turned back to the dancers, jigging on the spot to the catchy number. ‘I need to watch the rest of this rehearsal and get involved. You OK to look on?’
‘Yep.’ But Joe, to Georgine’s surprise, moved further into the room with her to continue the conversation. ‘Will they dance to recordings on the night?’ His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.
‘No, this is a rehearsal track. The show’s composed by Jasmine, an alumna who went on to university and won a scholarship that paid her final year’s tuition fees. She’s provided rehearsal recordings that her music student mates have played on. We have two bands of our own, but they’re still rehearsing separately at this stage.’
She half expected Joe to look bamboozled by so much detail, but his deep brown eyes were aglow with what looked like satisfaction. ‘Ace.’
Georgine could only agree.
Before them, Maddie was still mirroring the troupe’s routine, occasionally calling out the steps, gaze moving back and forth to monitor each student. Unable to contain her impatient feet, Georgine thrust her shiny Christmas show file at Joe and moved up behind Maddie, picking up the steps to dance along.
A couple of the students grinned her way and Maddie, seeing Georgine in the mirror, implemented an impressively smooth about face to dance opposite Georgine. Forgetting all her pressures and worries, Georgine laughed aloud as the troupe moved forwards and she had to reverse. It was a bit like being Ginger Rogers to a bunch of Fred Astaires … apart from wearing jeans and trainers instead of a swirly dress and heels.
At the close of the segment Maddie called, ‘Three, two, one, cha-cha-cha, and sliiiiiide, jazz hands. Fantastic everybody! Quick break. Grab a drink if you want one.’
Back down to earth now the dancing was done, Georgine caught her breath and approached her colleague. ‘Maddie, I’d better introduce you to the new guy, Joe. Oggie was one of his teachers, apparently, and he has technical experience.’
Maddie sipped from a bottle of water and winked. ‘The cutie rocking the designer specs? What’s he like?’
‘Nice to look at,’ Georgine admitted, ‘but flippin’ hard work. Hardly speaks.’
Yet when she took Maddie over to Joe and made the introductions, Joe flashed a smile, showing no signs of shyness. ‘I’ve really enjoyed watching,’ he told Maddie, and went on for a whole minute about how great the dancers had looked and what a shame it was that there weren’t more male dance students.
Then he turned back to Georgine and returned to using only necessary words. ‘Oggie’s texted. I need to go to Fern’s office and apply for my DBS online.’
‘OK, I’ll show you there.’ Georgine turned back to the dancers. ‘You’re doing brilliantly! I’ll be back shortly.’ Then Georgine delivered Joe to the capable hands of Fern, with her bouffant silver hair and air of unflappable calm.
She skipped back to dance rehearsal trying not to mind that Joe had turned to Fern’s computer with such an obvious expression of relief.
After filling in all the necessary boxes on-screen and watching Fern check his application before it went off, Joe thanked her and made for Oggie’s room. Pretending not to see the look of reproach in Fern’s eyes because he hadn’t cleared his destination with her, he shut the door.
He flopped into the same brown chair he’d occupied earlier, threw off his glasses and covered his eyes.
Oggie laughed at his theatrics. ‘What?’
Joe didn’t move. Mortification was easier to deal with from behind eyelids. ‘Georgine France. I was at school with her. Here, not in Surrey. I’m behaving like a teenage doofus around her.’
Oggie stopped laughing. ‘Oh! Will it be a problem?’
Joe pressed his palms harder against his face, the short, freshly cut ends of his hair and his close-shaved cheeks feeling weird to his touch. Since he’d gone clean-cut he felt a stranger to himself. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did she recognise you?’
‘No sign of it. Everyone changes a lot between fourteen and thirty-four. When I knew her I was blond and scrawny and looked as if I lived in a skip.’
Oggie’s voice dropped sympathetically. ‘You’re not that person now. Did you know her well?’
Slowly, Joe slid his hands down from his eyes, blinking at the raw winter light streaming through the window. ‘Reasonably.’ Then, because he’d never wanted to bullshit Oggie, corrected himself. ‘We were friends from age eleven to fourteen.’ He sucked in a huge calming breath. ‘I had the most gigantic, painful crush on her. She was one of the popular girls. Her dad had money and she went on holidays abroad and had dancing and singing lessons after school. The princess to my pauper.’
‘A monied princess?’ Oggie looked slightly surprised.
‘Compared to me. She came to Bettsbrough Comp on the bus from Middledip or in a posh car. I lived on the crappiest estate in Bettsbrough with a couple of alcoholics masquerading as parents. The Shetland estate was known as “Shitland” back then and I was part of the infamous Shitland gang, but she was always nice to me.’ He swallowed. ‘I recognised her instantly. Not even Georgine’s sister had the same unusual colouring.’ Her hair was what she’d used to tell him was ‘cool strawberry blonde’, her skin golden and spangled with faint freckles like a blonde photographed through the palest sepia filter. Except for her eyes. Not green, nor grey or blue, but a mix of the three, like a winter sea.
He’d had to paint her portrait once in art class and the teacher had said, ‘Good effort!’ Some of his moron mates from the Shitland gang had jeered and so he’d painted the ends of her hair like worms, because clowning around was a good way to distract them from how he’d felt about Georgine. He was the fool, the kid who never had the right shoes or uniform or PE kit. The one whose stepdad was known throughout the town by just his surname, Garrit, and ridiculed, along with Joe’s mum, for being drunk on cheap lager almost every day.
Garrit hadn’t been funny to live with.
In fact, not much about Joe’s life had been funny. If he hadn’t developed strategies to make people laugh with him instead of at him he would have punched their stupid heads in for not using their stupid eyes to see how stupidly unfunny it was to be him.
He rose on what felt like hollow legs to get a drink from the small cooler in the corner. ‘She doesn’t know me as Joe Blackthorn, or by my full first names, John Joseph.’ He kept his back to his friend as he sipped from the flimsy disposable cup. ‘You probably remember me telling you I had my stepdad’s surname from the age of two or three. Then all the Shitland gang got nicknames and mine was “Rich” because I wasn’t. Everybody called me Rich Garrit.’
He dropped back into his chair and sent Oggie a rueful smile. ‘Sorry to be a diva. It was a shock to see Georgine and after the crap that’s happened with the band lately …’
Oggie nodded, not rushing in with platitudes or questions, but letting Joe work through things in
