Page 60 of Teacakes & Tangos
My mood lifted a little when I arrived at Magic of Dance.
At once, I was plucked out of my troubles and dropped into the lovely, friendly atmosphere of the Little Duckling Café, and Maddy – who’d opened up that morning – chatting away about the young girl Clara had employed to be my assistant. She’d be starting work the next day, apparently.
‘She’s called Esmerelda, would you believe? Esmerelda Brown. But she prefers the name Merry.’
‘Merry’s a lovely name.’
Maddy grinned. ‘I thinkI’dbe changing my name, too, if my dear parents haddaredto thrust a label like that on poor unsuspecting baby me! Esmerelda.’ She shook her head in wonder. ‘Phew! It doesn’t bear thinking about. I bet she was bullied at school.’
I nodded. ‘My friend Tammy was picked on at school for having blazing red hair. Kids can be so cruel.’
‘Clara says Merry’s quite shy but she’s hoping this job will bring her out of herself... give her some confidence.’ She smiled. ‘I have a feeling Clara was thinking about herself at Merry’s age when she hired her.’
‘Really?’ I looked at Maddy, intrigued.
She nodded. ‘Clara used to be painfully shy herself. She always says that walking into a dance studio for the first time revealed a whole new world of possibility to her. Dancing gave her the confidence she’d been lacking and everything changed for her after that.’
I smiled. ‘I can really see how that would happen. Dancing can be such great therapy.’
‘And great exercise as well. Have you tried Jaz’s Zumba classes yet?’
‘No. But they’re definitely on my list.’
Chatting to Maddy eased me into the day, and as I got to grips with the workings of the café in my little office next to the kitchen, I had a feeling I was going to really enjoy working there.
Hopefully, that was another area of my life that had now taken a turn for the better – after Dad emerging from his coma.
Now, I just had to work out what was true and what wasn’t about the Xander situation...
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Three days and nights had passed since my clash with Xander over the photograph in the newspaper. And I still hadn’t heard from him.
I’d texted him to suggest we should meet and talk about it. But he hadn’t replied. He obviously didn’t want to see me. So when Lyndsay had called the next day to say she was thinking of going to the police station when she finished work, I’d just said it was probably the right thing to do.
‘You don’t need to come with me,’ she said. ‘I know you feel weird about it. Have you heard from him?’
So I told her about showing him the photo in the newspaper at the station and how his reaction had been so strange. ‘He was denying it. But he couldn’t look me in the eye.’
‘Guilty?’ she murmured, sounding sad.
‘Maybe.’
There was a part of me that had expected to get the cold shoulder from Xander... the part of me that felt guilty because maybe I should have believed Xander without question when he’d denied being the man in the photo.
But on the other hand, I knew my reaction to the photo had been logical and sensible. I’d just started to get to know Xander. I knew very little about his past and I still hadn’t even seen where he lived.
I was wondering now whether he’d been deliberately putting off taking me to his flat for some reason, possibly because he had something to hide – using the excuse that his hob wasn’t working or that my place was nearer.
But what he could be hiding, I had no idea...
*****
I’d been hot all day in the café, operating the steamy coffee machine, so when I finished work, I decided I couldn’t bear to stew inside on a stiflingly warm summer’s night.
Janet was going to visit Dad in hospital that evening, and I’d told him I would see him the following day. So if I went straight home from Magic of Dance, all I’d be doing would be trying to watch TV but driving myself crazy thinking about Xander.
I needed to get out . . . get some fresh air . . .
