The Ballroom Class (55 page)

Katie crooked her neck up and saw that Angelica was beaming with delight.

‘Well done!’ said Angelica. ‘That’s lovely! I think it’s time for some music, don’t you?’

She went over to her CD player and Katie checked her watch. Half-one already. It would take her five minutes to get back to the office. She didn’t have that long.

But as soon as the distinctive staccato tango rhythm started, with mournful accordion squeezes, Katie felt a sudden desire to fit it all together. She started moving her feet in the salida even before Angelica came back.

Angelica said nothing, but took her in the hold and began to move, stepping around while they did one, then two, sets of the basic pattern.

Katie looked up, and couldn’t stop smiling. ‘This feels really easy,’ she said.

‘No, it’s not easy, you’ve just found a dance you can do.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. Stop fishing for compliments. Now in the Tango Argentino the man doesn’t make
all
the decisions. Here, he might put you into a little extra step,’ she motioned for Katie to step over her foot, ‘but you can decide how many of them you do. Now twirl, flick your foot up, but keep your knees together so you’re turning yourself round, that’s it, and now the other way. That’s called an ocho – a figure of eight.’

Katie carried on spinning on her toe, flicking her foot up. It took her a couple of goes to get it right, but then she couldn’t stop. It felt wonderful.

‘Is this right?’ she asked, but as soon as she asked it, she realised she didn’t really care if it was or not. She just enjoyed doing it.

‘You’ve found your dance,’ said Angelica. ‘I knew you would.’

‘Do you think?’

‘I do.’ Angelica gave her a firm look. ‘The tango isn’t for wallflowers. The woman needs to be strong, and definite in her moves, just as strong as the man. And there aren’t so many rules as for the other ballroom dances, so it’s really up to the dancers to decide how it goes. Ideally, you should forget there’s anyone else in the room when you’re dancing this. It’s about seducing your partner, making the audience feel the heat sizzling between you.’

Katie had been feeling encouraged, but as Angelica finished, she deflated again.

‘I don’t see me and Ross sizzling,’ she said.

‘Katie, let me tell you something,’ said Angelica. ‘You’ve got to stop worrying about how good you are, and just enjoy it for what it is. Enjoy the feeling of moving, enjoy the compliment of a man wanting to dance with you. Stop letting that brain of yours run things.’ She gave her a pointed look. ‘Ross is better than you at the moment because he’s not so hard on himself. I promise you, if you stop trying to mark yourself out of ten,
everything
will get better.’

Katie opened her mouth to protest, then stopped, knowing Angelica could see through the stiff holds to their cold and lonely bedroom.

‘Everything,’ repeated Angelica, meaningfully.

She blushed and looked down at her shoes.

‘Anyway,’ Angelica went on, to spare her embarrassment, ‘once you get into the tango, you won’t want to do anything else. It’s the sort of dance that just takes you over. I mean, when I  . . .’ She stopped.

‘You what?’ asked Katie.

Angelica gave her a sad smile. ‘When I first learned the tango, my partner and I didn’t bother with waltzes or foxtrots for months. Our ballroom teacher was furious. We went round the milongas just dancing this. Learning the moves, making up new ones, letting it get right into our blood. It was like learning to dance all over again. I loved it.’

‘Was that your dancing partner or your  . . . romantic partner?’ asked Katie.

‘Both.’ Angelica brushed some invisible lint off her skirt, and Katie saw a glow of something soft come over her face. ‘He was called Tony Canero. We were brilliant together – on the dancefloor at least. We won everything we entered, pretty much. I’ve never seen a man who danced like him, then or since. He really found something in me that I didn’t know was there – great partners do that.’

‘Was he your husband?’

‘No.’ She made a tsking noise with her tongue, her face still vulnerable. ‘No, we didn’t marry. It’s better to learn to dance with your husband than to marry your dancing partner, I think. We danced together, all over the world, every competition going, and we were together the same amount of time, but it all came to a head. It all ended. No, I haven’t seen him in years.’

‘You didn’t stay in touch?’ asked Katie, curiously. How could you achieve that much with someone, live through an experience like that, and let them just vanish from your life?

‘We didn’t exactly part on Christmas-card terms,’ said Angelica. ‘He ran off with a younger woman. Just before we were about to compete in a national championship, actually – not the greatest timing.’

‘What a bastard!’ said Katie, her eyes widening in sympathy.

Angelica opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. When she looked at Katie, frankness made her eyes even more piercing. ‘I was about to say something very flippant there, but if I’m being honest, it was as much my fault as his. I was very insecure in those days, thought that I was only as good as our last competition. I had this obsession about winning every title. I thought Tony would only want me so long as I could be the perfect partner, as long as we were learning new things together.’

She looked down at her hands. ‘In the end, he said he didn’t know whether I really loved him off the dancefloor as much as I did on it. Which was rich, because I could have said the same about him. I think the reality was that we were both scared of having to be honest with each other, when we didn’t have the dancing to do the talking for us. We were really hot stuff on the floor, you know. I couldn’t bear the thought of us stagnating into slippers and cocoa when he found out how dull I was underneath the sequins.’

‘You’re hardly dull, Angelica!’

The ballroom smile didn’t cover the regret in Angelica’s face, and standing there in the empty, daylit Hall, she seemed older than at class, and more worn out. ‘Tempestuous relationships are all very well when you’ve got the energy for fighting and making up, but  . . .’ She shrugged. ‘It ended very quickly, but I’d rather have quick endings than drag things out. And then I went off to America and was married for a while to a very sweet man, Jerry, and I was very happy.’

Katie wasn’t convinced by her bright smile or her verys. ‘Tony’s never tried to get in touch since?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I’ve moved around a lot. I’ve never believed in going back, in any case.’

‘You’re back here, though, aren’t you?’ Katie pointed out.

Angelica sighed through her long nose. ‘Seems so.’

The tango music seemed to have unlocked memories that she couldn’t pack away, and Katie was conscious that she was intruding.

Not intruding, she thought, sharing. I’m sharing my own relationship woes with her, without speaking, and she’s sharing with me. It was a bittersweet feeling, but not completely sad.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be nosy.’

‘You’re not,’ said Angelica. ‘It’s just  . . . It brings it all back, teaching you this, being back in this Hall again. You know, I came back here to sort my mother’s house, and really it’s been
me
that’s needed the sorting out.’ She looked up at Katie and twisted her mouth wryly. ‘Don’t put things in storage, that’s my advice. In life and in relationships. One day you have to unpack it all, whether you like it or not.’

Angelica slapped her hands on her knees to indicate that the melancholy break was over. ‘And when you unpack your old dresses, you’re absolutely depressed to think you were once that skinny.’ She smiled. ‘You have to find slim young women to pass them on to. Now, don’t you have that job of yours to get back to?’

‘I do.’ Suddenly Katie was in no rush to get back to work. It had slipped down her priorities. ‘Can I have a CD of tango music to listen to in the car?’

Angelica smiled, and her face lost thirty years in a flash. ‘Of course. At last!’

As she left, pulling her coat tightly around her against the chill November wind, Katie looked back at the Hall, and was startled to see one of the outer stained-glass windows was broken. Not smashed, but definitely damaged. Slowly, she walked back, and realised that deep cracks split two other windows, and the wooden window frames had been pulled away, as if to prove they were rotten.

Her chest contracted with outrage, and in an instant, she knew what Nick had been up to – she’d heard about shady stuff like that before, contractors ‘discovering’ irreparable deterioration in staircases when they examined them with sledgehammers, or accidental damage done to historic façades, meaning the whole building may as well come down.

That was the last straw, thought Katie, and instead of feeling bad, she felt thoroughly elated as she stormed back to the office.

Jo’s house was as tidy as ever, but, later that evening, Katie could sense a hum of chaos as she walked through the door to pick up the children. Ross hadn’t called to say where he was, and she was too proud to phone him to see what he’d got up to on his day off.

The television was on very loud in the sitting room, for a start, which Katie didn’t remember ever hearing in Jo’s house, and the girls were screeching about something in the kitchen. She couldn’t tell what; they were making a high-pitched keening noise that, in her house, usually signified extreme pleading for sweets.

As she walked in, Katie realised she’d been proved right for once.

‘No more Haribo!’ Jo was yelling back as Molly and Hannah made hysterical praying gestures. ‘Molly, I promise you, even if I had any more, you wouldn’t be getting any! Look,’ she added, spotting Katie, ‘Hannah’s mummy will back me up. Isn’t that right – too many sweeties before tea makes your hair fall out?’

And I thought Jo was way above scary stories, thought Katie. Thank God it’s not just me.

‘Absolutely right,’ she nodded, seriously. ‘And I was thinking of taking
some
little girls to Claire’s Accessories to buy new hair bobbles this weekend, but obviously there’s no point taking you two if you don’t have any lovely hair to put in them?’

Hannah and Molly looked shocked, then ran off, screeching, to the sitting room again.

‘Thanks for that,’ said Jo. She let her face fall back into its exhausted state once the girls had left and Katie realised that it was only copious concealer making Jo look normal. ‘I promised myself I’d never do blatant sweetie lies like my mum did, but they haven’t let up all afternoon. I’m on the verge of running amok with that sleeping stuff Leigh Sinton drugged her kids with last summer.’

‘What?’ said Katie, putting the kettle on before Jo felt obliged to hostess her. ‘I missed that.’

Ross might have told her, but she couldn’t remember. She could barely remember who Leigh Sinton’s child was. I’ve been missing too much, she told herself fiercely. No wonder Ross thinks I don’t care.

‘Delphi’s mum. She couldn’t be bothered to play i-Spy all the way to Brittany, so she knocked them out before they got to the motorway. Everyone pretended to be shocked, but Boots sold out of whatever she used in two days.’ Jo gave her a weary look. ‘The scandalous world of the under-fives, eh? We have to make our own entertainment.’

‘It’s more entertaining than my day at work.’ Katie sank onto a kitchen chair. ‘One passive-aggressive argument with my boss about this regeneration project and now I discover they’re trying to sabotage the whole thing. Hence a sneaky mobile-phone call to English Heritage about getting the key building in that very same regeneration project listed so my boss can go berserk and possibly fire me.’ She watched Jo make them both a cup of coffee. ‘The woman at English Heritage even asked me if I wanted a job with them, seeing as I was so concerned with historic buildings. I might as well write my own resignation letter, save Eddie the bother of sidelining me back to car parks.’

Jo put a mug down in front of her. ‘Why not? I think it’s a great idea. You should talk to them – it’s just the sort of thing we need round here, more appreciation of what the town’s already got. What’s happening with the Hall?’

‘Well, Bridget suggested we have an awareness-raising evening before Christmas – she and Angelica are organising an old-style ball, where everyone comes in vintage clothes? Bring the place to everyone’s attention, get them fired up about saving it. Angelica’s promised she’ll ring some of her old big-band contacts about the music  . . .’ Katie cupped her hands round her coffee, not caring that it stung her hands. She looked up at Jo, and added, tentatively, ‘You must think I’m just like Greg, always obsessing about the office when I should be worrying about stuff nearer to home.’

‘Katie, you’re nothing like Greg,’ said Jo. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘I am.’ Katie stared into her mug. ‘Work’s taken over my life, I know. But it’s because I want the kids to have everything they need, and it’s down to me to provide that. I just want to be a good mum. And I’m not.’

‘You’re an amazing mum, Katie,’ said Jo, very seriously. ‘You’re far, far too hard on yourself. Do you think Hannah would be doing as well as she is if you weren’t? You work hard, and you set a great example about being independent. And it’s not like you don’t spend time with the children – you do! You’re there for them when you get in, and all weekend.’