You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) (16 page)

Felix
chucked one of my pillows at Roddy, but it hit me instead.

“Sorry,
Laura,” he said. “For taking over your bed, not just for my crap aim.”

I
looked at him, too shy to meet his eyes, and found my gaze drawn to his bare
legs, impossibly long and muscular, sticking out from under my faded flowery
duvet cover. I felt myself blushing and ducked my head again.

“That’s
all right,” I said, and scurried off to knock on Mel’s door. I was longing to
have an urgent, whispered chat about what had happened – or not happened – between
Felix and me, and what – if anything – it meant. Would he have slept in my bed
if he didn’t like me? If he did like me, what should I do about it? Or was it
all just a stupid, random, drunken thing that had happened, which I needed to
put out of my mind once and for all?

But
as soon as I heard Mel’s croaky, “Come in,” and opened the door, I knew that
wasn’t the conversation I was going to have with her. The room smelled odd – stale
and musty. Mel was lying down, curled in a foetal huddle, her lank hair
sticking to her face, which was ghostly pale. I could see that the pillowcase
next to her was damp, and realised she’d been sweating, or crying, or both.

“Hey,”
I said softly. “How are you feeling? Are you okay? You look awful. I brought
you coffee.”

I
put the mug down on the floor and sat next to her, reaching out to stroke her
hair.

“Don’t
touch me,” she groaned. “It hurts. Everything hurts. Could you bring me a glass
of water, please? If I drink coffee I’ll spew. And those tablets I bought
yesterday.”

“You
should see a doctor,” I said. “You’re not well.”

“Don’t
be ridiculous.” She struggled upright. “It’s just a cold. I’m fine.”

“You’re
not fine,” I said. “Mel, seriously, you need to rest.”

“Fuck
that,” she said. “I can rest when I’m dead. Right now I need to get to class,
and then to rehearsal. You don’t chuck sickies when you’ve just been given a
promotion, Laura, as you know full well.”

I
did know. I’d seen it happen before – Iris, who’d joined the company in the
same year as us, had been identified as a rising star, a dancer who was going
places. Then she’d started getting migraines. Her doctor said they were caused
by stress, and advised her to take it easy for a bit. Iris certainly did take
it easy – she stopped getting any parts at all, sank back to the Corps de Ballet
with the rest of us, and left a year later, her promise come to nothing. So I
pushed my worries to the back of my mind, fetched Mel her tablets and had a
shower.

Class
that morning was different from usual. I could sense that more eyes were on me
than had ever been before – the company’s rumour mill had clearly been working
overtime, and the whispers that always followed Felix now followed me, too. I
felt proud and excited to be the one who was watched, was talked about – but
also frightened. Nothing had happened between us, after all – probably nothing
was going to. But every time I glanced at Felix, I saw that he was looking at
me, too, and every time our eyes met we smiled at each other. His smiles gave
new sureness to my steps, new height to my jumps, a sense of freedom and
pleasure in my work that hadn’t been there in the weeks before. But all too
soon, class was over and Felix and Mel departed with the soloists while I had
my break and prepared for my own mundane rehearsal with the rest of the mere
Artists.

I,
along with the rest of the dancers who’d been with the company for a while,
knew
Swan Lake
pretty much inside out. I’d been dancing bits of it since
I was a little girl, after all. So rehearsals like today’s were a strange
mixture of comfort and frustration. Here we were, practising the same, familiar
steps, albeit with slightly different artistic interpretation, but basically it
was all the same, as easy as putting on a favourite pair of jeans, but with the
niggling knowledge that you’d really, really like a new pair – ideally a
gorgeous, designer pair that would turn heads when you walked down the street.

I
slotted into my place behind Lisa, the pianist began to play, and we all flowed
seamlessly into the choreography, our shoulders identically angled, our hands
identically placed. Always let the audience see your palms – it was a message
we’d had drummed into us for so long that it was automatic, like breathing or
swallowing.

Anna
moved along the line of dancers, criticising a tempo here, demanding more
turnout there, correcting the tilt of a chin or the angle of a spine. I worked
on autopilot, my thoughts straying to Felix and when I’d see him again. His
rehearsal finished half an hour after ours – I’d loiter on the stairs and wait
for him to go up for a smoke, and then maybe we could talk, if he wasn’t surrounded
by his usual fan club. And even if he was, perhaps he’d single me out, invite
me for a coffee – I’d be satisfied with anything, if it meant being close to
him. And while I waited I’d text Mel and ask how she was feeling. She’d seemed
to be okay in class, her face set with determination, although paler than
usual.

The
background hum of my thoughts was broken by a ripple of – something – through
the line of dancers. It wasn’t a sound; it wasn’t even visible, really, unless
the routine was as familiar as cleaning your teeth. It was more a tension, a
series of tiny adjustments that began with Rosa at the front and spread like a
game of Chinese Whispers from one girl to the next, and on and on. Gestures,
while still identical, became ever so slightly more extravagant. Spines were
held straighter. I noticed Lisa across the room suck in her abs and minutely
alter the angle of her body to the mirror. I didn’t have to look – I knew.
Marius was in the studio. I could literally smell him.

“Thank
you, girls. Thank you, Paul.” There was a final chord from the piano, then
silence. We always thanked the pianist at the end of a class or rehearsal,
bowing deeply to show our appreciation, but when Anna said thank you, it meant
stop.

It
was our cue to relax and look at Marius while pretending not to. It wasn’t
unheard-of for him to look in on rehearsals – as Artistic Director, he was
notorious for knowing exactly what was going on in every part of the company at
any time, down to the tiniest detail. Inez, one of the seamstresses, had shown
me just the other day a deep wound in her finger where she’d shoved a needle
into it through sheer fright at smelling Marius behind her in Wardrobe as she
took up a hem.

“Thank
you, Anna,” Marius said. “That was very pretty, girls. A little more… perhaps.”
He gestured with both hands, knowing even after watching for just a few seconds
that we hadn’t been trying as hard as we should. “But I won’t keep you. You’re
all hard at work. Anna, could you spare Laura for just a moment?”

Instantly,
I wasn’t a part in the machine any more, one small and anonymous form in the
flock of dancing swans. I’d been singled out. Thirty pairs of eyes swivelled
around the room to find me. Girls shifted to see me better, or to allow their
neighbours to. I could hear thirty pairs of lungs giving almost identical, tiny
gasps, then exhaling, all together. I felt sick.

“Marius.”
I walked to the door, trying to keep my head high and my back straight,
imagining a wire pulling up through my spine so I crossed the floor like a
marionette carried by its string, gliding and graceful. Only when I reached him
did I dip into a deep bow.

“Yes,
thank you,” he said impatiently. “Come along.”

Clumsy
in my pointe shoes, I hurried through the corridors behind him, conscious of
the sweat beading my upper lip and trickling down my spine. I was worried I’d
get cold – we weren’t allowed to get cold.

“Melissa
Hammond,” Marius said. “She’s a friend of yours?”

“Yes.
Yes, she’s my friend and we share a flat, us and Roderigo Silva.” My breathing
was rapid and uneven. “Is she okay?”

“She
fainted in rehearsal.” There was a slight but definite note of scorn in
Marius’s voice. “She’ll be fine, but not for this show. Some sort of virus.
Let’s hope it doesn’t spread through the whole company. So, for now, her part
is yours. We’ll get the paperwork sorted ASAP.” He pronounced it ay-sapp. My
mouth was as dry as my body was wet – I wished I’d brought my bottle of water
almost as much as I longed for my warm top.

“Thank
you, Marius,” I said.

“Here
we are then. Studio Eight,” he said. Then he took my jaw in the fingers of one
hand, turning my head this way and that, so I had to force myself to meet his
eyes until at last he let go, giving me a small, paternal pat on the shoulder.
“Off you go. Any problems, you know where to come.”

Jesus,
I thought, I’d rather go to Ozzy Osbourne with my problems than to you. The
idea made me giggle, and I wrapped my arms around my freezing shoulders, trying
to summon up the courage to open the door and go in to the soloists’ rehearsal
room, where Briony, Jerome and the others had been working for the past few
weeks, remote as planets. I understood now how Mel would have felt – how
terrified and daunted, while all I’d been aware of was my own jealousy. And then
another thought occurred to me – Mel wouldn’t like this. Not one bit. Her
illness wasn’t her fault, any more than my promotion was mine, but I knew that,
deep down, she’d see this as an unwelcome reversal of the natural order of
things, in which she led and I followed, some way behind. She’d blame me, and I
wondered if she’d ever be able to forgive me.

Then
I realised that Felix would be there too, rehearsing with the others. I thought
of his easy banter and his smile that made me feel like a candle had been lit
inside me, and I remembered the way his body had felt next to mine in my bed.
And that gave me the courage I needed to open the door.

Felix
was as good as his word. Two days later, an envelope arrived on the doormat
addressed to me in his distinctive black scrawl – using a fountain pen had
always been an affectation of his. I tore it open eagerly, and found two
tickets and a note.

“Come
next Friday if you can. It’s the final night and there’ll be a party after.”

He’d
signed it with a large, sloping F and three kisses.

I
logged on to our online calendar and checked Jonathan’s diary. Meetings – bloody
six o’clock meetings every evening, for the next two weeks, except Thursday
when he had a dinner. I was going to have to call in the cavalry.

“So,”
I said to Zé the next morning as we sipped coffee together in her garden.
“Fancy seeing the show again?”

“The
Dream
? Hell yes. Or I would if I could get hold of tickets. There were
some on eBay but they’re like three times the face value and I’m not quite that
desperate yet.”

“I’ve
got two,” I said. “One each.”

“Seriously?
How did you manage that? Do you still have both your kidneys? And both your
children?”

I
laughed. “Friends in high places. Or rather, one friend.”

And
I told her the same half-truth I’d told Jonathan the day after Darcey’s birthday party – that Felix had mentioned to
me when we were having our cigarette outside the restaurant that he did magic
as a hobby, and I’d remembered when I was in dire straits when Larry had let us down, and Googled him.

“And
he sent me a couple of tickets,” I said. “Which was lovely of him, don’t you
think?”

Zé
looked at me astutely. “He fancies you.”

“No!
No, of course he doesn’t! He’s just being kind.”

“Do
you fancy him? You must do, he’s fucking gorgeous. Such charisma – I suppose
you have to have that, to act. And his voice! I so would. We can get Carmen to
babysit, at yours if you don’t mind Juniper sleeping over? The girls will love
it. Thanks, Laura.”

 I
walked home and sat in the kitchen and drank more coffee, staring blankly out
of the window. The wave of jealousy I felt when Zé had said she found Felix
attractive had completely blindsided me, especially as I could see exactly how
Felix – or anyone else, for that matter – would be attracted to her, too.

It
was my own fault for not having owned up to her, and more importantly to
Jonathan, about the role Felix had played in my past. At the time it had seemed
like a simple glossing-over of a time I preferred to forget – a way of
protecting my feelings and my husband’s. But at the time I hadn’t imagined ever
meeting him again, and now I’d begun to spin myself into a web of deception
that I couldn’t see a way of unravelling.

The
sensible thing to do, of course, would be to return the tickets to Felix, with
a note explaining that I’d had a think and decided it was better if we let
things lie – that there was too much potential for hurt. But he hadn’t included
a return address on the envelope.

So
hand them in at the box office, I told myself, and send him a text – or call
him – and explain. It’s simple. It’s what any adult in your position would do.
Or give the tickets to Zé – let her go with another friend. Just do it, Laura.
Do the right thing.

But
I didn’t want to.

We’d
be in a public place, I rationalised. There was no harm in it. Zé would be with
me, probably hitting on Felix herself, if what she’d said that morning was
true. And with her around, no one was going to give me a second glance – certainly
not Felix, for whom I was ancient history anyway. And I’d loved the play – I
wanted quite desperately to return to that world, that night-time forest, and
discover more of its secrets. It wasn’t about Felix, I said firmly to myself – it
was about me, about discovering a new interest, a new passion, something to relieve
the monotony of my life.