Page 9 of Teacakes & Tangos
I sighed. ‘Sadly not. But I’d love to. I will one day.’
Maddy nodded. ‘How do you feel knowing your life-long dream of opening a dance centre is about to come true?’
I smiled, thinking about my baby which I’d named ‘Magic of Dance’. ‘Thrilled and excited, but pooping my pants at the same time?’
She grinned. ‘Fair enough.’
Magic of Dance – funded by my lovely great-aunt Freda, who’d danced on stages in New York in her younger day – was due to launch in less than two weeks, at which point hopefully all our hard work would pay off.
My stress levels had been rising steadily over the past month, to the point where lately, even my sleep was being affected. I’d been having horribly vivid dreams in which not a single person turned up on opening day and I ended up trying to drag people in off the streets.
In one particularly disturbing nightmare, a coupledidturn up – but they were buff naked and dancing an enthusiastic Charleston in Studio One with bits flying everywhere.
My boyfriend Rory had laughed when I’d told him about these wild nightmares, and I’d shrugged and smiled because as he said, they were only dreams, after all. Not a sinister warning of doom. But I couldn’t find it quite so funny. Opening Magicof Dance meant so much to me. After all that planning, I was desperate for it to be a success.
I’d long wanted to open a place where people could go to release their stress, lose their inhibitions in movement and build their self-confidence. I’d struggled with shyness when I was little – especially after Mum died when I was four – and the thing that had helped me through those dark days had been dancing.
Discovering dance had been a revelation and my whole life after that seemed to have been leading up to this moment right here. The dance studio, housed in a beautiful converted barn we were renting at nearby Brambleberry Manor, was part of a little retail community that included a variety of artisan craft shops and a café, and which was nestled in a leafy little corner of the estate.
Now, I glanced over as a familiar car drew into the Little Duck Pond Café car park and Rory got out. As I watched, he leaned back inside and I realised my sister, Lois, was his passenger. He seemed to be trying to coax her to come out.
My heart sank. Lois was in a bad way.
Her boyfriend, Mark, had ended their relationship a couple of months ago, informing her that she was impossible to be with and he’d had enough of her demands and tantrums to last him a lifetime, which I’d thought really harsh.
Naturally, I’d been on Lois’s side when she’d told me – or ratherscreechedat me – in floods of indignant tears. (‘How darehefinish withme!’)
Secretly, though, I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for calm, endlessly patient Mark.
I’d been coping with Lois’s drama queen behaviour myself ever since we first met when my dad got together with her mum. But I’d grown to love my stepsister and after quite a few bumps in the road, we now had a great relationship.
Lois was an extrovert – the life and soul of every party – and the total opposite of me, really. She was supportive and fiercely loyal towards the people she cared about. But she could be quite self-centred at times. And if something had upset her, she wasexhausting!
Rory emerged again, smiling across at Maddy and me, and my heart gave a little skip, the way it always did when he came into view. Even now, more than two years since we got together, I still couldn’t quite believe that this gorgeous man had fallen in love with me.
I’d had a mad, unrequited school crush on dark-haired, blue-eyed Rory Angel for a very long time and then we’d bumped into each other years later, and I’d really thought it might be our time – that we might finally, against all the odds, get together. But then he’d met Lois and had fallen for her instead.
I obviously couldn’t show how devastated I was, so I’d plastered on smiles until my cheeks ached, and I’d bounced around looking so delighted for the happy couple, I’d felt constantly exhausted.
That had been a really dark time for me.
But somehow things had worked out for Rory and me, and Lois had fallen for Mark.
I suspected Lois was still madly in love with Mark – despite the fact that she was now calling him all the horrible names under the sun and stating loudly to anyone interested that she couldn’t imagine what she’d ever seen in him in the first place.
It was a defence mechanism, of course.
Lois could be her own worst enemy at times...
Now, I bent to the passenger seat and motioned for her to wind down her window. With an obstinate twist of her lips, she opened the door a crack but remained staring glumly ahead.
‘Would you like to join us?’ I asked her. ‘The cake and coffee is on me.’
‘Don’t feel like it,’ she snapped, not even bothering to turn her head. ‘I’d just have to smile and talk to everyone and I’m not in the mood.’
‘Lois’s car wouldn’t start so I’m taking her shopping,’ explained Rory, walking round to join me.
I stifled a sigh. Lois hadn’t been in the mood for anything since she split with Mark. I totally sympathised with how she must be feeling – I’d be devastated if I lost Rory – but two months had passed and she didn’t seem to be even trying to get over the break-up. In fact, it sometimes seemed like she was quite enjoying playing the hard-done-by victim and being abrasive and cutting towards people who were just trying to help.
