time. This was just another one, for all his anguish. She just had to keep calm and stay discouraging but kind. He would stop in a minute. And then they could be friends again.
Who was she kidding? They could never be friends again. Not when he had let her see his feelings naked like this. Lisa leaned away from him, wincing.
Alec didn’t notice that she was discouraging him. Intent on his own feelings, he was oblivious of hers. He began to tug at the fabric of her shirt. Whether to get it off or to pull her down onto the floor, was not clear. He kept muttering, like a mantra, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you…’
Lisa’s heart leaped in primitive disgust. She tore herself away.
‘Love,’ she spat.
That was when Alec looked up at her at last. There was a gleam of anger in his eyes, along with the tears. He came lithely to his feet and took hold of her. His lips were clumsy, suffocating, desperate.
Lisa closed her eyes. She was torn between pity and simple horror. She tried to push him away but he was too intent to pay any attention to her resistance. She wasn’t even sure he noticed. It was faintly ludicrous, this pretend battle with a man she had thought of as a friend for more than three years. She jerked out of his hold.
‘But I love you,’ he repeated insistently, as indignant as if she had shot him.
He had stirred up old memories he had no idea of, and, between them, Alec and the memories had shaken Lisa to her core. They left her too upset to remember to be kind.
‘Love. Huh! Don’t insult my intelligence,’ she said, retreating behind the table. ‘You want to get into my bed and you think saying you love me will do it. Well, I’ve got news for you. That doesn’t work with me. Not any more.’
‘Lisa—’ He was full of despair. And the beginnings of anger. He advanced on her with unmistakable purpose.
Lisa stopped even trying to spare his feelings. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she cried.
She ran.
The next morning she got out of the house before anyone else was up. She toyed with the idea of going to her mother’s. And rapidly discarded it. Joanne would say that she had enough problems dealing with Kit. Lisa was supposed to be the strong one, the one who found her own solutions.
In the end she went to the dance studio in Ladbroke Grove. There was an early class in jazz dance. Lisa flung herself into it.
With such effect, indeed, that as they left the studio at the end one of the other dancers said to her, ‘And who were you trying to kill?’
‘What?’ Lisa looked round. ‘Oh, hi, Tatiana. I didn’t know you did jazz dance.’
Tatiana Lepatkina must be over seventy years old, but she still taught a ballet class at the centre. She and Lisa had bumped into each other first at an enthusiastic salsa session over a year ago. Now they strolled along to the changing room together.
‘Dance!’ sniffed Tatiana. ‘What you were doing wasn’t dance. That was pure combat training.’
For the first time since Alec’s pounce, Lisa laughed.
Tatiana grinned. She was small and astringent. She was also something of a guru to the younger studio members, though no one actually knew how old she was. She had muscles like an athlete’s and wore full dramatic make-up at all times. Even after she had showered it remained untouched.
Now they both stripped off and went into shower cubicles.
‘I wouldn’t have wanted to come within catching distance of your elbows. Or your feet, for that matter.’
She went silent for several minutes under the whooshing of water. When she emerged, wrapped in a huge white towel, Lisa was already dressed and combing her damp hair in the mirror. Tatiana put her head on one side, eyes bright with inquisitiveness.
‘You are so lucky, with hair like that. Pure gold and natural too.’ She added without a break, ‘Who were you kicking this morning?’
Lisa raised an eyebrow at her reflection. ‘Was it that obvious?’
Tatiana nodded. ‘A man, I suppose?’
‘Or two,’ said Lisa, only half joking.
‘Sounds complicated,’ said Tatiana, pleased. ‘Let’s have something decaffeinated and you can tell me all about it.’
Rather to her surprise, Lisa found herself doing exactly that. When she had finished, Tatiana looked at her in silence for a moment, narrow-eyed.
‘And you’re sure you gave this man no encouragement?’
‘Alec?’ Lisa sighed. ‘I’ve never thought so. We all had this agreement right from the start—no inter-house affairs. Everyone stuck to it.’
There was an ironic pause. After a moment Lisa flung up her hands in a token of surrender.
‘OK. OK. I thought everyone had stuck to it.’
‘You can’t make rules about feelings,’ Tatiana said largely. ‘Never works.’
Lisa looked mulish.
‘Believe me,’ Tatiana insisted. ‘When I was still dancing, we used to be on tour for months at a time. You always start off saying no attachments. But human nature wins every time.’
Lisa said something very rude about human nature.
‘No point in fighting it, though,’ Tatiana pointed out practically. ‘So—what are you going to do?’
Lisa sighed. ‘Look for somewhere else to live. Alec will never forgive me, and I—well, frankly I’m not too proud of the way I handled it. I got in a panic, I suppose. All that passion.’ And she pulled a face.
Tatiana, who was rather in favour of passion, was intrigued. ‘Attracted in spite of yourself?’
Lisa was startled. ‘Not a chance. Men are such idiots.’
‘Oh.’
‘I had my drama when I was eighteen,’ said Lisa grandly. ‘I got over it and grew up. Why can’t they?’
Entertained, Tatiana murmured something about human nature again. Lisa frowned.
‘Well, it’s a terrible bore. Now I’ll have to go house-hunting and I haven’t got the time. What’s more, my boss will start nagging me about getting what he calls a suitable address, and I almost certainly won’t have the money for that without mortgaging my underwear. And anyway, I just hate doing what my boss tells me.’
‘Ah.’
Tatiana was not only a teacher of ballet, she was a choreographer. Listening to Lisa, she had begun to perceive the story of a ballet. Now here was the dramatic pas de deux: the powerful man, the woman who fights him because she cannot admit the attraction between them.
‘What’s wrong with your boss?’ she said carefully.
Lisa
