with her eyes. ‘I’m not asking you to get anyone else involved. I just want it brought back to a level playing field.’

There was a long silence, his breath still hot against her ear.

‘And if I do it? What do I get in return?’

Her throat tightened. ‘What do you want?’

‘Oh I think we both know what I want, Pia,’ he said, flicking the fabric off her shoulders so that the robe slipped off her like oil.

She felt her skin prickle as his eyes probed her like fingers. She’d never been shy about nudity, but standing there before him she felt utterly exposed. Violated. She could feel his
breath on her shoulder as he moved slightly, and she tensed, the adrenalin beginning to pump around her.