back and wonder why they didn’t do their weekend orienteering round London rather than the Hampshire countryside. That way Seb would have been savvy and street-wise, not like a lame duck ready and waiting for her fox-like claws to swipe him away. And now, of course, despite getting their precious youngest son back under Nettleton lock and key, the reason behind it had been her fault. Her inability to keep her job. Her fault he left his position at the elite Whitechapel Boys’ School. Nothing to do with him hating fucking Whitechapel, all the boys who just put their iPhone headphones in during lessons and said things like, ‘My father pays your salary, Sir. Which kind of means he owns you, doesn’t it? He paid for that suit you’re wearing.’
‘So what’s happening with this wedding, then? It’s very unusual, this limbo,’ Hilary sighed. ‘Postponed? Everyone’s been ringing me up, asking what it means. People like to be able to make plans, Anne. They have to book hotels. You must understand.’
Anna nodded. ‘We are sorting it, Hilary.’
‘Well that’s all very well for you to say, but it doesn’t look like you are. As far as I can see, you have a dress and a hotel that’s gone into receivership. And when people ask me what’s going on I simply don’t know. I know you’ve lost money, but what about what we gave you?’
Anna could feel herself getting hotter again. Wanting to shoo Jackie away so she didn’t witness her humiliation at the hands of Hilary and Roger.
When she’d told Seb how much she’d paid and, as a result, how much she’d lost, the main point he’d kept repeating was: just don’t let my mum and dad know.
‘It’s young people and the value of money, Hilly.’ Roger mused. ‘I just can’t believe you didn’t pay for it on a credit card. Everyone knows you pay on credit cards. Instant insurance.’
Anna swallowed. The credit cards she’d kept free to pay off the rest of it, month by month, to syphon off from the salary that she no longer had. ‘I’ve applied to the administrator, I’m doing everything I can.’
Roger snorted. ‘As if that will do anything at all. You won’t see a penny. You’re just a generation who thought they could have, have, have. I blame Labour. All you Guardian readers thinking that the world owes you another pair of shoes. What’s that woman in that ghastly programme?’
‘Sexy in the City,’ Hilary sighed.
‘Yes, just like that. Well, it’s come back to bite you.’ Roger tapped a cigarette out of a silver case that he always carried in the top pocket of his shirt, put it between his lips but didn’t light it, just sucked on the raw tobacco.
Jackie at least had the decency to absorb herself in her phone, Anna noticed, as Hilary leant a hand on the table and said, ‘You need to sort it, Anne. Can’t fail at your first job as a wife. That wouldn’t do at all.’
Tell them to stop, Seb, she thought as they carried on. Tell them to stop.
But he said nothing, just looked at his glass.
The conversation swirled on around her until she heard Jackie say, ‘I know, I’ve been trying to persuade her to put her phenomenal talent to use back here in Nettleton. Razzmatazz are heading towards a big Britain’s Got Talent audition.’
‘And Anna‒’ Hilary frowned, ‘You’re not doing it?’
‘I just‒’ Anna made a face, glanced at Jackie and thought, you sly cow.
‘You really should, Anna. I would have thought you’d jump at the chance of extra money. Seb, what do you think?’
Tell them that you think it’s a terrible idea. Tell them something because you know, more than anything, I don’t want to dance.
Seb licked his lower lip and said, ‘I think it’s Anna’s decision.’
Anna’s ballet teacher pulled her mother aside when she was eight and told her she had talent. Real, proper talent. Talent that she couldn’t really do justice with her own teaching. Anna’s mother had wanted to whisk her off to London there and then, but it had been her father who’d said no. Who’d said a child should enjoy their childhood. So the compromise had been Summer, Easter and Christmas holidays spent at The Yellow House, a precursor to The English Ballet Company School.
But the second her father had been caught in bed with Molly, the local auctioneer, he forfeited, in her mother’s opinion, any rights to Anna’s future. And, quick as a flash, they were speeding down the M3 to London, towards an audition for a full-time placement at The English Ballet Company School.
As the sun edged its way over the Hammersmith flyover, her mother had said, I should have done this years ago. In fact, no, I should have just gone back. I should have gone straight back to Sevilla. What is there keeping me here? There’s nothing, nothing for me here.
The feelings of the springs in the back of the car seat jutting into her back and whether she’d ever see their cat again were Anna’s predominant memories of the trip. Which distracted her from the fear of her audition and the possibility that she wasn’t quite good enough. That everyone else there had started when they were six, and weren’t chastised every lesson at summer school for their lack of flexibility. That if she did get in she’d suffer the humiliation of being in classes with younger kids, that she’d be described as a ‘late bloomer’.
You, her mother had looked over from the road, the sleeves of her black fur coat flopping down over her hands on the steering wheel, and said, You’re the only thing keeping me here, darling. You. You’re going to be a star. I can just see it. You’re going to be a star and we’ll wear Chanel and we’ll go back to that bloody village and we’ll show them that we’re better. We’re better, Anna.
Anna was lying in the bath when Seb popped his head round the door to say that he was going out with his brothers, then added an eye-roll, as if it was just something that had to be done.
Anna laughed involuntarily. She knew that meant he’d be forced to drink shots and go to some hideous club on an industrial estate out of town that they’d gone to when they were sixteen. An image of his siblings with their middle-aged One Direction haircuts made her wince. She knew they called her a stuck-up cow and blamed her for the loss of Seb’s apparent sense of fun.
As he leant over and kissed her on the top of the head, Anna found herself saying, before she could stop herself, ‘Why didn’t you stand up for me in the pub the other day?’
Seb turned and leant against the sink. ‘I don’t know what you mean?’
She looked at the bleeding cuts on the backs of her hand where she’d been lugging boxes around all day, her chipped nails with dirt underneath them, her bruised legs. ‘It just feels a bit like you’re punishing me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He shook his head. ‘Anna, I was unhappy in London. I’m not ashamed to admit it. We both made mistakes, we both lived outside our means, the wedding was just the icing on the cake. I promise, I’m not punishing you. By no means am I punishing you. I suppose I just want you to try.’ He paused, his fingers thrumming on the edge of the porcelain basin, ‘Also, I wonder if maybe you weren’t as happy as you think you were.’
Anna guffawed.
