The Vintage Summer Wedding

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Anna bristled, unused to that kind of reaction. She thought of Seb squeezing her hand and telling her that it was OK after she’d lost all their money. ‘It could have happened if you were here or not—’

‘Anna.’ Mrs Beedle locked her with a look that cut her off immediately. ‘Don’t make excuses to me. It wouldn’t have happened if I was here, I know that, because this shop is my life and the things in it are my life. To you they may be nothing, but to me they are my livelihood and I respect them. I have given you a job when a lot of people here wouldn’t and all I ask in return, is you show my possessions just a little respect. That’s it. That’s all I ask,’ she said, her lips taut, her jaw as rigid as it could be in her round little face.

Anna opened her mouth to reply, but chose instead to say nothing, just nodded.

‘I don’t need you here. In fact, I’d rather you weren’t here. But your father has been my friend since I was at school and he asked for a favour. I’m not putting up with your shit, Anna Whitehall. I see through you. And, quite frankly, I’d say it’s about time you grew up.’

At five on the dot, Anna grabbed her bag and sloped out so that Mrs Beedle wouldn’t see her, and once outside she’d never been happier to feel the scorching heat of the afternoon sun on her face.

Pausing for a moment to sit on one of the chairs outside the French bistro, she leant her head against the wall and took a deep breath. She’d spent the rest of the afternoon flitting between fury about her telling off and guilt over the clock theft. Why had this had such an effect on her? It was just a crappy antiques shop, but it felt like the culmination of everything. The conversation with Hermione had rattled her, shaken her foundations. Her relationship with Seb felt like it was being wedged apart by a huge Nettleton crowbar, and now she had the big, sad, watery eyes of Mrs Beedle’s disappointment to contend with.

‘I don’t care,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘I do not care.’

As she was repeating the mantra to herself, the owner came out of the bistro where Anna had taken residence of one of his chairs. He very good-looking in a dark, Gaelic way she thought as he started watering the pots of red geraniums with an old glass bottle. ‘Bonsoir, Mademoiselle. Can I get you something to drink?’

‘Oh no sorry, I was just sitting.’ Anna pushed herself up. ‘I’m just going.’

He shook his head, pouring the last of the water into one of the gnarly pots. ‘There is no hurry. You can sit as much as you like.’ He winked, shook out the drops from the bottle, and then disappeared back inside. She watched him go and wondered in how many places you could sit at someone’s cafe for free.

Standing up, she hauled her weary body across the cobbles, the sun burning on her back, the group of old men sitting on the bench staring, hands resting on their bellies, the old sheepdog at their feet turning its head away as she passed. She felt like everyone knew about the clock.

I don’t care, she said again under her breath. But then why was she so riled?

As she neared the bakery, she saw Jackie and Seb sitting on the chairs, laughing together over chocolate cake. She could see Rachel inside, behind the counter, wrapping up bread and scooping chocolates into gold boxes. The window had changed again, piles of jellied sweets shaped like strawberries and green apples, orange slices and bobbly raspberries glistened in the afternoon sun. Scattered nasturtium flowers fluttered like butterflies, shots of bright vermilion and dazzling cerise. And hanging from ribbons in the window were tiny glass test-tubes, each with a sweet pea drooping from the weight of its pastel petals. If she still had it, a photo of the display would have been worthy of her book.

‘Anna!’ Seb called with a wave.

Jackie was still sniggering as she approached. Again Anna felt like the outsider.

‘Jackie was just asking me whether you’d ever change your mind about coaching her dance group,’ Seb said, as if by way of explanation for the giggling.

Why was that funny? Anna wondered.

‘Seb said that you didn’t really do things for other people.’ Jackie said over a mouthful of chocolate cake.

‘I didn’t say it like that.’ Seb shook his head, waving a hand to try and make her disregard Jackie’s comment. ‘I just said that you weren’t, you know, community-focused.’

Anna didn’t say anything. Just watched the pair of them, a thousand possibilities of what Seb had said swirling through her head. In London this was her time with him. Where she’d call and arrange to meet him in swanky bar, but he’d catch her just before she went in and pull her into a sweet, family-owned tapas place where they’d get free sherry with their chorizo, or make her stroll down the Embankment to look at the river in the twilight and the blue and white lights threaded through the branches of the ragged trees. Like when they first met and she’d led him round London like a pro, pointing out various landmarks and over-egging her knowledge of the history, he’d stopped her with a raised brow when she said something with total conviction about Big Ben or the fact there had to be more than two people in a London Eye pod in case you had sex in there, and he’d said, ‘You’re full of shit, Anna Whitehall.’ And she had turned, ready with a quick retort but had seen the twinkling in his eyes and realised that he was laughing at her. No one had dared laugh at her before and she had loved it.

But this was a different type of laughter. One that excluded her and made her feel foolish, out of the joke.

Jackie sat back in her chair, took a sip of her espresso, and said, ‘Don’t worry about it. You probably don’t have the skill set to do it anyway, Anna. Teaching kids, it’s hard, it’d make working in PR at the Opera House seem like a walk in the park.’

I was at the English Ballet Company School, Anna thought, bristling. I was going to be a star. She closed her eyes and saw sequins and feathers and Swarovski crystals. Powder on a white puff, flicks of eyeliner and the sparkle of shadow. Tights with a hint of shimmer, pointes worn down to the box, ribbons frayed around her calf, the hoops of sweat on her leotard, the vomit in her mouth the split-second before the curtain went up, the thrum of the orchestra, the darkness of her eyelids as she waited, one deep breath after another until she could feel the warm, engulfing heat of the lights. The steely determination, the poise, the in-built stubbornness that fired like the strike of a match as soon as anyone questioned whether she could do it, whether she wanted to or not.

‘Tell me what time they rehearse,’ she said, pulling on her sunglasses, deliberately not looking at Seb. ‘I’ll be there.’

Chapter Six (#ulink_85113f6d-1a40-5fa8-8a36-11f37af015ec)

The Nettleton village hall was at the far end of the square, red brick with a parapet and a white key stone with the date, 1906, carved into the masonry. It was flanked on either side by plane trees, their prickly seeds swaying like hedgehogs, the leaves shading the front steps with spots of dancing light breaking through like rain. By the looks of the noticeboard, it was used for everything, from old people’s tea dances to after-school clubs. From the outside, Anna could see the windows decorated with paper-plate suns and pipe-cleaner daffodils.

She could feel her hand shake as she pushed open the heavy wooden front doors and was almost blown backwards by some hideous pop track as it blasted in her face like a roar.

Perfect, she thought. It was like her once only venture to Glastonbury. Same annoying-looking teenagers, same painful music, same hippy-dippy niceness and probably only one toilet that worked.

Jackie and Mrs McNamara were standing at the front of the stage chatting while, what looked to Anna, a bunch of malnutritioned juveniles bounced around like malcoordinated maniacs on stage wearing tracksuit bottoms, oversized T-shirts and crop-tops. One, she noticed, was actually wearing a onesie with a tail. That would have to go.

‘Anna!’ Jackie called, clearly delighted to see her for the pure fact she could now pass the buck of this terrifying shambles.

The hall was stuffy and Anna felt completely overdressed in tight leather-effect leggings, flimsy blue tank-top and a gossamer MaxMara cardigan. The heat, mixed with the nerves of coming back into this type of situation, of drawing on skills that lay happily dormant, made her wonder if she might faint.

‘This is the dream team, Anna Whitehall,’ Mrs McNamara shouted, and Anna’s name on her lips catapulted her straight back to gym class. Huffing and puffing across the lacrosse pitch in the freezing cold. Come on, Whitehall, none of your ballet flim-flam out here!

Anna gave her a tight smile, and then they all stood side by side for a second and watched the debacle on stage. The horror of what she was watching quickly gazumped her fears.

‘OK, Matt,’ Jackie shouted. ‘Turn it off a second.’

A loping, spotty teenager flicked off his iPod on the stand and Anna felt like she’d experienced a miracle.

‘Everyone, this is Anna Whitehall. She’s here to put the final touches to the routine. Iron it out before the big audition.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Anna whispered, perplexed. ‘Was that the routine?’

‘Yeah, what about it?’ A girl with a bright-orange Amy Winehouse beehive shouted from the stage, a tiny nose stud glinting as she sneered.

Anna just waved a hand. ‘Nothing,’ she said, but could feel a wave of the stifled giggles washing over her, mixing with the adrenaline of her nerves, which must have done something strange to her expression because another girl sprang forward, this one with a platinum fringe flicked like Farah Fawcett, and said, eyes narrowed, ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Well, it’s just—’ Anna glanced at Jackie and Mrs McNamara for back-up, but they both just looked at her with blank expressions. ‘Well, it has no steps,’ she sniggered, as if it was obvious. She was the first to admit that this style of dancing wasn’t her forte, but it didn’t take a genius to see it was just a hotch-potch of random jumping about the place.

‘It’s got fucking steps.’ Matt, the iPod owner said, running his hand through his dirty-blond hair and frowning, his freckle-smattered nose runkling.

‘OK, Matthew, don’t swear,’ Mrs McNamara cut in.

The flicky fringe girl pointed a finger at Anna. ‘What would you know, anyway?’

Anna raised a brow, was the girl baring her teeth at her? Christ, it was like being in the zoo. Anna shook her hair and straightened her back in an attempt to maintain her hierarchy. ‘I’m a professionally trained dancer—’ she said, and was about to add her qualifications; that she was a goddamn expert in everything from classical ballet to jazz and contemporary to bloody mime, when Jackie cut in, ‘Lucy, Anna was going to be a star!’

Anna turned to see if she had deliberately said it like that to belittle her, and from the slight tilt of Jackie’s lips, realised that that was exactly what she’d done.

‘But you weren’t? You never made it?’ Lucy’s lips pulled into a smug smile and a couple of the others giggled.

Anna swallowed. ‘I grew too tall,’ she replied quickly and too defensively, she realised. ‘I would have done. But I was too tall,’ she said again, slightly slower and with a hint more poise.

‘You don’t look very tall to me. Darcey Bussell is tall.’

Anna rolled her eyes. ‘TV makes you look taller.’

‘What’s your excuse then?’ some little wavy-haired shit called from the back and they all laughed.

‘Billy!’ Mrs McNamara said with a warning tone, but even her lips twitched.

Anna ran her tongue along her bottom lip, furious. As they all eyed her with delight, she just managed to stop herself from retaliating. She was better than this, than them. She glanced up at the ceiling. There was no marble ceiling rose here, no golden cherubs carved into the plaster, no fleur-de-lis in the arched moulding, no giant spotlights or even a lighting rig, no royal box with duck-egg-blue furniture and velvet drapes. No, this was nothing.

She surveyed the motley crew, all attitude, Beats headphones round their necks and low-slung tracksuit bottoms. She thought of her stars at the Opera House ‒ their elegant grace, their long limbs like gazelles as they stretched, their fluid beauty as they poured themselves into yards of net and tulle that shone and frothed and flickered as they danced. She thought of sitting in the stalls, watching with her notepad, pen poised for notes, swallowing down the giant lump of envy, of failure, of disappointment, lodged in her throat.

She didn’t have to do this.

She glanced across the row of them as they flopped down on the edge of the stage, at the spots, the barely there stubble and the Wonderbras, and shook her head as if to say that they were lucky to have her, and then made the movement to turn and walk away but, as she did, she saw the chin jut out of Farah Fawcett Lucy and was catapulted back further, to exactly where she hadn’t wanted to go: to her interview at the English Ballet Company School. Her hands shaking and sweaty as she’d passed the state-of-the-art, air-conditioned studios, head down, eyes glancing furtively to the left and seeing only the unwavering confidence reflected off the faces of the dancers in the three-sixty wall of mirrors.

‘You will give your life, Anna, and most probably fail.’ Madame LaRoche had said, her black cigarette pants and spotty scarf making Anna feel like Audrey Hepburn was sitting crossed-legged in the chair in front of her, cigarette dangling between her red lips. ‘Less than one percent make it, Anna. And you are already old. Already you will have to catch up. One percent.’ She held her fingers close together to show the tiny amount. ‘Are you in that one percent?’

Anna hadn’t answered.

‘Of course she is.’ Her mother had crossed her hands over her Chanel bag, the only designer item she owned, that she pulled out of its tissue paper at the bottom of the wardrobe to impress at moments like this.

‘Anna?’ Madame LaRoche had fixed her in her beautiful, beady gaze. ‘Are you in the top one percent? Do you have the hunger?’

And Anna had swallowed. She thought of the auditions, of the classes she had watched, of the girls who might be thinner, harder, cleverer, tougher than her. Girls who didn’t blink when they looked at her. Who danced through stress fractures, twisted ankles, who pushed themselves till they were sick on the floor, vomiting blood they’d worked so hard. Toes bound and crushed and bleeding; blistered, swollen feet frozen in ice. The constant, gruelling quest for perfection, the hours at the barre, the gnawing hunger. Knees strapped into place, tiredness that seeped into the bones like lead, weighing you down like an astronaut suit. Did she have the hunger?

In Nettleton, Anna was the top one percent. Here. Here she felt suddenly tiny, soft, fragile, breakable, scared, nervous, terrified. She could see her father watching them leave, cheeks wet, begging her mother to stay, that he was sorry. She could see the eyes in the street as they sped out of the town. She glanced momentarily at her mother, saw her rigid jaw, her defiance, her determination.