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Where was he? She wandered round to the other side of the large cherrywood desk with the green leather top, trailing her fingers along the edge as she did so. One of these days her father would have to give in and learn to use a computer, but for now he was steadfastly holding out. There was no scribbled note, no scrap of paper to hint at where he’d gone or when he might be back. She sighed.
Oh, well. She’d just have to find him later. She had a rehearsal in an hour and it had been tight fitting in a trip back home as it was.
She had reached the other side of the desk again when the phone rang. By the time she reached the door the answerphone kicked in and a male voice filled the empty room.
‘Hi. This is Simon Tatler again. I was wondering if you’d had a chance to think over the offer for Miss Martin to appear on Fearless Finn. As you know, the schedule is pretty tight, so could you possibly get back to me today?’
He added his number and email address and rang off.
Allegra stood, half in, half out of her father’s study with her mouth open.
An invitation to appear on Fearless Finn! A warm feeling surged up from her toes and burst up through her, leaving a smile on her lips. She’d get to meet him? Actually stand face to face with him? Her heart began to pound at the thought.
And then her excitement began to evaporate. This Simon had phoned before? Why was this the first she’d heard of it?
Her father found her moments later in the doorway, frowning. She jumped when he lightly touched her on the shoulder.
‘Are you okay, Allegra?’
On autopilot, Allegra nodded, but then she realised what she was doing. She turned to face him.
‘What was that message about? The one about Fearless Finn?’
Her father looked puzzled. ‘Who?’
‘The TV show…’
He blinked and shook his head faintly. ‘Nothing, really. They were looking for a celebrity guest. I tried to tell the man you couldn’t do it, but he insisted I think about it.’
‘You think about it?’
Her father nodded. ‘Yes.’
Allegra’s eyebrows pinched together. ‘Don’t you mean, he suggested I think about it?’
He shrugged and walked past her into the study. ‘It hardly warrants an argument over semantics, Allegra. You simply can’t do it. They wanted you to fly out to some godforsaken place tomorrow and stay there for seven nights. I don’t know what the man was thinking even approaching us about it—’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me about this?’
Her father smiled at her. That same soft smile he’d given her when she’d been a little girl and had tried to use a complicated word and had got it wrong.
‘I didn’t see the need.’ He walked round to the other side of the desk and rifled through some papers, effectively dismissing her. ‘As I said, it was impossible.’
‘I know it’s impossible!’ She paused and cleared her throat, got control of herself. ‘But that’s not the point,’ she said evenly. ‘It’s my career. It was my decision. You should at least have mentioned it to me.’
Her father looked up, a wad of papers clutched in his hand, looking perplexed.
He just didn’t get it, did he? It didn’t matter what she said, or what she did; he would never get it.
To him, she was just another thing to be conducted. He waved his baton and she jumped. He waved it again and she stayed silent. And she’d let him. All these years she’d let him, because she’d seen what he’d become after his wife had died, how he’d almost given up on everything. And she’d seen his renaissance when she’d started to excel at her mother’s art. How could she snatch that back from him and still live with herself?
She continued to stare at her father, who had paused rifling through the papers on his desk and was looking at her with raised eyebrows.
There was so much she wanted to say to him.
Let me live, Daddy. Let me breathe…
If only he would give her the same range he gave his musicians. At least they got to change tempo and mood. When he conducted them he made sure he breathed life into the music. He made sure it had light and shade, joy and despair, stillness and dynamism.
She had none of that freedom. She was always supposed to be the perfect little ballerina. Focused. Dedicated. Obedient. And, if her life had a score, no one would want to listen to it because it would be plodding and quiet and controlled. It would be dull.
‘You should have told me, Daddy,’ she said quietly, begging him to see past the even tone, the reasonable words. Begging him to look deep inside her and see what was longing to burst out.
He shook his head and shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said dryly. ‘I promise I’ll tell you about the next ridiculous offer that comes along. Happy now?’
No, not really. Because this was just a symptom, wasn’t it?
He shook his head again. ‘Sometimes I just don’t understand you, Allegra. You have the life a thousand other dancers would kill for. The life your mother dreamed about, would have given anything to continue, and yet still it’s not enough for you. Sometimes I think I’ve spoiled you, and that you’ve grown up a little bit selfish.’
Allegra blinked at him, stunned.
Selfish? When all she’d ever done was try to please everyone else, try to ease their sadness by showing them her mother had left a little bit of herself behind in her child?
Well, the compliments were coming thick and fast today, weren’t they? First she was soulless, and now she was selfish, too. She wondered that anyone still wanted her around if she was really that awful.
Maybe she was ungrateful and spoiled because she couldn’t stand the weight of her mother’s mantle on her shoulders a moment longer. It had been weighing her down since just after her eighth birthday. Once she had loved feeling that her talent had connected her to her mother, but now she wanted that connection broken, severed once and for all.
Her mother was dead. Nothing was going to change that.
And Allegra feared that if something didn’t change soon all the life would be sucked out of her as well.
She looked at the floor and then back up at her father, giving him one last chance to really see her, see past layer upon layer of expectation he’d pasted upon her, but his face was closed. He was still angry with her. For the comment she’d just made, for the performance last night, for the review he’d have to defend himself against to his arty friends.
Suddenly she felt utterly and totally alone.
The only remedy was to throw herself back into her work and hope the boiling pot of emotions she was busy trying to keep a lid on would flow out in her next performance, and give that critic good reason to eat his words.
‘I have a rehearsal at two. I have to go.’
And, without waiting to be dismissed, she turned and left her father’s study.
Nat was waiting for him at one of the airport bars. It was a pity they only had an hour or so together, otherwise they might have been able to go into Amsterdam for a meal. Finn didn’t mind too much about that, though. This was the life they’d chosen and they were used to it. There’d always be another time.
He walked up to Nat and pulled her into his arms for a kiss. Nat kept her mouth firmly closed and then slid away. Finn stopped and looked at her. Same Nat, with the jaunty honey-coloured bob, the girl-next-door healthy glow about her faintly tanned skin. As usual, there was nothing girl-next-door about the clothes. They were designer all the way.
She pushed herself back onto her bar stool and took a sip of a brightly coloured cocktail with a lime-green straw and an umbrella sticking out of it. Finn frowned. Where was the usual vodka and tonic?
‘What’s that?’ he asked, nodding towards the garish drink.
Nat’s smile started in her cheeks but didn’t make it all the way to her lips. ‘Dutch courage, I think they call it. Want one?’
He shook his head. ‘I think I’ll stick to beer, thanks.’ And he waved to get the bartender’s attention and ordered just that.
‘Finn…’ Nat folded her hands in her lap and studied them for a moment, then she lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come out and say it.’
Finn went very still. She wasn’t pregnant, was she? Because that would be way ahead of schedule. He was only thirty. Plenty of time for that later.
Nat inhaled. ‘I’ve met someone,’ she said quickly and returned her gaze to her lap.
Huh?
‘Pardon?’ Finn said. It was the only word he could think of.
Nat sighed and reached for her cocktail. She held the umbrella-laden glass against her chest like a shield. ‘I can’t marry you, Finn.’
This wasn’t real. No, this definitely couldn’t be real.
This wasn’t Nat sitting opposite him sipping the wrong drink, saying the wrong thing. He must be having a weird in-flight dream and Schiphol airport must still be hours away.
‘Who?’ he said, and his voice sounded hard and flat. He couldn’t look at her.
He heard her fidget in her seat. ‘His name is Matthew, and he’s an architect. I met him at a charity do a few months ago, and then I bumped into him a few times after that. And, well, one thing led to another…’
How he hated that phrase. It implied that something couldn’t be helped, that the person in question had had no choice and, therefore, bore no responsibility.
‘He’s asked me to marry him,’ she said quietly.
That made him whip his head round. ‘But you’re supposed to be marrying me!’
‘I know,’ Nat said, looking at him from under her lashes. ‘I’m sorry.’
Finn just stared at her. He was feeling so many emotions that he wasn’t even sure which one to pick out of the bag first. How about anger? A good one, that. Much better than disappointment or the sting of rejection. Or the creeping sickness telling him he’d been stupid to let himself get too attached once again.
‘Sorry doesn’t cut it, sweetheart! We had a deal, remember? You’ve got a—’
He’d been about to say ring on your finger to prove it, but a quick glance at her hand left him without ammunition.
Silently, she reached into her handbag, opened her purse and handed his diamond back to him. He took it between thumb and forefinger and stared at it, felt its weight.
This was real.
Nat gave him a weak smile. ‘We weren’t really ever going to get round to it, were we, Finn? It was a nice game, pretending we were ready for a proper relationship when really we hardly spent any time together. We did it because it was easy.’
It had been easy! What was so wrong with that?
‘We worked together, Nat! Wasn’t it nice to know there was always someone to come home to? To have someone who wouldn’t moan about the long hours and weeks spent apart? Someone who knew how to pick up where they left off without a lot of fuss? Is the wonderful Matthew going to put up with all of that?’
Nat sighed. ‘It did work, Finn. Did being the operative word. “Us” was a habit we’d fallen into, a way of keeping our freedom while telling ourselves we were ready for more.’
What was she talking about? He’d been ready for more. Hadn’t he? The anger quickly dissolved into confusion.
He looked at Nat and she looked back at him.
‘Now I really am ready for more,’ she said.
‘Just not with me,’ he replied, then pressed his lips into a straight line.
She shook her head. ‘Matthew wants us to move to a nice big house in the country and fill it with kids.’ She smiled to herself. ‘I’m amazed to discover I want that, too. I’m even thinking about giving up Amazing Planet and doing something UK-based.’
What? Cutesy early-evening nature programmes? Nat hated those!
‘But you’ll go mad staying in one place for that long! You always said you didn’t want to be tied down like that. This is a mistake, Nat! You love your job.’
She looked back at him, unblinking and contrite. ‘I love him more,’ she said simply. ‘I want to be where he is, Finn. I can’t stand being away from him.’
Finn slumped back into his leather-backed stool. She was crazy, but there was no talking to her. She’d made her choice and, even if she regretted it later, he wasn’t going to stop her. And he certainly wasn’t going to beg. So it was time to cut ties, to let her loose, he supposed.
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, watching the crowds bustle past. Families with whining kids and stupid big Spanish hats that no one born there would disgrace themselves by wearing. Elderly couples on city breaks who’d probably seen Amsterdam’s canals from the wrong side of a coach window.
He turned away, irritated, and found Nat watching him.
‘That was us, Finn. We were tourists.’
Finn glanced at the almost-empty cocktail glass. What exactly was in that concoction? Nat knew he’d never been on a package holiday in his life, knew he’d rather shoot himself first.
She stood up, looking very serious. ‘I want the real experience now, Finn. I don’t want to just whizz past the landmarks—dating, engagement, wedding—and still not really know what it’s like to live there.’
That drink had really gone to her head. She wasn’t making any sense at all.
‘I hate to ask, but would you do me a favour? Will you keep quiet about this until I get back from Tonga next week? I don’t want media speculation running rife while we’re both out of the country.’
He nodded. She could have anything she wanted. He didn’t care. He was numb. Just as well, really, because he was in no hurry to find out what a broken heart felt like.
She leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. ‘Goodbye, Finn. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’
And then she was gone. Lost amongst the overladen trolleys and duty free bags.
The bartender plonked his bottle of beer in front of him and Finn took a long, long drink.
Jilted in the time it took to order a beer. Marvellous.
‘I want to see that lift again.’
Allegra picked herself up off the studio floor and glared at her partner. Damien, The Little Mermaid’s choreographer, continued to stare at them, his patience thinning rapidly.
So was Allegra’s.
‘It would help if you put your hands where they’re supposed to go,’ she muttered darkly to Stephen. He was in a particularly infantile mood this afternoon.
