The Summer We Danced

Maybe the shadows from the street lights made the angles on Nancy’s face appear sharper than they really were, but when she turned to look at me there didn’t seem to be any trace of warmth in her expression.

‘Oh, hello. I’d heard you were back.’

The way she looked at me made me feel like a dead butterfly pinned and held securely on a collector’s board.

She knew.

She knew all about Ed and me. She knew all about the TV show.

This was what I’d been afraid of. This was why I’d carefully avoided all the lovely Christmas social gatherings in Elmhurst over the last couple of weeks. Because I’d been scared that even though this was my home, the place where I was supposed to belong, everyone would look at me differently now, that they’d smile at me when I went into the post office then whisper about me once I’d left. That every time they looked at me they’d be running those humiliating scenes of Ed and the Tart together on the reality show in their heads and judging me. Or worse, pitying me.

‘What do you say, Pippa?’ Donna asked as we waited for Miss Mimi to lock up. ‘We always end our Friday night tap session with a quick tipple at the Doves and you’re more than welcome to join us.’

I looked from Donna, back to Nancy and then round the rest of the group, all looking at me with expectant faces.

‘Sorry,’ I said, giving them a weak smile. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I really do have to get back.’ And then, before anyone could argue with me, I turned and dashed for my Mini.

Seven

I couldn’t stop thinking about Miss Mimi all that night. Every time I woke up, I kept seeing her soft, wrinkly face in the light from the car park street lights, full of determination and fire.

But there’d been something else there too—a weariness, hidden down behind the feisty smile—and I couldn’t help worrying about her. It was stupid, really. I mean, she was eighty-two and stronger and fitter than some women of my age.

When I woke up the next morning, I sat up and tickled Roberta under her chin. She’d crept up on to the bed during the night as she often did and had tucked herself into the hollow made as I slept on my side. She looked up at me and I looked down at her.

‘I know this is daft,’ I began, ‘but I really think I need to just pop down to the dance school this morning, check that Miss Mimi’s okay and see if there’s anything I can do.’ I paused for a moment. ‘Good idea or bad idea?’

Roberta kept staring at me.

‘Great! Knew you’d say that.’

I jumped out of bed and went to find something comfy—and warm—to wear. Who knew if the heaters were back on again? That hall could be horribly draughty.

I decided that it was probably better to get down there as early as possible, so I didn’t bother with toast, only a cup of tea, which I tipped into a travel mug, thinking I’d just slip along to the Apple Tree Cafe when I was finished and get something healthy, like a pot of bircher muesli or some porridge. Not a pastry. Definitely not a pastry.

When I edged the hall doors open I could hear piano music and the timbre of Miss Mimi’s voice, still clear and strong after all these years. I hesitated in the vestibule, wondering if I should just turn around and sneak away, but something kept me there. The same something caused me to push open the inner doors and slip inside the hall. I owed her this, because I’d let her down once before when she’d been relying on me.

‘Philippa!’ Miss Mimi exclaimed and paused her instructions on doing the perfect plié to sweep across the room towards me, a vision in orange and pink, her long gold chains clinking musically as she walked. ‘How can I help you, dear?’

‘Actually, I thought I’d pop by to see if you needed any help,’ I said.

Miss Mimi beamed at me and reached out a papery hand to pat my cheek. ‘You were always such a kind girl,’ she said, warmth lighting up her eyes, ‘but we’re all perfectly fine, aren’t we, girls?’

The dozen or so eight-year-olds lining up against the barres and mirrors against the far wall nodded, their eyes wide, but I saw the way their lean little bodies were quaking under their thin crossover cardigans and how some were even trying to clench down on chattering teeth. It was then that I realised, despite my coat and big woolly jumper, that the hall was perishing. The only person who didn’t seem to notice it was Miss Mimi, whose arms were bare from the elbow down and who was wearing only a colourful sheer wrap over the top of her leotard and skirt.

I touched my cheek, suddenly remembering the iciness of her fingers there. The information had arrived late, the sensation momentarily overridden by the warmth of her smile.

I looked up to the ceiling. The old-fashioned globe lights that hung down on metal poles were unlit and every time the wind hit the windows at the far end of the hall, they rattled noisily.

‘Miss Mimi, did the electricity come back on?’

She waved her hand dismissively. ‘Oh, I’m sure it will sort itself out soon enough.’

I looked over to the other side of the room. The little girls had given up pretending they were holding their places on the barre and were now hugging themselves. Two or three of them had huddled together in a group.

I stared intently at Miss Mimi, trying to work out how to respond, and then the strangest thing happened. She kind of went out of focus and went back in again, and when she was sharp and clear once more it was like I was seeing a completely different person. I realised I hadn’t properly looked at her since we’d met again.

Oh, I’d taken in the changes of twenty years, noted the new lines on her face, the thinner limbs, but it became clear that I’d been looking at my old dance teacher through the lens of my teenage self, the Pippa who’d worshipped her mentor, who’d thought she was eccentric and charismatic and wonderful.

Of course, Miss Mimi was all those things still. It was just that thirty-seven-year-old me could see other things too, things that only living with a man who thought he was Peter Pan could teach a person. It shocked me that I hadn’t seen the similarity between them before, that magical ability to reshape reality into their own design, to ignore the things they didn’t want to see.

‘Miss Mimi,’ I said softly. ‘You can’t teach in here without electricity. It’s freezing.’

‘Pff,’ Mimi replied, looking very French, as she had a tendency to do when she thought she knew best. ‘You should have been backstage at the Palladium in December. It was twice as cold as this back in the fifties. A dancer has to learn to be hardy, to deal with all conditions.’

‘But these aren’t dancers,’ I said softly. ‘These are little girls, and I doubt their parents will appreciate it when they come home from ballet with hypothermia.’

Miss Mimi stared back at me, her gaze strong and determined, but then I saw something shift behind her eyes, a subtle ‘click’ of agreement. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

She walked away from me and over to her students. ‘Girls! We’re going to stop for today. You may get your clothes back on and come back and sit on the floor in front of the stage.’

All twelve of them scurried off to the little dressing room at the back of the hall.

‘Do you have phone numbers for their parents?’ I asked. ‘We might as well get hold of them and tell them to come back early.’

‘Oh, Sherri keeps all that sorted for me,’ Mimi said breezily. ‘I’m sure it’ll all be in the office somewhere.’

I pulled my mobile out of my pocket. I didn’t know what kind of phones were in the office, but if they were the kind that needed to be plugged in, they were going to be about as useful as the ancient caged-in heaters that hung from the walls of the main hall.

When we got to the office, though, I had a shock. In the back of my mind I’d been expecting a cosy little nook, the walls filled with photographs of Mimi’s glory days and memorabilia, maybe an old armchair with a shawl draped over it in the corner, opposite an old leather-topped desk. What I saw was indeed small, but not at all cosy.

Papers and folders were balanced precariously on every available surface and lay in piles on the floor. The photos and keepsakes might have been around somewhere, but they were buried by the unending stacks of clutter. I took one look and went straight back out to the main hall.

‘Hi,’ I said, smiling at the girls, who were all looking a little bit worried as they huddled together on the floor, their bags at their feet. ‘I’m Pippa. A long time ago I came here and did dance lessons just like you.’

A girl with a perfect blonde bun and a pinched expression looked me up and down, then wrinkled her nose. I knew what she was thinking: How on earth did one of us turn into that great tub of lard? I ignored her and carried on. New Pippa didn’t react to things like that. She was comfortable in her own skin, however large it was.

‘Anyway, as you can tell, there’s no heating and no lights, so we’re going to have to call your mums and dads and get them to come and get you early. Who knows their home phone number?’

Five or six of them put up their hands. The rest just looked worried.

‘Never mind,’ I said as Miss Mimi rejoined us, ‘we’ll work something out.’ And I began tapping a number into my mobile as one of the girls recited it to me.

In the next ten minutes we managed to dispatch almost all of the girls. Some had parents who passed the message on and a couple more took turns in doing lifts, so managed to drive away with two or three. That left two students sitting on the hall floor, fidgeting with their coat zips.

And then there was one.

‘Ursula’s mum never gets the time right,’ Miss Mimi explained as the penultimate girl skipped out the door. ‘Either she’s twenty minutes late or twenty minutes early for pick up. Thank goodness it was the latter today!’

She turned to the remaining girl. ‘Who’s picking you up today, Lucy? Dad or Grandma?’

‘Dad,’ Lucy replied quietly, her eyes as huge as the over-sized buttons on her school coat. ‘I stayed at Gran and Grandad’s last night. They dropped me off.’ She glanced at a small wheeled case with lots of glitter and a fluffy cat in a tutu on the front that sat beside her.

‘Do you know his mobile number?’ I asked.

Lucy nodded, then reached into her bag and pulled out a purse. Inside were a few coppers, a broken hair clip and a scrap of paper. She took the paper out and handed it to Miss Mimi. ‘Dad makes me keep this in my bag,’ she explained.

Mimi passed it to me. ‘See if you can get hold of him, will you, dear?’

I noted the neat handwriting. There was a mobile number on it, labelled ‘Daddy’, in a grown-up hand. ‘Why didn’t you say you had this when I asked earlier?’ I asked gently.

Lucy looked surprised I’d asked. ‘You said home phone numbers.’

I nodded. Yep. I had said that. It reminded me how much I didn’t know about the way kids’ brains worked, despite the amount of time I spent around my nephews and niece. Now I thought about it, it was exactly the same kind of thing Honey would say.

‘So I did,’ I said to the girl. ‘Well remembered.’

Pride flashed across her expression and I couldn’t help smiling even wider. ‘Well, I’ll just try and get your dad now …’

Unfortunately, it went straight to voicemail. I left a message, explaining the situation, then turned to Miss Mimi.

The older woman sighed. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to phone up the rest of this morning’s students, aren’t I?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re going to phone the rest of your Saturday pupils.’

‘No, no, Philippa … You run along. I’ll be fine.’

It seemed I hadn’t noticed how stubborn and independent Miss Mimi could be when I’d been younger either. Now, usually I was a good girl, the sort to do as I was told by my elders and betters, but I think Miss Mimi was starting to rub off on me again. ‘It’ll be quicker with two of us,’ I said.

Miss Mimi didn’t say anything, but her expression hinted she wasn’t about to budge an inch. However, I’d been a pupil of hers for more than ten years as a child. I knew which strings to pull. ‘The quicker you contact the parents,’ I continued, ‘the quicker you can get this fixed and the quicker the classes will be up and running again. You wouldn’t want the children to be disappointed, would you?’

‘Come on, then, Lucy,’ Miss Mimi said, not taking her steady gaze off me. ‘You might as well come to the office with Philippa and me rather than sitting here on your own in a draughty old hall.’

Lucy shot a nervous glance at her case.

‘Leave that there,’ Mimi said, as she headed for the corridor once more. ‘It’ll be fine.’

Lucy bit her lip and looked at Miss Mimi’s back as she disappeared through the doorway. ‘Daddy says I’m not supposed to leave my bag all over the place.’

I smiled at her. ‘Then we’d better do what Daddy says. I’ll tell you what, we’ll put it in the kitchen. It’ll be safe there.’

It was going to have to be. Because there was no way we were going to fit one more thing in that office!

Eight

I stood with my hands on my hips and surveyed the chaos. Lucy, having left her case in the kitchen, stood close behind me, almost touching but not quite. I had a feeling she was a bit thrown by the morning’s events, and would probably have liked a friendly hug, but I had no idea if that was the right thing to do or not. Weren’t there all sorts of rules these days, to stop people being ‘inappropriate’?

‘Where are your lists of student telephone numbers?’ I asked Miss Mimi, who seemed completely oblivious to the mountains of clutter.

‘I’ve no idea where Sherri keeps them on that thing of her dad’s she brought in.’ She shook her head. ‘I should’ve stuck to doing it the way Dinah did, but Sherri said a computer would be better.’

‘What ever happened to Dinah?’ I asked, remembering the woman who’d been Miss Mimi’s administrator the whole time I’d been at the dance school, a stern lady with horn-rimmed glasses who’d never smiled. I’d never once dared be late with my envelope containing the cheque for my fees.

‘Oh, she got married and moved to Portugal,’ Miss Mimi said, as if it was nothing.

Wow. I hadn’t seen that coming. Dinah must have been fifty, if she was a day, and the sort of sturdily built, hairs-on-the-chin kind of gal that I’d assumed would be a spinster forever. It gave me a small glimmer of hope.

‘And Sherri’s your new administrator?’ I asked.

Miss Mimi laughed. ‘Goodness, no! She’s one of the older girls who volunteered to come and help me with the office a few hours a week.’

Ah. Suddenly the piles of paper, the text-speak emails and the clip-art-happy posters in the vestibule all started to make sense.

‘I did try to hire someone when Dinah left, but no one seemed to want to take it on.’

I took a sweeping look around the office. To be honest, if I’d turned up here for a job interview, I’d have run a mile in the other direction too, and I’d been used to touring with a rock band.

Something occurred to me. ‘Erm … Miss Mimi? Where is the computer?’

She waved an elegant hand towards the corner of the room. ‘Over there, of course. On the desk.’

Desk? I wasn’t even sure I could see a desk. Still, I trod carefully through the narrow path through the piles of stuff, rounded the edge of the largest one and discovered that it was indeed a desk, and that it had a clear spot where a dirty old grey computer sat, complete with dirty grey keyboard, mouse and chunky monitor.

‘I don’t even know how to turn the thing on,’ Miss Mimi said.

I glanced at her. Was that a faint tone of pride in her voice?

Well, thankfully, I did know how to operate a computer, even one as ancient as this. I moved a small pile of Dancing Times magazines from the wooden chair tucked half under the desk, pulled it out and sat down.

It took an agonising amount of time to boot up. While I waited, I turned to smile at Lucy, who’d followed me through the mess and was standing just behind the chair. ‘That looks old,’ Lucy said, frowning. ‘I think I saw one like it in the Science Museum.’

‘Do you like science, then?’

Lucy made a face. ‘Not really. My dad took me. I think he wants me to like science and football and stuff like that, but I don’t.’

‘What do you like?’

Lucy gave me a ‘duh’ kind of look. ‘Ballet, of course,’ she said. ‘And modern and tap.’

‘I’m learning tap,’ I told her, ‘but I’ve only had one lesson so far.’

Lucy’s little feet moved fast on the wooden floorboards of the office, her school shoes shuffling and scuffing over the wood in demonstration.

‘You’re brilliant!’

Lucy shrugged. ‘I’ve been doing it my whole life practically.’

I stifled a smile. That was—what?—all of five years since she’d been old enough to waddle into one of Miss Mimi’s classes. I turned back to the computer screen, which now seemed to be winking into life. ‘All I can say is that I hope I’m as good as you one day.’

Lucy gave me a doubtful look, but I didn’t take offence. To the kid, I must have looked as ancient and creaky as the computer on the desk.

‘O-kay,’ I muttered as I scanned the handful of folder icons on the desktop and decided that the one titled ‘School’ was the most likely candidate. I clicked on it and began reading lists of file names.

Hmm. Nothing like ‘register’ or ‘students’. This was probably the result of letting a seventeen-year-old set up your computer system. In the end I just started opening random folders and ended up finding something in one labelled ‘Girls’ that looked as if it might be a database.

‘Okay,’ I told Mimi. ‘I’ve found the list of phone numbers. All we’ve got to do now is work out who’s coming to what class this morning.’ I started rummaging through the directory again, looking for a class list.

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Miss Mimi said, not missing a beat. ‘Next is Grade 2 Ballet, so that’s Lucinda Henderson, Megan Tremont, Freya Barry—’

‘Hold on!’ I said quickly. ‘Who was that first one again?’

‘Lucinda … Henderson.’

‘Okay …’ I clicked back to the database and hunted down the list. ‘Got her!’ I read the number out to Miss Mimi, who was standing by the office phone. ‘Give me the next name and I’ll call from my mobile.’

And that’s the way we worked through the list for the next forty-five minutes. When we’d made the final call, I pushed the chair back from the desk and rubbed the back of my neck. Lucy was cross-legged on the floor in a tiny space that only an eight-year-old could have sat down in and Miss Mimi was over the other side of the room, humming as she pottered around her piles of clutter.

I checked my watch. ‘Shouldn’t someone have come to pick you up by now?’ I asked Lucy.

Lucy looked back at me with large eyes and nodded. ‘I’ve only been living with my dad since October. He says he’s still getting used to my timetable.’

I frowned. ‘Is he often late?’

Lucy shook her head. She seemed happy to be talking, so I kept going. ‘Were you living with your mum before that?’ I asked, hoping I wasn’t venturing on to a sore subject.

She nodded. ‘She’s very good at her job and she’s got to go and work in America for a year, so I had to move to Elmhurst and live with my dad. Mummy said it was okay because Granny and Grandpa live nearby in case he messes up.’

Nice. I assumed it hadn’t been an amicable split, then.

‘You weren’t living here before that?’

Lucy shrugged. ‘No. We lived in London when I was very little but then Mummy and Daddy got divorced and I went to live in Edinburgh with Mummy. She had an important job there too.’

‘That must have been difficult—living so far away from your dad.’

‘He came to visit sometimes and I’d come back for school holidays,’ she said, ‘but Daddy had to work in the daytime so I’d go to Granny and Grandpa’s a lot.’

Poor kid, I thought. Sounds as if she hardly knew the man, although I had to concede that may not have been his fault. However, since he hadn’t bothered to turn up for his daughter on time I wasn’t feeling very inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. I held out my hand. ‘Come on, then. Let’s go and see if anyone’s looking for you.’

Lucy’s thin fingers slid into mine and I helped her to her feet. All three of us made our way back to the hall, but it was as cold and empty as it had been when we’d left it. Lucy’s eyes began to fill.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, squeezing her hand gently. ‘He can’t be too far away. ‘

I tried phoning her dad once more and I was just listening to it clicking into voicemail when there was a loud pounding on the outside doors, the sound of two heavy and rather determined fists coming down again and again.

‘Lucy? Lu-ceeee!’

I ran, pushing through the swinging doors that led to the vestibule and then to the main doors, where I found the heavy bolts that slid across the top of the doors and the one that went down into the floor drawn. I released them as fast as I could and came face to face with a rather wild-looking man.

‘Where’s my daughter?’ he half-yelled. ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’

And then he stopped and stared at me. ‘Flip?’ he said, his face completely transformed with shock.

I heard a rushing sound in my ears. ‘Tom?’ I croaked back.

Nine

Tom? Tom Boyd? For some reason I really hadn’t expected to bump into him back in Elmhurst. I don’t know why but I’d imagined him in a swanky Thames-side apartment, living the champagne lifestyle with a beautiful and elegant wife by his side.

I waited for the smile full of mischievous energy, the one he’d always worn as long as he’d been awake or not in double history, but his mouth remained open and then he closed it again and it became a thin, grim line.

I was having the weirdest sensation. On one hand, this man in front of me did actually look as if it could be Tom Boyd, twenty years older. The nose was still long with that little bump in the middle, the eyes the colour of freshly-peeled conkers, and even though there were speckles of grey at his temples and he wore it shorter than he’d used to, he still had the same wavy, dark hair.

But that was where the similarities ended.

The Tom Boyd I’d known had been the joker of the pack, the cool guy that all the guys had wanted to hang with and all the girls had wanted to kiss. And many of them had got their chance. Tom had been ringleader and rebel, the one most likely to get a ticking-off from Miss Mimi and the one most likely to climb the kitchen roof at the back of the hall, just because someone had dared him to.

This man didn’t look anything like that Tom.

But it had to be. Because he’d called me ‘Flip’. No one else had ever used that nickname for me, before or since.

At the time I hadn’t even been sure I’d liked it. I didn’t like the word; it sounded silly and juvenile. But I’d liked the way Tom had said it, with a twinkle in his eye and a dare on the tip of his tongue. It had reminded me of the glamorous actresses of Ginger Rogers’ era, who’d played women with nicknames like ‘Teddy’ or ‘Nan’: sassy and sexy and not afraid of anything, especially the man they had wrapped around their little finger.

‘What … what are you doing here?’ he stammered.

I stepped back and allowed him access. ‘It’s a long story. I moved back and …’ I trailed off, not really wanting to share my life story. It wasn’t really relevant and it would be better if I just got straight to the point. I cleared my throat and started again. ‘The long and the short of it is there’s a problem with the electrics and we’ve had to cancel classes this morning. Lucy’s fine,’ I added quickly. ‘I’ve been dialling your mobile but it’s been going straight to voicemail.’