You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) Page 11

  “No more magic,” I said. “And no presents until we’ve tidied up a bit, okay? I’m sure Felix would love to see your presents, but I expect he’s got other things to do.”

  “I don’t mind,” Felix said. “I can stay for a bit.”

  So he did, helping to sort out the wreckage of the kitchen, which had plates of congealing cocktail sausages everywhere, crisps trodden into the floor, countless half-drunk cups of squash on every surface, the plundered remains of the birthday cake, and, inexplicably, a pair of fairy wings draped over the back of a chair. We watched Darcey rip the paper off her stack of birthday presents, then he showed her some more magic tricks while I put Owen to bed. When eventually I’d tucked Darcey up and watched as she almost instantly fell asleep, I came downstairs to find him waiting with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I thought you looked like you needed a drink, and I know I do.”

  “Damn right I do.” I sank down onto the floor, my back against the sofa, and Felix joined me. It was how we used to sit, I remembered, our legs stretched out in front of us, our hands intertwined, while Mel and Roddy sprawled above us on the shabby leather couch in our flat in Covent Garden, all those years ago. Felix handed me a glass of wine and smiled, and I knew he was remembering, too.

  I felt suddenly shy again, although while the kids had been around and we’d been busy with the mundane post-party chores, I’d felt completely comfortable, answering his questions about whether things went in the dishwasher and where I kept the cling-film as if he was just another friend. But he wasn’t, I realised – he was my ex, the man who’d broken my heart, who I’d believed for years was The One, The Only One, the One Who Got Away – even though that wasn’t true, that was how it felt. And here he was sitting in my house, close enough to touch, while my husband was out. I tucked my knees up and wrapped my arms around them, then realised that made my skirt slip down my bare thighs, so I straightened them again.

  “So,” I said. “You haven’t told me what you’ve been up to, all these years.”

  “You haven’t told me, either,” he said.

  “Yes, but,” I gestured at the room around me, up to the ceiling above which my children were sleeping. “You know. You’ve seen. It’s all here. I don’t know anything about you.”

  “You’ve seen where I am now, too,” Felix said. “I stayed in Russia until I stopped dancing. I was still okay, but I was getting slower, taking longer to recover – you know. So I tried acting. Turns out I’m good at it – good enough to be in work some of the time, anyway. When I’m not I do other stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Magic shows for kids, obviously,” he laughed. “No, I don’t do that much. I work in a bar sometimes – a mate of mine has a place in Hoxton and I help out there when it’s busy. I mix a mean Blood and Sand. And I train doctors.”

  “You what?”

  “Train doctors. Well, not myself. But when they’re learning to have a bedside manner, they use actors. You know – ‘Mr Lawson, I’m afraid there’s nothing more we can do for your wife.’ ‘Mr Lawson, you’ll need six-monthly prostate checks for the rest of your life.’ That kind of thing. It’s not exactly a laugh a minute, but it pays the bills when nothing else does. I work with a woman in Brixton who does theatre workshops with young offenders – they’re almost as scary as kids’ parties. I was in the States for a bit. I had a part on Broadway but the show bombed, so I came back here.”

  “Where are you living?” I asked – the typical London question that lets you find out almost everything you need to know about a person’s life by their postcode. But Felix was unforthcoming.

  “A hotel, for the time being,” he said. “While I’m doing Dream. And after that —” he shrugged – “I’ll go wherever there’s work. Chasing after my big break. I live in hope, anyway.”

  “But…” I said again, then stopped, and topped up our glasses. The closeness, the intimacy I’d felt when we first sat down together was gone. I was conscious of the huge gulf that had opened up between us – how different our lives were, our aspirations. Not, I realised, that I really had any aspirations any more, beyond my children’s happiness and safety. And losing half a stone, obviously.

  “Laura, there’s nothing wrong with this, you know. What you have. It’s wonderful.”

  Anyone else would have thought that I felt sorry for Felix when he told me what his life was like, but he knew me too well. He’d realised I was worried that he pitied me.

  “It is,” I said, defensively. “Anyway, I couldn’t have carried on. You know that.”

  “I do,” he said, and reached over, almost putting his hand on my bare knee, then withdrawing it. “I was married, you know.”

  I felt a sharp, unexpected stab of jealousy. He what? When I’d imagined what Felix was doing in the years since we last saw each other, that had somehow not crossed my mind. Sometimes, I’d tortured myself by imagining him on the red carpet with a succession of glamorous, A-list women on his arm – sometimes so vividly that I’d been too frightened to look at the Daily Mail sidebar of shame lest he appear there in a dinner jacket next to a beautiful model in Valentino. But mostly, I’d preferred to imagine him single, alone and lonely, success eluding him as he lost his looks and became a fat, disappointed shadow of himself. The second scenario was pretty accurate, I realised – apart from the minor details of Felix being as gorgeous as he’d ever been and, apparently, not disappointed in the slightest.

  “She was a dancer,” he said. “Of course. Tatiana, I mean. We met not long after… about twelve years ago. But then she decided she wanted a family, and there was just no way I could do that. I couldn’t jack in my career for two kids and a picket fence and I wasn’t earning enough to let her jack hers in and try and do something else. So that went tits up. And now she’s married to an accountant and living in Omsk.”

  Maddeningly, he didn’t even sound particularly disappointed about that.

  “Funny how history repeats itself,” I said, cattily.

  “Hilarious,” Felix said.

  I tipped more wine into our glasses. The bottle was nearly finished.

  “He’s an accountant, then, your ‘hubby’?” I could hear the careful quotes he put around the word.

  “A management consultant,” I said. “He’s just been made a partner in the firm where he works. And I’m not working. I was, but I got laid off.”

  I knew how prickly I sounded. Jonathan’s success, and my lack of it, was something I avoided thinking about.

  “What does a management consultant do, then?” Felix said, steering the conversation on to safer territory.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” I admitted. “Jonathan said when I met him that the definition of a consultant is a guy who knows ninety-nine positions to have sex in, and no women.”

  “And does he?” Felix said. He was looking at me sideways, from beneath his impossibly long eyelashes, and his gaze and his words reminded me of all the times we’d fucked, all the positions we’d done it in, all the places.

  “He knows me,” I said, deliberately misunderstanding. “His boss is a woman, actually. Things have changed. There’s lots more equality now, Jonathan says.”

  “Is there,” Felix said. It wasn’t a question. He stretched his arms up over his head, pulling the silk shirt out from the waistband of his trousers, and yawned hugely. Fuck, I thought, I was boring him. I’d changed too much, we no longer had anything in common, and now he was going to go home, and tomorrow he’d tell all his mates at work about his adventure in middle-class Wandsworth, and laugh about how conventional, dull and shallow his ex-girlfriend, who used to have a brilliant career as a ballerina, had become.

  And then I thought, rightly so. Let him fuck off and live his life, hoping that his big break is just around the corner, even when it’s not. Good luck to him. I’ve succeeded in my life – he blatantly hasn’t. He’s a failure, even if he’s the most beautiful failure I’ve ever seen
.

  Then Felix said, “Laura, I’ve wanted to say sorry for fifteen years. For what happened. I tried to tell you then, but you wouldn’t let me. And then I was in Russia – there was no Facebook then, it was harder to find people. I tried, once I was back in London. But you were married by then and I couldn’t find you. And even if I had…”

  He stopped, but I knew what he’d been about to say. It would have been too late. And now he had, and it was.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry, too. It wasn’t your fault. It felt like it then, but I know it wasn’t, really. I’ve grown up, I guess.”

  I didn’t tell him that I’d had very little difficulty tracking him down – that his name had been almost the first I’d looked for when I opened my Facebook account, and Googling him had become as tempting as picking a scab.

  He reached over and took my hand, and we sat there for a moment, feeling the warm pressure of each other’s fingers, remembering.

  Then I stood up, pleased that I was still able to uncurl myself from the floor without using my hands. I meant to say – I genuinely did – that it was almost eight o’clock, and he should go, but what came out was, “Shall I open another bottle?”

  Felix said, “Only if you put some music on.”

  Half an hour later, we were dancing around my sitting room like lunatics, the music quiet enough not to wake the children, but loud enough to drown out our tuneless attempts to sing along. I discovered that although my mind didn’t remember the way I’d moved back when I still could, my body did. And Felix’s did too. It was late, far too late, when we collapsed on the sofa in a laughing heap, our acrimony forgotten and the second bottle of wine history.

  “Laura,” Felix said.

  “What?” I said, gasping for breath, and we both started to laugh again.

  “Look, I need to go,” he said. “And you need me to go. But I want to see you again. Not in a – not like that. But you liked the play, didn’t you?”

  “The play?” I’d forgotten all about it. “Yes, I did. I loved it.”

  “I can get comps. If I send you some, will you come? Maybe we could have a drink in the bar after.”

  “I’d love that,” I said. “Thank you.” Then I offered to ring a taxi for him, and said I’d pay for it, and we were able to say goodbye, kissing each other on the cheek at the front door like old friends, because we knew we were going to see each other again.

  Chapter 10

  April 2001: Rehearsal

  I may have fallen asleep quickly, but my sleep wasn’t deep, or restful. All night, it seemed, I dreamed strange, anxious dreams, in which I was on my way to rehearsal but couldn’t find the right studio, and when eventually I did I’d forgotten my shoes, and then when I rushed off to find them, the rehearsal room had moved again, and suddenly I was out in the street with no clothes on, and people were laughing at me.

  It was laughter that woke me fully. Felix was sitting up in bed next to me, his eyes bleary and his hair tousled, and Roddy was in the doorway with two mugs of coffee.

  “What’s this then?” he said. “Sleeping Beauty, the Porn Star Years?”

  “Fuck off, Roderigo,” Felix said. “I can assure you that your flatmate’s virtue is unsullied – by me, at any rate. Unless I was too pissed to remember, but I don’t think so. Was I, Laura?”

  “You must have been pretty pissed,” I said, sitting up too. “Or do you make a habit of passing out in girls’ beds?”

  “I’ve been known to,” Felix said. “But generally only once I’ve driven them to extremes of ecstasy, and I’d have remembered doing that to you. Wouldn’t I?”

  “No extremes of ecstasy here,” I said. “You were rubbish, to be honest.”

  Felix’s face fell, then he realised I was taking the piss out of him. “Hand me a coffee, Roderigo,” he said. “I feel like utter shite.”

  “What time is it, anyway?” I asked. “We haven’t missed class, have we?”

  “It’s only seven thirty,” Roddy said. “Melodrama hasn’t surfaced yet.”

  That was unlike Mel, who was usually up at six on work days, doing her Pilates in the living room.

  “I’ll go and see if she’s okay,” I said. I clambered out of bed, shy in front of Felix in the T-shirt I’d slept in, which barely covered my bottom. I wasn’t wearing anything underneath. I hoped I hadn’t snored. This was the moment I’d longed for – waking up next to Felix – but it wasn’t happening at all as I’d imagined.

  “I’ll take this to Mel,” I said, grabbing one of the cups of coffee from Roddy.

  “Here, you have this one.” He handed the other to Felix. “Your need’s greater than mine, Lawsonski. I’ll stick the kettle on again. Breakfast will be served in ten minutes, so make yourself decent. This is a respectable establishment, not one of your Moscow bordelloes.”

  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.