The Ballroom Class (47 page)

She would have insisted normally, but tonight, Katie had no fight left, so she handed it to Ross, who proceeded to puff and squirt talcum powder all over the bathroom, to Jack’s happy giggles.

‘Mummy join in!’ commanded Jack, and she did, putting the Hoovering-up out of her mind, as she clapped her hands, as Ross giggled with him, pulling faces. For a moment, all three of them were laughing at the same time, and Katie felt a sudden flash of hope that they might still be able to get through this, because they both loved the children, and the children were part of their marriage too.

‘We need to talk,’ said Ross, after he’d talced Jack to his specifications, and the sudden gravity in his voice cut that little hope dead.

‘I know. But let’s get the children to bed first?’ said Katie, pulling Jack’s pyjamas over his downy head. ‘Later.’

She knew she was delaying, but there was something new in Ross that was making her think this might not be as easy to fix as she’d hoped. It was a Ross she didn’t think she knew.

They got through the rest of Saturday night with Ross making up some hilarious story about walking into a naughty slapping tree that he acted out so amusingly Hannah bought it wholesale, and even demanded action replays. They ate supper, and Hannah went to bed with only the usual demands for extra stories from Mummy, which Katie was happy to give her, and then fell asleep quickly, worn out with the past few days.

Katie sat for ten minutes outside her door, not wanting to go downstairs, but knowing she had to.

The conversation she’d had with Jo, and the almost identical one she’d then had with Greg went round and round in her mind like water circling a plughole. It was weird how a matter of hours could turn the way you saw something completely upside-down.

The thought of Ross moving out made her sick. But at the same time, she still couldn’t dredge up any feelings more passionate than concern and affection for him.

And nothing was going to change; she’d still have to work, he’d still coast along, being great with the kids, but like a brother to her.

Was that enough?

Ross was loading the dishwasher in the kitchen, with the martyr-like demeanour of someone who rarely remembered to do it normally.

‘So,’ said Katie, ‘are you ready for us to talk?’

Ross put the last dish in, and stood up slowly, then turned to face her. His expression was calm, but Katie sensed a distance between them, a separation of mental space that she hadn’t felt for years. She had no idea what he was going to say and her skin went cold.

‘No, I need to talk,’ said Ross. ‘I’d like you to listen, and I don’t want you to interrupt like you always do until I’ve said everything. Otherwise it’ll turn into a row and I’m past that, after today.’

Katie opened her mouth, then made herself close it. She nodded.

‘Right.’ Ross gestured to the table. ‘Should we sit down?’

It seemed ridiculous to make it even more formal, but Katie sat down anyway.

‘I’ve been thinking over the last few days,’ said Ross. ‘About what you said. About not loving me any more. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so humiliated or hurt in my life. I gave things up for you, and because I thought it would make you happy, and now you’re telling me that, basically, I’m not a man to you any more. And how is that my fault?’

Katie flinched.

‘I’m not going to lie to you, I was  . . . gutted, and I wanted to pack my stuff and leave, but I can’t do that, not now we’ve got the children to put first. We’ve got to think of what’s best for them. So I need you to give me some straight yes or no answers. Nothing else. Just yes or no.’

‘OK,’ said Katie, cautiously. ‘If I can.’

‘Are you going to move out?’

‘No!’ she said, startled.

Ross mocked her startled expression. ‘Well, do you expect me to move out?’

Katie blinked. ‘No! I mean, not unless you want to. I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know.’ He looked sarcastic. ‘I thought you’d have planned this a bit better. Done a spreadsheet agenda or something.’

‘Ross, I haven’t planned anything. I kept telling you.’ This is the moment, thought Katie.
Take it back. Tell him you’re not sure
. ‘It’s not definite, I mean, I’m not saying I don’t  . . .’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Ross, his voice suddenly quite tough. ‘You can’t just say, “Oh, I only wanted to get it off my chest! I didn’t really mean it!” and expect me to
forget
. You’ve said it now.’

‘No,’ said Katie, startled by his bitterness. He was right. She had to take responsibility for what she’d started.

‘I’m the one who looks after the children,’ he went on, ‘so I can’t move out. And anyway, I can’t afford to pay rent – and you can’t afford to stop working or get a nanny. So we might as well just stay as we are. But  . . .’ Ross spoke briskly, as if he was trying not to feel what he was saying. ‘If you’re going to treat me like an au pair, then I need two days a week off, when you can sort out childcare. I want an evening off during the week, too. And I don’t want to share a bed with you any more, so I’ll move into the spare room. That’s my space. I’ll move my computer in there, so the kids don’t think it’s such a big deal, and hopefully they won’t notice. It’s about time we stopped them coming into our bed at night anyway.’ He corrected himself painfully. ‘Your bed.’

‘Fine,’ said Katie, though she was beginning to feel nauseous. ‘If that’s what you want to do, then fine.’

‘Don’t put it back on to me,’ he said. ‘This is what you want. You don’t love me any more. You can’t bear to touch me.’

‘I haven’t said that,’ Katie began but Ross glared with a hurt pride in his eyes. It cut through her like acid.

‘You don’t need to say it. When was the last time we made love?’

Her eyes dropped to the table; to the pine-cones Hannah had brought her, to Jack’s dummy that he wasn’t supposed to have these days.

‘Don’t
you
put it all on me – when was the last time you touched me?’ she said. ‘It’s not like you ever want to.’

Ross let out a frustrated groan. ‘I’m not an
animal
, Katie. I’m not going to force myself on you when you get into bed and turn your back on me. I mean, I could understand, after Jack was born  . . . but I thought eventually, you’d want me to touch you again, not just hold you while you fall asleep. But you haven’t, and you make me feel like some kind of sex pest if I do try to start anything.’

Katie stared at him, trying to overlay the sexy designer she’d fancied so much in the pub with this cold, weary man. She was tired, constantly, but that wasn’t the only reason her desire had died. She longed to point out that the only reason Jack was conceived in the first place was because of a brief phase of freelance work Ross had taken on for the local paper; the thrill of him showing some creative spark, of taking some of the burden off her, of getting properly dressed in the morning, had led to a little holiday for the three of them – and then to Jack.

But that would sound too cruel, and too materialistic, so she said nothing.

‘I miss it,’ he said softly. ‘I miss making love to you.’

Katie gulped, unable to bear the humbled longing in Ross’s voice. ‘I do too.’

She ached with nostalgia for a time that seemed like someone else’s memory, and for a moment, she thought Ross would put his hands over hers on the table, linking his fingers with hers, the way he used to in the days when they went out for dinner: their little sign at the table that he couldn’t wait to get her home and into bed. Sometimes not even into bed, sometimes on the stairs or the sofa, her slim legs entwined around his.

He didn’t. He folded his hands, waiting for her to say something, but Katie didn’t know what to say. It was as if someone was desperately ill; there was so much she wanted to say, but she was too scared of using the wrong words that she couldn’t speak at all.

Well, something is ill, she reminded herself. Your marriage, and those holding-hands-at-seventy dreams you had. It’s never going to happen, but instead, you’re going to have to live in the shell of what you thought would work, for years and years and years.

Katie looked at Ross over the table, the pink braid still in his hair where Hannah had twisted it, his cheek swollen from Greg’s punch. The same old Ross, but different. A Ross who didn’t love her enough to argue with her any more.

‘I don’t want you to leave,’ she blurted out.

‘I’m not going to,’ he replied, and pushed his chair back from the table. ‘I’ll move my stuff.’

Katie felt tears force their way up her throat, choking her. She wanted so hard to say the right thing, to stop all this, but her mind was blank.

‘Ross,’ she called out, when he was at the door. ‘Ross?’

He turned back.

Katie had to force herself to say it. ‘Do you still love me?’

He paused for an agonising few seconds, then said, ‘Don’t make me answer that,’ and walked out.

28

Angelica stood in her mother’s small back garden, breathing in the cool November air, trying to put her finger on what had changed. It wasn’t just the weather turning nippier. It was something inside herself, sharpening up as her old lives, the different Angelicas jostled for space, challenging her to decide what was real, and what was a myth she’d forgotten she’d made up.

Underneath. She’d never liked to peer underneath before, but now  . . . Now, she realised she was almost curious to see what would be there.

The light had nearly gone but she could make out the pale white stone that marked where Rosie was buried, appropriately enough, under a rose bush by the back wall. Full of guilt for being poolside in Florida when she finally died (‘I’m so sorry, Angie, she just stopped eating  . . .’), Angelica had sent ten rose bushes for her mother to plant in Rosie’s memory, but only three had survived, and were now all gnarled up, leafless and hunched against the coming frosts.

Rosie had been her constant companion until she moved to Florida, and Jerry. Angelica had always claimed to hate pets, but on a whim she’d picked up the little Yorkshire terrier at the dogs’ home the first time she and Tony fell out, and Rosie, unlike the men in Angelica’s life, had never looked at her with anything less than devotion in her liquid-brown eyes.

All Angelica’s unconditional love had been lavished on Rosie. Safer than lavishing it on a man, and more likely to come back to her.

Selfish, she thought now. I’ve been a selfish cow. I should never have left Rosie, even if she did remind me of Tony. Maybe it was a blessing we never had children.

Maybe.

With a heavy sigh, she turned back into the house, and steeled herself to face the box.

It had been delivered that morning, but Angelica hadn’t been able to bring herself to open it straight away. But now, she knew it had to be done, and mixed herself a gin and tonic to work up the courage to slit the brown tape and pull back the layers and layers of frothy bubblewrap.

It was a huge, heavy box, that two men had carried into the sitting room for her, and it still had the markings on it from the storage unit it had been stored in for over ten years.

‘What’s in here, love? A body?’ one of the young men had joked, pretending to hold his back.

Angelica had laughed because, in a way, there was a body in there: the old Angelica, and the multi-coloured, bejewelled and bedazzled skins she’d danced in. She tipped them each twenty quid, before her judgement could get the better of her, and she insisted they took the box away again.

Most of Angelica’s life was in storage, and she hadn’t really missed it. Memento shelves weren’t her style. Until she moved into Jerry’s sprawling mansion, she’d lived in a succession of tiny Soho studios and one-bed flats that barely had a cupboard, let alone an attic. Every time one phase ended, she’d pack what she didn’t want hanging around as reminders, and lock it up in her storage unit. Her first years dancing in London, her life with Tony, her competition days, her marriage – all in boxes. She didn’t want to be reminded of the past, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to sever her connection to it either. It meant it belonged to her, which was different, Angelica thought, to her belonging to it.

For the first time, though, she felt ready to start shedding these skins for good, and accepting the one she’d had all along. Besides which, there was something in this box that she wanted.

Angelica took the final gulp of gin and tonic, put down the heavy glass, and pulled aside the last layer of old bubblewrap.

A pungent, familiar smell of dry-cleaning fluid, and perfume hit her nose as she lifted the first dress out: her red ballroom dress, from her first years on the professional circuit. It was delicate but extraordinarily heavy, with hundreds of ruby-red stones set like curling flames up the bodice, and long floating chiffon sleeves that trailed behind her like angel wings as Tony swept her round the floor in the smooth, elegant patterns of the waltz and the foxtrot. Angelica held it high, to let the long skirt hang; it was fluted and cut to rise up in a cloud when they spun, moving as one, revealing her finely turned ankles in the matching crimson satin court shoes.

They were stoned too, she remembered: tiny roses on the toe.