After class that day Allegra returned home. No one had said anything, but she’d known they’d all read every word of that review. It had been there in the surreptitious glances when they’d thought she wasn’t looking. It had been there in the barely contained smirks behind her back. She hadn’t even acknowledged the few sympathetic looks that some of the girls had tried to send her. Those had been the worst.
She’d been so much younger than everyone else when she’d joined the company, still a child almost. If the age difference hadn’t driven a wedge between her and her contemporaries, her meteoric rise through the ranks in the following couple of years certainly had. Now she had colleagues and dancing partners, but she didn’t really have any friends.
All she had was her father.
That was why she headed straight to his study after she’d let herself in. Even though they hadn’t argued, there’d been such a horrible atmosphere between them. She’d apologise. She’d make it right again. She’d swallow the rising tide of suffocation and live with it a little longer. Because she understood he didn’t mean it really. And he did try.
She pushed open the heavy wooden door and looked around. The room was empty. At least, she thought it was. She stepped inside to get a better look.
‘Daddy?’
Where was he? She wandered round to the other side of the large cherrywood desk with the green leather top, trailing her fingers along the edge as she did so. One of these days her father would have to give in and learn to use a computer, but for now he was steadfastly holding out. There was no scribbled note, no scrap of paper to hint at where he’d gone or when he might be back. She sighed.
Oh, well. She’d just have to find him later. She had a rehearsal in an hour and it had been tight fitting in a trip back home as it was.
She had reached the other side of the desk again when the phone rang. By the time she reached the door the answerphone kicked in and a male voice filled the empty room.
‘Hi. This is Simon Tatler again. I was wondering if you’d had a chance to think over the offer for Miss Martin to appear on Fearless Finn. As you know, the schedule is pretty tight, so could you possibly get back to me today?'
He added his number and email address and rang off.
Allegra stood, half in, half out of her father’s study with her mouth open.
An invitation to appear on Fearless Finn! A warm feeling surged up from her toes and burst up through her, leaving a smile on her lips. She’d get to meet him? Actually stand face to face with him? Her heart began to pound at the thought.
And then her excitement began to evaporate. This Simon had phoned before? Why was this the first she’d heard of it?
Her father found her moments later in the doorway, frowning. She jumped when he lightly touched her on the shoulder.
‘Are you okay, Allegra?’
On autopilot, Allegra nodded, but then she realised what she was doing. She turned to face him.
‘What was that message about? The one about Fearless Finn?’
Her father looked puzzled. ‘Who?’ ‘The TV show …’
He blinked and shook his head faintly. ‘Nothing, really. They were looking for a celebrity guest. I tried to tell the man you couldn’t do it, but he insisted I think about it.'
‘You think about it?’
Her father nodded. ‘Yes.’
Allegra’s eyebrows pinched together. ‘Don’t you mean, he suggested I think about it?'
He shrugged and walked past her into the study. ‘It hardly warrants an argument over semantics, Allegra. You simply can’t do it. They wanted you to fly out to some godforsaken place tomorrow and stay there for seven nights. I don’t know what the man was thinking even approaching us about it—’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me about this?’
Her father smiled at her. That same soft smile he’d given her when she’d been a little girl and had tried to use a complicated word and had got it wrong.
‘I didn’t see the need.’ He walked round to the other side of the desk and rifled through some papers, effectively dismissing her. ‘As I said, it was impossible.'
‘I know it’s impossible!’ She paused and cleared her throat, got control of herself. ‘But that’s not the point,’ she said evenly. ‘It’s my career. It was my decision. You should at least have mentioned it to me.'
Her father looked up, a wad of papers clutched in his hand, looking perplexed.
He just didn’t get it, did he? It didn’t matter what she said, or what she did; he would never get it.
To him, she was just another thing to be conducted. He waved his baton and she jumped. He waved it again and she stayed silent. And she’d let him. All these years she’d let him, because she’d seen what he’d become after his wife had died, how he’d almost given up on everything. And she’d seen his renaissance when she’d started to excel at her mother’s art. How could she snatch that back from him and still live with herself?
She continued to stare at her father, who had paused rifling through the papers on his desk and was looking at her with raised eyebrows.
There was so much she wanted to say to him.
Let me live, Daddy. Let me breathe …
If only he would give her the same range he gave his musicians. At least they got to change tempo and mood. When he conducted them he made sure he breathed life into the music. He made sure it had light and shade, joy and despair, stillness and dynamism.
She had none of that freedom. She was always supposed to be the perfect little ballerina. Focused. Dedicated. Obedient. And, if her life had a score, no one would want to listen to it because it would be plodding and quiet and controlled. It would be dull.
‘You should have told me, Daddy,’ she said quietly, begging him to see past the even tone, the reasonable words. Begging him to look deep inside her and see what was longing to burst out.
He shook his head and shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said dryly. ‘I promise I’ll tell you about the next ridiculous offer that comes along. Happy now?'
No, not really. Because this was just a symptom, wasn’t it?
He shook his head again. ‘Sometimes I just don’t understand you, Allegra. You have the life a thousand other dancers would kill for. The life your mother dreamed about, would have given anything to continue, and yet still it’s not enough for you. Sometimes I think I’ve spoiled you, and that you’ve grown up a little bit selfish.’
Allegra blinked at him, stunned.
Selfish? When all she’d ever done was try to please everyone else, try to ease their sadness by showing them her mother had left a little bit of herself behind in her child?
Well,
