the air, looking as though he was about to launch into the song, only to elbow a passing waiter, narrowly avoiding knocking the wine tray from his hands while upending his own wine glass all down his front in the process. Amy gasped.
‘Oh, I am – what do you call it? – a klutz,’ he muttered, shaking wine droplets from his trouser leg.
‘Let me help,’ Amy flustered, grabbing a bunch of paper napkins from a nearby tray and dabbing furiously at Sergei. ‘Lucky it wasn’t red!’
‘Thank you, really, it’s fine, there’s no need …’
‘No, really, I’ll fix you in no time. Here, hold still.’
And he did. He stood stock-still, if a little embarrassedly, as she rubbed furiously at his sleeve, the front of his shirt, even his trouser leg, before the wine had a chance to sink in. She could feel his eyes on the top of her head, and given that she was in the process of rubbing his leg, she realised she had to find something else to say. Something normal.
Like, now.
‘Actually, that’s a Coldplay song title, did you know that?’ she chirped, from somewhere around his knee level.
‘What, “Hold Still”?’
‘No! “Fix You” – have you heard it?’
‘I’m afraid my pop music tastes date back to prehistoric times, Amy.’
‘Oh? For example?’ She straightened up and looked at him with interest.
‘Kraftwerk? OMD? Erasure?’
Amy raised an eyebrow. He was grinning sheepishly. ‘I’m not particularly proud of my electro-past,’ he whispered, ‘but that’s what we all listened to in Russia.’
‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Sergei, but there must be organisations that can offer help …’
Sergei hooted with laughter. ‘That’s just the sort of comment your mother would make!’
Amy looked up sharply. This was it. This was what she had been waiting for. Sergei was her link to the past – and a side of her mother she was hungry to know about. Her mother – Hannah Powell – the most perfect Odette in Swan Lake that this country had ever produced, or so the reviews of the time had exuberantly claimed.
‘Do you know, once in my dancing days when I was about to go on stage, I spilled orange juice over my costume. Your mother did exactly as you have done tonight – she was always looking after me, like a mother hen.’
‘I can imagine,’ Amy said, clutching a clump of damp napkins in her hand, with nowhere to put them. ‘She mothered everyone.’ Glancing round the room, she couldn’t spot a single woman who looked like she’d allow herself to get into this sort of predicament. They probably all could have summoned up a member of staff to help out with a click of their perfectly manicured fingers.
‘I once dyed my hair orange to try and look like Bowie in his Aladdin Sane period, you know.’ Sergei was like that. He could put a coiled spring at ease.
‘Really?’ Amy laughed, relieved.
Sergei nodded. ‘I think that was just before I had it cut very short – it was just before my Yellow Magic Orchestra fixation. Oh, and there was the Sparks weekend …’
As Sergei launched into a somewhat baffling reverie about his seventies and eighties musical journey, Amy tried, she really, really tried, to keep up with his encyclopaedic knowledge of synthesiser pop, but within minutes she felt herself drifting off into another place – a fantasy world, or a reality check, she couldn’t decide which …
Sergei Mishkov. What on earth am I doing here yet again? And yet, how could I have stayed away?
It’s because of Mum, that’s why. This place, this is Mum’s world, and Sergei was Mum’s friend from another time – pre-me, pre-Dad, pre-retiring from ballet to bring me up … I owe Mum this, to live in her world now and again, to try and feel what she felt, with people she cared about. That way I guess she can live on in me as a whole person, rather than just as my mum …
‘Ah, Ultravox, now that was a conundrum. Did they truly fit the genre … ?’ Sergei was in full flow, waving his arms to emphasise the finer points of the Vienna album …
And they’re not half bad, really, these evenings, even though I feel like a kid in a crowd of adults. Sergei’s great, the dancing’s great, the music’s a bit iffy sometimes but I’m working on it. I just wish … oh, I wish I’d told Justin from the start. Why the heck didn’t I?
She knew the answer perfectly well. When Justin had first met Sergei – what, a year ago? – he’d made his feelings perfectly clear. He didn’t like him, didn’t trust him.
‘Amy? The bells?’ Sergei had stooped to look directly at her.
‘Pardon?’
‘I think I lost you somewhere between The Human League and Fad Gadget, did I not? I apologise.’
‘Oh! I’m sorry!’ The theatre bells rang again.
‘No need to be sorry!’ He waved his arms energetically. ‘But we must go back in: time for the second act!’
Monday morning, over a week later, and Amy rolled over in the otherwise empty bed, pushed the duvet covers away and forced herself to get up and pad over to the bathroom.
I am never going to go to the Isle of Wight Festival ever again as long as I live. I am never going out with Debbie and Jesminder ever again as long as I live.
Amy had just caught sight of her bleary, hungover face in her bathroom mirror.
Well, not until next year, anyway.
She shook her head painfully at the sorry reflection, and forced a dry-lipped smile. Thank goodness Justin had left yesterday to catch up with one of his bands in Manchester. Besides, he’d been a bit moody and preoccupied for most of the past week – the break from routine was bound to do him good. Now, all she had to do was drink lots of water, swallow some aspirin and get ready for work.
It was scorching outside, so after choosing the H&M wrap dress in shades of turquoise and lime green that looked, from a decent distance, not unlike a Pucci original – a sure-fire hangover-buster if ever there was one – Amy walked slowly and carefully to her shoe closet to pull out the Christian Louboutin wedges. They’d be perfect.
Thank goodness for my impeccable filing system, she thought to herself, pinpointing the Louboutin box immediately, thanks to the jazzy Polaroid on the outside.
But the box was empty.
Amy frowned. Had she kicked them under the bed one drunken evening? No, Amy was never, ever untidy where her shoes were concerned. Then, she remembered: perhaps Phyllis borrowed them after all. Still,
