The Summer We Danced

‘Thanks again,’ I said, ‘for agreeing to let me move in here. I won’t stay here forever. Just until I work out what I’m doing next.’

‘You needed somewhere to go once you sold the flat, and we had an empty house. It’s what families do for each other.’ She frowned. ‘And I’m really sorry.’

‘What on earth for? You’ve been more than generous. You won’t even accept the full rent from me.’

She sighed as she stared at the Christmas tree, which wobbled slightly as her daughter manoeuvred under its bottom branches. ‘For leaving you here all alone this Christmas. I didn’t realise how hard it must have been for you until just now.’

‘It was okay,’ I said, although it really hadn’t been, but none of it had been Candy’s fault.

‘You know what Mike’s mum and dad are like,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘A total nightmare. I don’t know how they stayed married for twenty years before going their separate ways. We have to have a strict rota for his parents and their respective partners for Christmases, and we’ve learned the hard way that veering from it only causes upset.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said again. ‘I was fine on my own.’

Candy sighed. ‘To be totally honest, I’d have much rather spent it with you. We trundled off down to Mike’s dad’s farmhouse, where his step-mum cooked a vegetarian nut thing that the kids refused to eat and, frankly, I didn’t blame them. It tasted like manure.’

I chuckled into my big wine glass.

‘I feel as if I should make it up to you.’

Ah, that was what the overcatering and the three bottles of prosecco had been about. Candy was feeling guilty.

I called for Honey, who was still convinced there was a reward for an intrepid and tenacious treasure hunter, and her pink satin bottom reversed from under the drooping branches of the Christmas tree. I smiled at her. ‘Pass me that little red present bag, will you, darling?’

Honey did as she was asked, then clambered on to the sofa and sat down, half on me and half on the cushion next door, and looked longingly inside the bag. ‘Is that for me?’

I smiled, remembering the bootful of colourful packages I’d delivered to her house the week before Christmas. ‘I think you’ve had plenty of presents from me already, don’t you?’

Honey batted her eyelids innocently.

‘No presents for you, I’m afraid,’ I told her. ‘It’s mine. Just a DVD, and I was thinking that if your mum really wanted to make it up to me for deserting me at Christmas—’ I paused to give Candy a meaningful look ‘—she could watch it with me. It’s miserable watching your favourite films on your own.’

Honey perked up instantly and peered into the bag. ‘Dessert?’ she asked, a longing tone in her voice. Surprising, since she’d already wolfed down a massive bowl of my tiramisu.

I laughed. ‘No, I meant “desert” not “dessert”! It means that …’ I faltered as Candy started to snicker beside me. ‘Oh, never mind what it means …’ I said, giving my sister a sharp look. ‘What it boils down to is there’s nothing to eat in there.’

Honey’s face fell.

‘Sorry, chicken. But what we do have is one of the most iconic Hollywood musicals ever made.’

Honey’s expression brightened considerably. ‘Frozen?’ she asked, with hushed reverence.

‘Top Hat,’ I corrected her firmly. ‘The songs are way better.’

The look of disbelief Honey gave me could only have come from a princess-in-training who spent hours each week in her bedroom in the midst of a swirling, imaginary snowstorm, perfecting the dramatic high notes of ‘Let It Go’.

Okay, maybe I wasn’t going to win this argument, even if I was clearly in the right. However, I had another ace up my sleeve. ‘The dresses are just as pretty,’ I added. ‘You wait and see.’

Honey looked sceptical, but she always loved the idea of doing ‘grown-up stuff’ with her mum and Auntie Pippa, so she wedged herself between Candy and I, folded her arms and stared at the blank television set, ready to be proved wrong.

Three

When Ginger Rogers first appeared, I leaned across and gave Honey a nudge. ‘See? Told you there’d be pretty dresses. And that’s only her nightie. Wait until you see what she wears for an evening out!’

Honey stared at the screen, duly impressed. ‘Mummy? Can I have a bedroom like that?’ she asked, eyeing up the improbably large and improbably white movie-set hotel room Ginger was sleeping in, complete with a sumptuous bed with a padded satin headboard.

‘Oh, Lord …’ Candy muttered. ‘It’d be like having Vegas come to Islington! I’d keep getting worried that Liberace would pop out from behind the furnishings and flash me his perfect gnashers.’

I chuckled to myself. No, all that glistening white definitely wouldn’t merge well with the Laura-Ashley-meets-Habitat vibe she had going on in her house.

When it got to the bit I’d been waiting for, I hugged the cushion tighter to myself. This was it. The famous rendition of ‘Cheek to Cheek’, where Fred and Ginger glided across a vast dance space. They flowed through the beats of the music, moving together like one person. When the routine came to an end and they stared into each other’s eyes, I couldn’t help letting out a sigh. I knew it was all make-believe, but just for a moment I let myself forget that and imagine what it would be like to dance with a man like that, someone who looked at me as if I was the most captivating creature on the planet. It would be like being in heaven …

‘You’ve always loved Fred and Ginger, haven’t you?’ Candy asked, jerking me out of my little fantasy, which was probably for the best.

‘Always,’ I echoed, my eyes still glued to the screen. ‘Although, I have to confess, while everyone goes wild about Fred and what a genius he was, it’s Ginger I like the best.’

‘Really?’

I turned to look at her. ‘Really. Not just the dancing. There’s something about her. She’s so … confident, self-contained, always ready with a quick line and a sassy look. I wish I could be that way.’

Candy gave me a warm smile. ‘You are!’

I nodded, because I didn’t know how else to respond, but I knew it was a lie. I wasn’t that way, not really. I’m capable and organised, which often gets mistaken for confidence, but it wasn’t the same thing. Not by a long shot.

‘Anyway,’ I added, crossing my arms and deciding to deflect the conversation on to something safer. ‘I think I’m getting a little fed up with Ginger nowadays.’

‘Oh? Why’s that?’

I stared hard at the screen. ‘Well, just look at her. Parading around like that, looking gorgeous and thin as a twig. It’s more than a little sickening.’

‘That’s just the post-Christmas remorse talking,’ Candy said matter-of-factly. ‘You’ll be fine once you’ve been down the gym a few times, dropped a few pounds.’

I waited a full ten seconds before answering. ‘It’s not just a few pounds, Cand …’ I said, casting her a sideways glance.

Candy must have sensed something in my tone, because she picked up the remote, paused the film and shuffled round to face me.

‘I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been, by a long way.’

There. I’d said it. Out loud and not just inside my head. I looked at Candy, feeling my heart skip lightly and unevenly inside my chest and waited for her to say or do something to make me feel better. Candy had always been good at that.

‘I think you look lovely whatever your size. You’ve got amazing eyes and when you smile your whole face lights up. No amount of extra weight is going to spoil those things. Anyway, it’s what’s on the inside that counts, and that’s where you’re most beautiful.’

I leaned over and gave my sister a hug. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And you’re right. I shouldn’t worry about my size. I should just feel confident whatever my weight.’

That’s what New Year, new-improved Pippa would do, wasn’t it? She was the sort of girl who’d dress to emphasise her assets, rather than hide them in a dark tent of a top. She’d walk confidently down the street, knowing she looked good, even while she carefully overhauled her eating habits and improved her lifestyle in the way the January magazine features suggested. Time to get with the programme, Pippa. No more moaning about your wobbly bits while wolfing down custard creams …

‘It’s not just about the weight, though. I feel like crap because I’m eating crap. I want to be fit and healthy too, feel good about myself.’

‘You’ve still got that gym membership, haven’t you?’ Candy asked.

I nodded reluctantly. I’d transferred it to a branch of the same club in Swanham, the nearest big town, even though I couldn’t really afford it, knowing I had to do something, but the card had been gathering dust in my purse since the autumn.

‘I know I should use it, but every time I get dressed in a T-shirt and jogging bottoms, I take one look at myself in the mirror and then strip it all off again.’

Candy gave me the once-over. ‘You look fine,’ she said in the same tone of voice she used when trying to convince Noah that broccoli was nice. ‘Who hasn’t put on a little extra over Christmas?’

I searched her frame for even the hint of a bulge, but couldn’t detect one. I shook my head. ‘It’s the women at my gym,’ I confessed. ‘Half of them look like Barbie dolls, even the ones older than me! They’ve got tiny little grape-like bum cheeks inside their skin-tight yoga bottoms, and they all wear those strappy little crop tops that show off their taut abs … And then I waddle in wearing my size eighteen Marks and Sparks trackie bottoms and one of Ed’s old Pink Floyd T-shirts that I didn’t give back …’

It’s the biggest and baggiest thing I’ve been able to find. I hadn’t kept it because it smelt of him or anything. In reality it had been mine for years. I’d nicked it to sleep in when it had been like a tent on me, but now it was the only T-shirt I had that fit.

‘I know gyms are supposed to make you feel better about yourself,’ I said, reaching for a Quality Street. ‘But mine makes me want to slit my wrists.’

‘Time for a new gym, then,’ Candy said, ever practical.

I nodded, even though I was pretty sure the same cookie-cutter gym bunnies would populate the next one too.

Candy must have caught something in my expression, because then she added, ‘Or time for a new way to burn off the calories.’

‘I’m not going running like you do,’ I said with a chuckle. ‘With the size of my boobs bouncing around, I’d give myself a head injury …’

‘Oh, my goodness! Stop!’ Candy said, laughing. She jerked her head towards the screen, where Fred and Ginger were having a cross-purposed conversation on a balcony. ‘I mean that! Dancing!’

I turned my head and looked at the couple on the screen. ‘They’re not dancing, they’re arguing.’

Candy gave me the kind of look only a big sister can give a little sister. ‘Don’t be awkward. You know what I mean.’

Of course I did. But I wasn’t going to let Candy know that. I studied Ginger Rogers, still wearing the iconic satin-and-ostrich-feather dress she’d designed herself for the scene. ‘I can’t do that. I’d look like a heifer in that dress, for a start. I mean, white, for goodness’ sake! Don’t you know that’s the most unflattering colour ever?’

Candy merely replied calmly, ‘I thought you told me once that dress was actually sky blue.’

I bumbled around for a good reply to that one. Which was difficult, seeing as Candy was right. ‘That’s beside the point.’

‘Well, the point is that I’m saying you should try dancing as a form of exercise. You know you’d enjoy it.’

I folded my arms and stared at the screen. ‘I’ve never done any ballroom.’

‘It doesn’t have to be ballroom. You were brilliant at dancing when we were younger! Me? I had two left feet.’

I really didn’t want to feel the warm glow that flared inside me at Candy’s compliment; I was too busy being irritated with her. Which was odd, because I realised I wasn’t sure why. She just seemed to have hit a nerve.

‘I was passable,’ I muttered.

I hadn’t thought about dancing for a long time. Not in years. But all of a sudden I remembered being back at dance school, loving the sense of joy that had filled me every time I’d stepped through the studio doors, how I’d lost myself in the movements, loving the feeling of not just learning them but mastering them.

I had been good. Candy had been right about that. For a while I’d even considered going to performing arts college and training as a professional dancer, but then, well, things hadn’t worked out that way, had they?

What would it be like to do it again? What would it be like to feel that wonderful sensation, as if I was flying, as if the steps themselves were living things, moving and breathing through me?

I glanced back at the television, then picked up the remote and scooted back to the bit where Fred and Ginger were tapping in a large white set that was supposed to be a bandstand in a London park and watched them, really watched them.

‘Learning to tap dance is on my bucket list,’ I confessed.

A large smile slowly grew across Candy’s face. ‘Well, there you are, then. You could even go back to Miss Mimi’s School of Dancing, see if she does adult classes …’

‘Oh, my word! She can’t still be going, can she? She must be eighty if she’s a day!’

Candy let out a grudging laugh. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she outlived us all. Do you remember that time, before I’d managed to convince Dad that dancing wasn’t my thing, that she made me do a whole class with one of my geography textbooks on my head, because she said I had “horrible” posture?’

I couldn’t help laughing. That book had slid off Candy’s glossy hair and hit various parts of her body on the way down more times than she could count. By the time we’d got home she’d looked as if she’d been doing boxing, not ballet.

‘I don’t know, Cand … Miss Mimi’s? Really? Surely there’s some funky young dance studio I could go to instead these days?’

‘Probably,’ Candy said, nodding. ‘Although I’d guess there’d be a startling amount of tiny bottoms and Lycra in one of those too.’

Ah. There was that. Back to square one.

I shook my head. ‘I can’t do that,’ I told her. ‘People will see me.’

‘Don’t be daft. People see you every day.’

No, they don’t, I thought. Not really. Only in the fringes of their vision, because in my world Ed had always been the one everyone wanted to watch, and now that Ed wasn’t part of my life any more, I was starting to wonder if I’d disappeared completely.

‘Tell me you’ll think about it?’ she urged.

‘Maybe,’ I said, but mainly just to shut her up so I could watch the rest of the film in peace.

Four

Elmhurst was a pretty little place, full of red-brick cottages covered in local flint with high gables and leaded windows. It was a big enough village to have some life—a local pub, a main street with shops and a post office, a primary school and two churches—but still quaint enough that it had become a desirable location for well-to-do Londoners who wanted a bit of the country life without straying too far from a tube stop or a Starbucks.

In the centre of the village was a green with a wrought-iron town sign and a war memorial that always, always had a wreath of pristine poppies underneath it, and at the other end of the green was a duck pond where Candy and I had fished for minnows with plastic nets and jam jars when we were kids.

The oldest houses clustered around the main street, but the village had grown over the last century to include bungalows and a few oast-house conversions and two small estates of new-build houses in local stone.

If you ambled down the main street past The Two Doves and kept going, you’d reach the cricket pitch, complete with its vintage wooden scoreboard and pavilion, and past that, tucked away, out of sight down a side road, was a little church hall. It had once belonged to St Christopher’s C of E church, but the main building had been flattened by a stray doodlebug during World War II. In the early seventies the last of the rubble had been cleared and it had been paved over, turning the footprint of the church into a large car park for the hall.

It was a beautiful little building, almost a miniature version of the church it had once served: red brick that had now weathered to a rusty brown and tall mullioned windows with decorative arches. It even had a little belltower perched on top of the slate tiles. Once the church had gone, the village had used it for clubs and classes, bingo nights and jumble sales, but when a new, modern church had been built on the other side of the village, complete with a smart new community centre, the number of people crossing its threshold had dwindled. That is, until Mimi D’Angelo had come along.

Initially, she’d hired the hall for two nights a week to start her dance school, after retiring from a career as a dancer at the grand old age of twenty-nine. While Elmhurst was only a small village, it was close to the much bigger town of Swanham, where the local kids went to secondary school, and news of Miss Mimi’s first-rate school began to spread by word of mouth. Very soon, scores of little girls (and the occasional little boy) had thronged to her lessons.

They didn’t seem to be put off by the fact that Miss Mimi, as she was always known, was as strict as she was flamboyant. Somehow, she’d always made each pupil feel as if they had untapped potential, and her great stories of her colourful professional life and sense of the dramatic made for interesting lessons, that was for sure.

By the early eighties, Miss Mimi’s school had taken over exclusive use of the hall and she’d finally become queen of her own terpsichorean kingdom. She’d put up posters and noticeboards, added permanent barres to the painted brick walls and put hanging baskets and flower pots outside the entrance to offset the glossy scarlet double doors.

I sat outside St Christopher’s Hall on a windy January Friday night, the engine of my Mini running. I could hardly believe it was still here, the place that had been the setting for the most important moments of my formative years: my greatest triumphs, in the form of shows and exam grades, my first job, helping Miss Mimi with the Babies class on Saturday mornings, and even my first soggy teenage kiss with Simon Lane after a Christmas disco.

I looked at the red doors. They weren’t so glossy now and the paint was peeling at the bottom. The flower pots were still there, but only the stalks of a few dry brown weeds poked over the tops. There was moss growing in the gutters and a couple of slates had come loose on the roof. St Christopher’s Hall was like the widow of a rich man down on her luck; her structure and proportions were still elegant, but she was looking a little ragged and worn around the edges.

Could I go back in there? Did I even want to?

I’d arrived early. A few more cars were pulling into the car park, but nobody got out. Probably parents waiting for kids who were in the class before adult tap. I could sneak away. Nobody would even know I’d been here. I readied my feet on the clutch and prepared to release the handbrake, but then I stopped. I owed it to Candy—and probably to myself—to at least try one class, didn’t I, even if my stomach was churning like a washing machine with a full load?

A crowd of long-legged girls with coats and boots on over their leotards and tights burst from the double doors and ran to different cars. Ah. So the previous class must end at seven forty-five, not eight. Miss Mimi had done that sometimes when it had been a long day of teaching, given herself little gaps in the timetable to just have a cup of tea and get off her feet. Although it probably wouldn’t be Miss Mimi teaching now, would it, even if the school bore her name? She’d probably passed the school on to one of her star pupils, someone who’d gone on to dance in West End shows or on cruise ships, but who was now getting older and wanted to settle down to a job with a fixed location and slightly more sociable hours.

My email enquiry about the class hadn’t even been answered by Miss Mimi, but by someone called Sherri, who had appalling grammar, didn’t know what capital letters were and replied to every email as if she was posting on Twitter.

I felt a twinge of sadness at the thought of not seeing my old teacher again, but it made the decision of whether to go in or not easier. I wouldn’t be letting anyone down. If I didn’t come back next week, no one would care. They probably wouldn’t even notice.

With that thought in my head, I reached for the door handle, grabbed my holdall and stepped into the chilly winter night. If I went inside before anyone else, I’d be able to get myself ready quietly at the back, and I’d be able to chat to the teacher a little first, let her know I was a complete tap virgin and ask if she could go easy on me.

The wind was really biting tonight, ruffling up my pixie cut and making my hair stand on end. I made a dash for the double doors and shoved them closed behind me.

A tsunami of nostalgia washed over me as I stood in the little vestibule that led to the main hall. I’d spent half my childhood and teenage years in this hall. It had become a home from home.

The old horsehair mat was there, still worn in places, and so was the cork noticeboard where Miss Mimi had always posted exam schedules and results, timetables and the allimportant uniform requirements, although now someone had obviously learned how to insert clip-art in Word, because instead of the photocopied notices of typed announcements or quick notes written in Miss Mimi’s elegant and looping handwriting, there were colour-printed A4 sheets, decorated with just about every dancing-related cartoon one could imagine.

I smiled as I looked around, especially when I saw the plaque on the ladies’ loo hadn’t changed. It was still a line drawing of an elegant fifties woman etched on dusky pink plastic, holding her large-brimmed hat as her ‘new look’ skirt swirled around her shapely calves. The men’s sign was equally as pleasing, featuring a man with Brylcreemed hair and a tweedy suit with turn-ups.

‘Hello, Audrey … Hello, Cary …’ I whispered. I’d christened them with those names at the age of eleven when my obsession with old black-and-white films had begun. ‘It’s lovely to see you again.’

I was still smiling absent-mindedly when I pushed my way through the second set of double doors into the hall.

Five

‘Philippa Hayes!’

I jumped at the use of my full name, the one I’d gone back to using after I’d stopped being Mrs Ed Elliot, and still wasn’t quite used to again. There were only two people in this world who had said that name in that same tone. The first had been my mother and the second was …

No. It couldn’t be? Could it?

A moment later an old lady started crossing the hall towards me. Actually, it would have been more accurate to say she swept across the room, arms outstretched, her outrageously long false eyelashes almost touching her drawn-on eyebrows as her eyes widened in surprise.

‘Miss Mimi?’ I croaked, as I was engulfed by a cloud of Chanel No.5.

‘Who else did you think would be here?’ she asked. ‘Gene Kelly?’

I laughed. Of course Miss Mimi was still here, still teaching! How could I ever have imagined otherwise?

‘Now,’ Miss Mimi said, looking me up and down, ‘let me take a look at you …’

I wasn’t sure I was ready for that, despite my current determination to reinvent myself. ‘I know … I’m a little on the cuddly side, but that’s why I’m here really—’

‘Nonsense!’ Miss Mimi said, cutting me off. ‘It’s just puppy fat, you always were prone to a little of that.’

Aw, it was lovely of her to say that but the truth was I had about as much puppy fat as the whole of Battersea Dogs’ Home. However, I didn’t correct her, because a) I was supposed to be embracing my curvaliciousness and b) I wasn’t sure she’d understand. For as long as I’d known Miss Mimi, she’d been a petite five foot two, with a perfect dancer’s physique. She wasn’t lanky like a fashion model but trim and toned and strong, even now, it seemed. I looked her up and down, taking my turn to study and observe.