You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) Page 12

  “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.

  Chapter 11

  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.

  And it was just an evening – an evening at the theatre. After that I wouldn’t see him again, ever. There was no reason for our paths to cross again – they hadn’t before, so why would they in future? An evening at the theatre, and then Felix would be consigned to my past where he belonged and normal service would resume i
n the Payne household – no more ex-boyfriends, no more chasing after actors in a park at nighttime, no more not telling Jonathan everything. Especially that last bit.

  My conscience uneasily appeased, I opened Jonathan’s and my shared calendar app and entered “Laura out, Juniper sleepover”, before I could change my mind.

  “So where are you off to next Friday then?” Jonathan asked that night over dinner. He’d come home late again – I’d more or less given up mentioning it. No amount of protest from me was going to change his workload and arguing about it just made both of us angry.

  “The play,” I said. “The one in Battersea Park? I wanted to see it again before it finishes, and Zé managed to get more tickets.”

  The lie came out before I could even think about it. Shit. Why couldn’t you just say, Laura? Just tell him? But once again, it was too late.

  “Cool,” Jonathan said. “It must have really made an impression on you; I’ve never known you to be into this stuff before. Although, of course, you must have been – you were a dancer. You hardly ever talk about that.”

  He forked up some salad and looked at me.

  “No – what’s to talk about? You worked at Pizza Hut when you were at uni and you never talk about that either.”

  “I can if you want,” Jonathan said. “Although my hilarious anecdotes about pilfering bacon bits to take home to my brother wouldn’t be as interesting as your stories.”

  “I haven’t got any interesting stories,” I said. “I started ballet classes when I was six, I was good at it, I did it professionally for a bit, then I got injured so I stopped. Then I did my degree and then I met you. The end.”

  “You know, Laura,” he said, “I sometimes think… I sometimes worry that, now the kids are bigger and you’ve got more time, especially when I’m putting in these hours, you need something else in your life. Have you ever thought, maybe, that you could teach dancing? You’d be amazing at it. It would give you an interest, outside of us.”

  “I don’t want to teach,” I said. “God! We always used to say only losers taught. Or people who were too old to dance, obviously. Look, Jonathan, I don’t know where this has come from, suddenly. I’m perfectly happy. I’ll go back to work when Owen starts school – there are loads of comms agencies in London who are just desperate for mid-thirties women who have to leave on the dot of half five for after-school pick-up and take endless days off when the kids have chicken pox. It’ll work out brilliantly.”

  “Laura…” He reached across the table and brushed the top of my hand.

  “What?”

  “Sometimes I worry you’re not very happy.”

  “Of course I’m happy!” I said. “Look at my life. It’s brilliant. I’ve got two gorgeous children, we live in this beautiful house, we go on fab holidays – why wouldn’t I be happy? And I’ve got you, of course.”

  I realised as I said it how much like an afterthought that sounded, but it was too late to change it, to make it better.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “I just wondered… I worry.”

  “Well, don’t,” I said. “Look, this thing – it’s just a play, all right? If I was going to Les Mis you wouldn’t think twice about it.”

  “You wouldn’t go to Les Mis twice,” Jonathan pointed out.

  “Too right,” I laughed. “I wouldn’t go once. Come on, let’s clear up and go to bed.”

  So we did, and we had hasty, comfortable sex before we both fell asleep, and Jonathan didn’t say anything more about my past life or my sudden obsession with an immersive theatre production, for which I was grateful.

  I didn’t either – but that wasn’t because I wasn’t thinking about it. I counted down the days until I’d enter that world again, waking up every morning thinking, that’s another sleep over, just like Darcey did when she was looking forward to a party. The eight days became seven, then it was the weekend and Jonathan was home, blissfully content as he pottered in the garden and took the children to the park. On Sunday we had Amanda, the nicer of the two Helens and their families round for a barbecue. The sun shone, the children played happily together, Jonathan made burgers using his secret recipe – it was all perfect, and it made me wonder why on earth I hankered, deep down, for something more.

  But on Wednesday morning I woke up to find that Owen had been sick in the night. Grey sheets of rain were battering against the windows, and real life descended on me again with a thud. I cleaned up the mess, rang the nursery to say I’d be keeping him home, and we walked an unusually silent Darcey to school, huddled together under Jonathan’s golfing umbrella.

  I spent two days on the sofa with Owen’s warm body on my knee, cuddling him and cautiously giving him sips of water with apple juice in. He felt floppy and listless, unlike his usual boisterous self. It was just a bug, I told myself – nothing to worry about. But I did worry, and the more I worried, the guiltier I felt, because I knew that I was concerned not just about my little boy, but about whether he’d be well enough for me to leave him in two nights’ time.

  To deflect my anxiety, I found myself obsessively checking the BBC weather app. If it carried on raining like this, the show would be cancelled, and none of it would matter. I found myself bargaining with my phone – if Owen’s okay, it can rain all day on Friday and I won’t care.

  But in the event, by Thursday evening Owen was devouring banana on toast and the sky had cleared, and Darcey was saying, “Only one more sleep until Juniper comes to stay, Mummy!”

  And I was thinking, “Only one more sleep until I see Felix again.”

  Owen made a full recovery from his lurgy, but whatever bug it was that was going the rounds claimed another victim. I was getting ready, applying my makeup with far more care than I had the first time I prepared to go and see Flight of Fancy’s Dream, as I was learning to call it in my head, when my phone rang.

  “Zé? How’s it going? Are you excited?”

  “I fucking was,” she said bitterly. “I’ve been like a kid waiting for Christmas, but now I’m ill. I’ve been spewing all day and I feel terrible. I’m not going to make it, Laura, I’m so gutted.”

  “Oh no, you poor thing! Have you got flat Coke? That’s meant to be the best thing.”

  “I can’t even face a glass of water. I’m in bed right now, and I literally feel like if I move I’ll be sick again.”

  “Oh no.” Poor Zé, poor Darcey missing her longed-for sleepover with her friend, and poor me. It looked like I wouldn’t be going to the ball after all. Maybe it wasn’t too late to book a babysitter online – but I couldn’t do that to my daughter. I’d have to stay in with her and think of something fun to do, and hide my disappointment.

  “Anyway, Laura,” Zé continued dolefully, “Do you mind if I send Juniper and Carmen over anyway? You’d be doing me a favour. Unless you’re worried about the children catching whatever it is?”

  “Owen’s had it,” I said. “Unless what he had was food poisoning from my cooking, which is possible, but I think not. Are you sure, though? That’s so lovely of you.”

  “It really isn’t,” Zé said. “It’s the most selfish thing I’ve done all week. Juniper keeps coming to check on me and see if I want cups of tea, which I don’t – at least this way I can get some rest. And you can see the show and go to the party. What are you wearing?”

  “Jeans, I guess,” I said, remembering the requirement for practical clothing.

  “Don’t you dare! Wear something sparkly – I bet people will dress up. Ugh, I have to go. Have a great time. Carmen and Juniper are leaving in ten. Call me tomorrow.”

  “Feel better soon,” I said, but she’d already ended the call, presumably to race for the bathroom.

  I ransacked my wardrobe and found a white shift dress that had a few sequins round the sleeves and hem. I hadn’t worn it for ages – it had been a lucky find in a charity shop when I was uni – but it still fitted, just. I combed my hair, slicked on a coat of bright red lipstick and went downstairs just as the doorbell rang
.

  “You look amazing, Laura,” Juniper said.

  “Mummy always looks beautiful,” Darcey said loyally. I kissed her and Owen, gave Carmen money for takeaway pizzas, and headed out into the balmy night.

  Until the moment I closed my front door, excitement and adrenaline had been carrying me. All that mattered was that I got to go out – that I didn’t have to abandon my plans and send Felix a sheepish text saying I wasn’t going to make it after all. But now, the reality of my situation hit home again. I felt more like a woman going to meet her lover than like a suburban housewife out for an evening at the theatre. And, in my sparkly frock and lipstick, I must look like one too.

  A passing group of teenage boys in hoodies gave me a long, appreciative stare and one of them said, “MILF.” I knew I ought to feel outraged, but instead I burst out laughing and they scuttled off, shamefaced. With my laughter came a new sense of carelessness. This was, honestly, just a night out. I should enjoy it, not encumber myself with needless guilt when I’d done nothing wrong, and wasn’t going to. Jonathan was at work, my children were being safely cared for in their own home by a girl they adored. Even Jonathan had said I needed to do more for myself, and now I was. It was just like booking a spa day. I was going to have a brilliant time.

  My sense of elation carried me all the way to the park, and I backed it up with a hastily gulped glass of prosecco. Zé had been right – people were dressed up. A few women had even come with fairy wings strapped to their backs, and one man was wearing a donkey mask on his head, until a steward made him take it off.

  The sense of anticipation was almost palpable. I joined the crowd by the marble pillars, and wished I’d come earlier to have a chance of being in first. The idea of being alone – truly alone, even for a few seconds – in that magical world was intoxicating. But I was a few minutes too late, and there were about a dozen people ahead of me. I wasn’t first – but I knew where to go.