Page 22 of The Second Ending
Christmas was horrible.Ashleigh had expected nothing else. She’d much rather be at home. Or, better, sitting in a creaky, leaky apartment with Marcus, eating macaroni and cheese from a box with him, than being here with her family, facing this fancy dinner that turned to sawdust under the insipid conversation that filled the air around her. Everything Penelope did was wonderful. Everything she did was suspect and inadequate. The same old song, year after year.
Do it for the kids, she reminded herself, until at last the ordeal was over.
The New Year’s Eve party wasn’t much better.
As so often happened, her mother insisted she come early to help before the guests arrived. When Ashleigh explained this to Sebastian, he immediately announced that he would join her to offer his help as well. It should have been a lovely gesture, but it rubbed her the wrong way, although she couldn’t say why. Was he trying too hard? It wasn’t like they were a couple, forhim to want to ingratiate himself with her family. Still, he was persistent and she couldn’t think of a reason to refuse him.
He picked her up early in the day, and they both entered the Lynches’ grand Rosedale house with their evening wear in garment bags. Ashleigh wore jeans and an old t-shirt for now; Sebastian was in wool trousers and an Oxford cloth shirt. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting to be lugging furniture or scrubbing pots.
The tasks her mother had in store were the usual meaningless and menial tasks reserved to keep her running around, while being quite useless. Check on the caterers, find out if the carpet was vacuumed, make sure the decorations are all in place and that no lights are out. The only purpose they had was to cement her subservience to her mother, and the only reason she went along with it was to ensure access to her father’s rich friends, who funded her music project.
Sebastian hovered around like a spare tire, saying all the right things to her parents and fawning over them, but being even less useful than she was. But, by the satisfied look on her father’s face, having a young man grovelling at his feet was the very best thing in the world. At least, this might keep him sufficiently pleased with himself not to spend too much time carping at her own lack of distinction.
In due time, they separated to replace their everyday clothes with suitable evening ware for the party. Ashleigh slipped into the long dark blue gown her mother had selected. It was too flashy for her personal tastes, with the ornate embroidery on the bodice and at the hem, but at least it had a full skirt and wasn’t bright orange or something. Sebastian emerged from the room he’d been offered, wearing a tuxedo like he was born to it. He wasn’t anything like the image of a functionary from the city’s zoning department. He’d fit into her parents’ set a bit too well; better than Ashleigh herself!
And, indeed, it seemed that Sebastian had established himself as her father’s newest protégé. He was at her father’s side, offering to help with this and that. Instead of drifting along by her side all evening, as she had imagined, Sebastian worked the room, meeting all her father’s cronies and oozing his considerable charm out of every pore.
She was both relieved and put out. Part of her had been looking forward to the expressions of impressed surprise on all those faces when she introduced them to this handsome, charismatic man who danced attention on her. Let them think what they wanted, she was tired of the pitying glances of ‘Poor Ashleigh, still single.’
But all that charm was tiring. Sebastian was wonderful company for an hour or so. His stories were entertaining and his smile heart-stopping, but the more she grew to know him, the more he seemed like an actor playing himself. She wouldn’t have minded a bit of his time, waltzing her around the room or smiling adoringly at her while he brushed off other women, but being that much the centre of attention all evening was, frankly, not at all what she enjoyed.
It was only in the few minutes before the strike of midnight that he finally glided through the room to find her.
“So sorry, Ashleigh.” He stood close to her, indicative of an intimacy she wasn’t sure she felt. “I’ve neglected you. Your father insisted on introducing me around, and how could I say no? He’s a very pleasant man. I’ve really enjoyed talking to him.”
Her father? A pleasant man? Was there a lookalike in the room?
“But I’m here now,” Sebastian continued. “Let’s dance. We’ve got a few minutes before midnight, and I’d love to have you to myself for a bit. I’m not so great with this stuff, but I can probably manage… what is this? A foxtrot? Slow, slow, fast-fast to the side, right? I can do that.”
He led her to the centre of the large room, where some people were dancing to some old standards that played over a hidden sound system. Some were just shuffling to the music, but a few couples knew how to dance quite well. Ashleigh had taken the requisite lessons in her youth—every society debutante needs to know basic ballroom—and she’d taken some lessons as part of her music training, for those times when movement was as important as the melody on stage. Sebastian, despite his self-deprecating apologies, was more than capable of managing on the dance floor, and he guided her around the compact space with skill and elegance.
A Fine Romance… she hummed the melody to herself as she allowed ages-old muscle memory to take over. This odd relationship she had with Sebastian was exactly that. He went through the motions, but there was nothing behind it. As cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes, so the song said. He smiled and charmed and buttered everyone up, but he didn’t touch her heart at all.
Not like Marcus, who was so deeply embedded in her heart, he’d never leave. She chided herself for thinking of one man while dancing with another, but there was no hope for it. Still… What, exactly, was going on between Marcus and herself? They were former partners who no longer turned to ice at the sight of each other. They were tentatively feeling out a new friendship. But there’d been no words of romance, fine or otherwise, no intimations of renewed intimacy.
So why did she feel guilty, swinging around the room with Sebastian, as he flashed those white teeth and crinkled his gorgeous eyes at everyone they brushed past?
The music stopped, the tick-tock of a clock rang through the room, and the countdown to midnight began. …Three… two… one! Calls of “Happy New Year!” filled the air and champagne flowed, and every available cheek was kissed and kissed again,as the creme-de-la-creme of Toronto’s high society celebrated together.
And all through it, Ashleigh wished like nothing else that she was curled up watching nonsense on TV and eating chips out of a bag, with Marcus at her side.
CHAPTER 13
REHEARSALS
Rehearsals for Mozart’s ‘Coronation Mass’began in mid-January.
Randall, as promised, had sent over the music almost immediately after the Christmas concert, and Ashleigh had spent the intervening time learning and practising her part. She had taken on the responsibility for the part, and she wasn’t going to let the choir down.
There were to be four soloists in the performance, and therefore, four stand-ins for the rehearsals: soprano, mezzo soprano, tenor, and bass.
Emma, the queen bee who swanned about the choir like it was her personal project, was to sing the soprano line. She could be quite overbearing, but Ashleigh had to admit that she did have a very pretty voice. Not rich enough to base a career on, but clear and strong all the same. A ‘Mimi voice’, as she had once heard someone describe it: perfectly adequate to play the ingénue soprano role, sweet and light, but nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that would make someone sit up and take notice. Still, she would be more than adequate as the rehearsal soprano for this concert, until the professional singers arrived for only the final rehearsals.
The tenor was a pleasant member of the choir named Victor. Always ready with a smile, he was reliable and steady, and Ashleigh looked forward to working with him. She’d met his wife a couple of times and liked her, and she’d seen his kids at some of the lighter concerts over the years. He had offered his home for the soloists to rehearse their parts, separate from the choir, so they could learn their lines and how they worked together. Victor was enthusiastic about his offer, explaining that he wanted his kids to hear some first-rate music happening in their living room. He had a house in the near suburbs, large enough to host this group more than comfortably, and a rather fine piano that his children learned on. His offer was accepted by all with pleasure.
The baritone was the newcomer to the choir, a rather striking young man from Montreal, by the name of Jean-François. He was only in Toronto for a few months, and was, if anything, a male version of Emma. In fact, the two of them had engaged in a rather outrageous flirtation, and everyone thought they were a couple. Whether they were or weren’t, they were often seen together before or after rehearsals, and Ashleigh wondered how much of Emma’s influence it had taken to convince Randall to ask Jean-François to sing the solo line. But, having heard him, she really couldn’t fault his voice or musicality. He would more than do justice to the part during these few weeks of rehearsal.
Now, all that Ashleigh had to do was make sure she could live up to this unexpectedly high standard.
