Page 77 of A Class Act

‘I’m sure you’ve done much worse at some point in your life,’ I snapped. ‘Justring the bell.’ I pushed Mason towards it, not caring that he was my boss and that I was getting him involved in our family problems.

Mason gave the bell a long hard ring and, after a few moments, the entryphone crackled into life.

‘Pizza?’ a disembodied male voice asked.

‘Yep,’ Mason immediately replied. ‘Come and get it while it’s hot.’

‘Come and get it while it’s hot?’I whispered, pulling a face in his direction.

‘Well, better than “I’m arresting you for?—”’

‘Shhhhh!’ I hissed.

The apartment door opened and the man I’d not seen for sixteen years or so stood there, frowning, seemingly unable to take in the one woman and one man on his doorstep who obviously weren’t pizza delivery boys from Deliveroo.

‘Hello, Peter.’

‘Sorry, do I know you…?’

Ignoring him, I pushed my way past him, racing up the stairs, shouting Sorrel’s name as I went, Mason and then Peter following in my wake.

‘Excuseme,’ Peter snapped, overtaking Mason at the top of the stairs and grabbing at my arm. ‘Who the fuck d’you think you are, breaking into my home like this…?’ He trailed off as the entryphone sounded once more and he appeared unable to make any decision about what to do next so instead stood dithering.

‘That’ll be your pizza you were obviously expecting,’ Mason said, calmly. ‘I’ll go and get it for you. I assume you’ve paid for it?’ He headed back down the stairs, accepted the pizza and started his ascent once more. And then I ran, flinging back doors on each room in turn, looking for Sorrel. The apartment was large, beautifully and artistically decorated and lit, myriad framed photographs of Peter dancing hanging on every wall. I went through a sitting room, a kitchen and utility and, with pounding heart, terrified of what I was going to find, a large bedroom with an enormous king-sized, black satin-covered bed.

Sorrel was in none of these – I even looked in the wardrobe and under the bed – and I turned to the one remaining room, opened the door and went in.

I couldn’t quite work out what I was seeing to begin with: the woman sitting upright at a dressing-table mirror wasn’t Sorrel. In her place was a heavily made-up female with a blonde chignon dressed in a plunging white dress emphasising a quiteremarkable pushed-up bosom sporting strands of diamonds. Her lips were painted in the brightest of red but as the woman glared at my reflection, I saw that her face appeared strangely lopsided, one dark brown eye completely made up and including a ridiculously feathery false eyelash, while the other was completely natural.

‘“I am my own woman,”’ the woman in the mirror said solemnly.

‘Sorry?’ I stared. ‘Sorrel?’

‘“My biggest fear in life is to be forgotten,”’ she went on, holding my eye and then, pulling off the blonde chignon to reveal her own beautiful dark wavy hair, added, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Robyn, what areyoudoing here?’

‘“Suffer little children and come unto me,”’ I snapped furiously, grabbing at her arm. ‘Yes, Sorrel,Iknow my Eva Peron quotes as well as you appear to do. Now, get that dress off, get your jeans on and get out of here with me. This minute.’

‘No way,’ Sorrel snapped. ‘The man out there isPeter Collinson, for heaven’s sake, and he’s going to help me get into the West End. He’s famous.’

‘Sorrel.’ I sighed wearily. ‘The man out there… I know who he is. You’re fifteen, without any training…’

‘You know him? Well, you know how famous he is, then? You’re just jealous because your dance career is over,’ Sorrel sneered. ‘And without any training? Robyn, I’ve been going to dancing class since I was eight. You know that. Just like you did.’

‘But you’ve not been going anywhere for over a year, have you?’

‘They’d taught me all I know; I was fed up with them all,’ she said sulkily.

‘You have to have the basics, Sorrel.’

‘I know the basics,’ she almost shouted. ‘I’ve been doing the basics for seven years. I needed to move on, to bigger and betterthings, but Mum couldn’t afford for me to go anywhere else. Jayden said he’d look into it, but he never did.’

‘Stop trying to run before you can walk.’

‘I want to go to the Susan Yates Theatre School in London. Jayden said he’d look into it for me. But of course, again, he never did.’

‘Oh, Sorrel, you know what Jayden’s like.’

‘I donow. Mum tried to help but then she got poorly again.’

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