9781789543087 If I Can't Have You Page 2

  I hated high school, bras and Facebook with all my heart. I had eleven friends, one of whom was my mum, I never updated my profile and I hadn’t even uploaded a profile pic, but Patrick was in my contacts, which meant I could torture myself without revealing who I was, checking his updates like a secret agent. Not that he wrote much himself, but he had friends and acquaintances from all over the world, who were always tagging him in photos or inviting him to different events, and I would imagine him replying with things like, ‘As soon as Mia has finished her exams we would love to come windsurfing with you in Hawaii,’ or, ‘Thanks, but I promised Mia I’d take her to see the Great Wall of China that weekend.’ I imagined our adventures together, across the world, followed by growing old together in our country house, surrounded by grandchildren and dogs.

  Sometimes I felt like I had nothing to cling to but my imagination and these days that was where I spent most of my time. If the real world got too tough, all I had to do was imagine a parallel life and take refuge in my dreams, where I was truly happy.

  I think the real reason behind my current anxiety was the growing awareness that my fantasy world was about to come to an end, that Nina and I would soon graduate and go our separate ways and I would have no reason to see Patrick when he was home from the navy. Nina wanted to become a human rights lawyer, while I knew that one day I would leave the city to try and realise my dream of becoming a dancer. I still didn’t know how, but I knew I had to try. And so I lived my life like a girlfriend who knows in her heart that it’s all over, but can’t bring herself to admit it.

  It was the coldest autumn imaginable. The boiler was constantly breaking down, and I had to keep going downstairs in the mornings to give it a thump. It usually waited until I was in the shower, and I would have to streak down the stairs covered in soap, risking both pneumonia and slipping on the lino in the kitchen.

  This was the sort of thing that made me and my mother feel lonely. When stuff like this happened there was no one else to help, and Mum had to do everything by herself. Her partner Paul had another family too, although he said they were ‘just staying together for the children’, so he was rarely there when we needed him. When we had a break-in, Mum had to threaten the burglar with a hair dryer, and when the car broke down, the dodgy mechanic up the road had convinced her to replace the entire engine, as ‘an investment for the future.’

  This was why I didn’t like the thought of having to rely on another person. I promised myself I would always be emotionally self-sufficient, and never need anyone for anything. That way no one could let me down and, in theory, I would never have to suffer.

  The theory was not working particularly well lately.

  ‘Mia!’ Mrs Bowen’s voice cracked like a gunshot across the hushed classroom, and hit me right between the eyes. I could feel the sighs of relief from my classmates, as they realised it was my head on the chopping block.

  ‘Go on, I’ll help you,’ Nina whispered.

  ‘Without help from Nina!’ the teacher thundered.

  Not that it mattered anyway, hints were fine in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ test, but not when you had 400 years of British history missing from your head. I began to mumble random sentences, just to give the impression of knowing something, which was probably not the best idea I ever had. Now everyone thought I was weird as well as stupid.

  The worst thing was that I had studied for hours, but I still felt like my head was completely empty. It was like the information had poured right back out again, like water down a plug hole, with no way to hold it in.

  ‘She doesn’t know it!’ I heard someone whisper behind my back.

  I didn’t know and didn’t care.

  I wanted to get up, flip my desk, and run away to sea with Patrick.

  But instead of keeping quiet and obediently accepting the public humiliation, I turned to the voice and said, ‘Fuck you! You think you’re some kind of genius because you know when the Magna Carta was? I’ll tell you where you can stick your Magna Carta…’

  In hindsight, I should probably have left it to his imagination, rather than telling him exactly where to stick it. If I had, perhaps I wouldn’t have found myself sitting in front of the headmistress five minutes later, and perhaps she wouldn’t have tried to call my mother (who fortunately never remembers to switch her phone on) and threatened to put me back a year. I couldn’t risk losing a year, or I could wave goodbye to any chance of getting into the Royal Ballet School in time. If they’d have me.

  At break time, Nina tracked me down in the girls’ toilets and demanded to know what was going on.

  ‘What’s wrong with you these days?’ She looked really worried. ‘You sounded like the possessed child out of The Ring!’

  ‘Nothing. I was just fed up,’ I replied, scratching an old sticker from the wall.

  ‘Mia, do you realise they could suspend you? Do you want to miss the year?’

  ‘Come on, Nina, don’t you start. You sound like my mum!’

  She took my hands. ‘I know you. There’s something you want to get off your chest, and if you don’t tell me who will you tell? York?’

  York was my dog. The ugliest dog anyone had ever seen. Mum had decided a few years back to get me a puppy, hoping to distract me from my father’s abandonment, and had taken me to see a litter of beautiful fluffy puppies that jumped and looked adorable and tried their best to be picked up, but my eyes had gone straight to York, the scruffy, one-eared runt who sat in a corner and wagged his tail out of time, trying not to be noticed, just like I did at school.

  And I had known right away that he was the one for me, refusing to even consider any of the others, to the amazement of both my mum and the breeder. I only needed one look to fall madly in love with him, just like it had happened with Patrick.

  And in fact Nina was right, although she didn’t know it. I had told York about Patrick, but I could never tell her, even though she was my best friend.

  ‘Are you coming round to my house to revise after school? We’ve got a maths test tomorrow.’

  ‘No, not today. I can’t.’

  Nina looked at me suspiciously ‘Why not?’

  ‘I have to go.somewhere with my mum.’

  ‘Where?’ She insisted

  ‘I dunno.just, on a visit…’ I mumbled unconvincingly.

  One more question and I think I would have told her everything.

  ‘A visit where? Has something happened to your mum?’

  ‘No, no, she’s fine. I just, I can’t today...sorry.’

  ‘Why are you being so weird? Are you in a mood with me or something.’

  She looked really worried.

  ‘If I’ve done something to upset you, you have to tell me.’

  That was Nina. Always worrying about other people. The girl who had given her mother’s best coat to the tramp in the park as a child, who had released her Aunty Sue’s budgies back into the wild, and who wanted to adopt me.

  And here I was answering her like I was dumping someone: ‘It’s not you, it’s me. I’ve just...I’ve been feeling a bit strange recently.’

  ‘Are you in love or something?’ she said suddenly

  I turned beetroot, so then of course she knew she’d got it right.

  ‘Oh my God, you are!’ she said, her eyes lighting up.

  ‘What? No! Are you serious? Who would I be ‘in love’ with?’ I answered huffily, unable to look her in the face.

  ‘Looook into my eyes,’ she said, waggling her fingers spookily.

  ‘You’re not funny,’ I muttered.

  ‘Mia, we’re supposed to be sisters, remember? There’s nothing I don’t know about you. Come on, tell me who it is! I’ve always told you everything, even about Thomas.’

  There was no escape. It was true that she had told me all about her crush on Thomas. Thomas was a couple of years older than us, and they were working on the project originally intended for Robert Pattinson. There was no part of my life that she didn’t know about, nothing that I didn�
�t involve her in, apart from the one thing that dominated about three quarters of my life, and involved her brother. We were almost always together, and when we weren’t we would spend hours talking on the phone.

  I was cornered.

  I sighed, and Nina leaned forward eagerly.

  ‘Come on, spit it out!’

  ‘Do you know...erm...that boy from Sixth Form?’

  She frowned. ‘Which one? There are loads of boys in the Sixth Form.’

  ‘The one with dark hair?’

  ‘The one who looks like Charlie Bewley?’

  ‘No, the one who looks like Jared Leto. Or his hair is like Jared Leto’s, anyway.’

  ‘Yes!!’ Her face lit up. ‘Tall? Big eyes? This is great! Do you know his name? Has he got a girlfriend?’

  ‘No, come on, Nina, he doesn’t even know I exist. He’s way out of my league.’

  ‘Hey!’ She pointed a threatening finger at me. ‘That’s my best friend you’re talking about. Nobody’s better than you! Just remember, no man is out of your league just because he’s good looking, or because he happens to live in Hollywood! They’re just people like us, with all the same insecurities, at least that’s what my mum always says.

  ‘You and me, we could get off with Robert Pattinson if we liked. Maybe we just don’t want to. So if you want to go out with Jared, we just need to come up with a plan to make it happen!’

  She beamed at me.

  It was the biggest load of crap I had ever heard. But if she was focused on Jared Leto from Sixth Form I could go quiet sometimes without her wondering what was wrong, and more importantly, I could finally tell her how I was feeling, only I’d have to pretend I was talking about this other guy and not Patrick. It would be such a relief to open up to her.

  And it wouldn’t exactly be lying. Not really.

  2

  ‘Annnnd, piqué, piqué and double chainé, chainé, chainé, passé, holllld. Aaaand down!’

  The solo ended with me in the centre of the dance studio with my teacher, Claire standing looking at me, arms folded and without expression. I didn’t remember seeing her smile once in all the years I’d been going to her classes. She had studied at the Royal Academy in London and for a while at the American Ballet Theatre with Diana Adams, but her career had been cut short by a skiing accident, which probably had something to do with her bad temper.

  She had been my teacher since I was five years old, and had trained me to a level where we now had to decide whether to go all out and try for a professional career, or to remain forever at an amateur level and settle for maybe getting a job as a teacher at a provincial dance school.

  And if that was all I was good for, I might as well go to university and get a job in the City with my father.

  Mum worried that if they sent me to the Royal and I didn’t break through, I’d be left with nothing to fall back on, and, even though the state financed a large part of the fee, we’d still have wasted at least twelve thousand pounds a year that we didn’t have in the first place.

  The blank look on Claire’s face didn’t bode well.

  ‘Mia, you are aware of what we’re doing here today, are you not?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, wiping my forehead with the back of my hand with an exaggerated gesture.

  ‘And what are we doing?’ she continued, drawing circles on the worn parquet floor with her stick.

  I hated it when she did that.

  She liked to play the eccentric Russian teacher. All that was missing was the turban and cigarette holder.

  ‘We’re preparing my audition for the Royal Ballet,’ I answered patiently, trying to hide my annoyance.

  Claire was like an aunt to me. She was about sixty-four years old and I’d been going to her for lessons three times a week for eleven years. We bought one another Christmas presents and I went round to her house for dinner every Wednesday night, but when we were in that room she became Pavlova in full diva mode and treated me like shit.

  ‘NOT. GOOD. ENOUGH!’ she barked, beating the stick on the ground like she was trying to break it. ‘We are preparing your entrance exam for one of the most prestigious dance schools in the world. You have one chance to make it and you cannot afford to be mediocre, Mia!’

  She said ‘mediocre’ like it was a swear word.

  ‘Do you think you are the only one who wants this place? Do you think you’re doing them a favour by just turning up? What else do they expect from you, the new talent of the century? Eh? Answer me!’

  God, she was a bitch.

  ‘No!’ I muttered, my hands on my hips, relaxing my feet from pointe to demi-pointe.

  ‘They don’t need people who are happy to give only eighty percent, they don’t even want a hundred percent!’

  ‘But Claire...’ I tried to protest.

  ‘But Claire what? You’re tired? Get some rest! Your knee hurts? Put some ice on it! There are no compromises and there is no middle ground. In our profession we squeeze ourselves like lemons while we are still young, because once you reach thirty-five, it’s all over. It’s sad, but that’s the way it is. And it’s Ms Claire in here if you don’t mind! Come on, let’s go again!’

  I returned to the centre of the room and ‘Ms Claire’ restarted the CD at the beginning of the solo dance of Odile, The Black Swan, from Swan Lake. It was practically impossible, especially the thirty-two fouetté at the beginning of the piece. Given that my artistic interpretation wasn’t so great, so she wanted me to concentrate on perfecting my technique, which meant thirty-two consecutive pirouettes on the tip of my left foot. An absolute nightmare!

  No sane individual would have assigned a dance like that to a sixteen-year-old girl. But then Claire wasn’t entirely sane.

  I had watched so many clips of my idols performing the piece. Svetlana Zakharova, the personification of grace and beauty. So sinuous and elegant that she seemed almost otherworldly, like, an angel. She could perform dozens and dozens of pirouettes with seemingly no effort, and her long, graceful arms mimicked the movement of bird’s wings so harmoniously that you were left hypnotised.

  I didn’t know if I was an extraordinary talent, but I knew that when I danced, the world around me disappeared and I felt like I could fly, soaring through the air, buoyed up by music. An unstoppable force, like a river bursting its banks, roared through my veins, and I felt invincible. There were no limits or boundaries any more, my body became infinite space, and I moved without fear, or pain, or anguish. My awkward teenage body became dance and that dance was love.

  When I danced I was love. When I thought of Patrick I could fly.

  ‘Aaaand. stop!’ cried Claire, ‘I don’t know what or who you are thinking about, but keep it in mind for the next time because that was much better.’

  I got home at eight o’clock.

  Mum wasn’t in, but she had left my dinner in the fridge: pasta with grated cheese and tinned peas. I ought to call social services!

  York ran to greet me, wagging his stumpy tail. I picked him up, threw myself on the sofa and turned on the television, exhausted. My feet felt like they’d been put through a mincer. What an absurd life it was being a dancer! Maybe Mum was right, maybe I should just hang up my shoes, start studying economics and get a normal job. But I knew in my heart that would have been the surest route to unhappiness.

  ‘He who does not risk certainty for uncertainty to pursue a dream, dies slowly.’

  I remembered the verses I had copied into my diary and vowed that I would never give up until I had given it everything I had.

  I liked being home alone. Being by myself made me feel like an adult, and I could imagine what it would be like to go and live in London. Not that I could have afforded an apartment all to myself, but at least there would be no-one to tell what to do. But I knew that Mum would miss me like crazy.

  I loved my mum. She had always taken care of me but still treated me like an adult. We enjoyed each other’s company, laughed at the same stupid jokes, and in some ways she seemed more
like an older sister. But just recently she had seemed different. Or maybe it was me. She still had that same tousled blonde hair, contagious laugh, and the look of a ‘reformed hippy’ as she liked to call herself, but lately she had begun to take less care of her appearance, and had put on about a stone from eating crappy food.

  She had great taste when it came to interior design - an instinctive knack for what looked good, inherited from my grandmother, Olga, who had a high-end antique shop on Florence’s illustrious Via Maggio - but unfortunately this didn’t extend to her taste in men, and frequent disappointments in love had clearly started to get her down. She was forty-three and, having given up on Prince Charming, she had started going to evening classes to learn all those ‘odd jobs’ that tend to penalise women, like repairing the washing machine, changing a tyre or using an electric drill.

  She didn’t really have many people to turn to for help. She hadn’t spoken to my grandmother since I was little. Olga never forgiven her for marrying my father and moving to England, and after putting up with years of bitter criticism, my mother had finally snapped. Even now my parents were separated, her pride would never allow her to go to my grandmother for help, despite the fact she was rolling in money and would expect nothing in return except the opportunity to say ‘I told you so.’

  It drove me crazy to think that my grandmother might have helped me to realise my dream, and this was one of the things we argued about most. All she had to do was pick up the phone, and we could have paid to send my kids to ballet school, too. I was her favourite grandchild - well, only grandchild, actually - and in a way it was down to her that I started dancing in the first place, or at least that was what she liked to tell people.

  When I was four she brought me an old painting of a little girl sitting on a chair, wearing a white tutu and showed it to be excitedly, saying, ‘Look Mia, it’s you!’

  In truth, the only resemblance was the protruding ears, but I was transfixed. It was as though that child had looked out of the painting right into my soul and demanded that I become a dancer. It was my destiny, the one thing that made sense of my life, and nothing else would truly make me happy.