Dance While You Can
SUSAN
LEWIS
Dance
While You
Can
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409008149
Published by Arrow Books 2007
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Copyright © Susan Lewis 1989
Susan Lewis has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in Great Britain in 1989 by William Heinemann
First published in paperback in 1990 by Mandarin Paperbacks
First published by Arrow Books in 1998
Arrow Books
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London SW1V 2SA
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
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ISBN 9780099517832
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by
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To Dad and Gary, with love
Dance
While You
Can
Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of twenty novels. She is also the author of
Just One More Day
, a moving memoir of her childhood in Bristol. She lives in France. Her website address is
www.susanlewis.com
Acclaim for Susan Lewis
‘One of the best around’
Independent on Sunday
‘Spellbinding! . . . you just keep turning the pages, with the atmosphere growing more and more intense as the story leads to its dramatic climax’
Daily Mail
‘Mystery and romance
par excellence
’
Sun
‘The tale of conspiracy and steamy passion will keep you intrigued until the final page’
Bella
‘A multi-faceted tearjerker’
heat
‘Erotic and exciting’
Sunday Times
‘We use the phrase honest truth too lightly: it should be reserved for books – deeply moving books – like this’
Alan Coren
‘Susan Lewis strikes gold again . . . gripping’
Options
Also by Susan Lewis
A Class Apart
Stolen Beginnings
Darkest Longings
Obsession
Vengeance
Summer Madness
Last Resort
Wildfire
Chasing Dreams
Taking Chances
Cruel Venus
Strange Allure
Silent Truths
Wicked Beauty
Intimate Strangers
The Hornbeam Tree
The Mill House
A French Affair
Missing
Just One More Day, A Memoir
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to G. V. Hardyman and Christopher Dale of Clifton College, Bristol. To Victoria Walcough of Christie’s, South Kensington. Lindsay and Bob Hall. My friend Fanny, who not only introduced me to Sark but gave me unstinted support throughout the book.
A very special thank you to Patrick Early of the British Council in Cairo, and John Kelsey-Fry. And, of course, Laura and Toby.
From the moment I met her, there was never any doubt in my mind that one day I would have to kill her. Perhaps it was a genuine vision of the future, though I recall no images, not even the vividness of the fire that was to consume so much. I felt only the overwhelming need to protect myself, and all that was mine.
Elizabeth Sorrill. She was blessed with the kind of beauty I had only dreamed about, bringing love and laughter to my brothers, while all the time she nursed the pain of a love she had lost – a love she would never give up.
And what right had she to that love? I am a woman, I have known love, I have known the pain of loss. Have I spent my life making others suffer for it?
But I know now that I have never experienced anything like the love that bound Elizabeth and Alexander. It was a love that not only bridged the gulf of class, but survived years of parting, the agony of rejection, and that most destructive of emotions, guilt. Do I envy her that love? No, I pity her. A love of that depth, that strength, extracts its own price. I was the one to call in the debt, and I have no regrets. Why should she have had it all? What was her suffering compared to mine? My brother gave her the world – but it was my world too, and I lied, cheated and murdered to get it back. Yet all the time my enemy – my invincible enemy – was not Elizabeth, nor Alexander, but the love they shared.
Why was their love so indestructible?
I rest my head against the wall. There is nothing to see here, only darkness, but my nostrils flare at the cloying stench of my surroundings. Among the few, almost indistinguishable sounds, I can hear myself laughing. Laughing and laughing. The bitter irony of it is, if anyone could answer me that last question, then here, at the end, they would hand me the key to life itself.
As it is, it is they who hold the key – Elizabeth and Alexander.
– Elizabeth –
– 1 –
‘
A schoolboy!
You’re telling me you’re in love with a
schoolboy
?’
Already wishing I hadn’t said anything, I met Janice’s incredulous gaze. ‘I didn’t say I was in love with him, I only said . . .’
‘Yes, I know what you said. You said you can’t stop thinking about him. And the way you’ve been moping around here, well, I can’t believe how dense I’ve been. But a schoolboy, Elizabeth. Do you know what you’re doing? Do you realise what it means?’
‘I’m not doing anything, and it means you’re getting everything out of proportion, as usual.’
‘You’ve been stuck down there at that school for too long, it’s turned your mind. Christ, I could understand if it were one of the masters. But a boy!’
‘If you saw him you wouldn’t call him a boy.’
‘Well, how old is he? Fifteen, sixteen?’
‘Nearly seventeen.’
‘And you’re twenty-one. And this is 1964, and you’re probably one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life. You’ve got to get away from that place, Elizabeth, and fast. Junior matron at a boys’ public school, I ask you! I never understood why you went there in the first place. So what’s happened between the two of you? You haven’t . . .’
‘Of course not. We danced together at the end of term, that’s all.’
‘Danced! I can hardly get a word out of you because you danced with a schoolboy? There really is something wrong with you, Elizabeth Sorrill. I’m going to have to find you a man, and fast.’
Janice liked her ‘and fast’s, but just at that moment they irritated me. I’d come to spend the summer holidays with her, in the bedsit we used to share in Putney when, like her, I’d been a nurse at the Meadford Clinic. But I’d only been there a few months when a vacancy had come up for a junior matron at Foxton’s Boys’ School, down in the west country. I’d lied about my age, collected my references from Mrs Carey at the Meadford, and gone. I’m not quite sure why I did it, except it seemed like a challenge and I’d never really felt at home in London. That was six months ago.
‘I take it you do want to find a
man?
’ Janice said, when she realised I wasn’t going to say anything.
‘You don’t have to say it like that, and as a matter of fact, I don’t.’
‘Elizabeth, think about it! This relationship can’t go anywhere, and you’ll land yourself in a whole heap of trouble.’
‘Stop moralising. I danced with him, that’s all, and I like him. He’s . . .’
‘Spare me. You’re going to tell me he’s tall, dark and handsome, and he’s got a winning smile.’
‘As a matter of fact he is tall, dark and handsome. And as for his smile, one of his teeth is crooked. What I
was
going to say was that he’s made me feel as if I belong at the school – not easy in a place like that. I have a lot of fun there now, more than I ever did flitting round pubs in the Kings Road. I’m happy, Janice. I feel as if I belong there, as if I have a place there – and it’s all down to him.’
‘Down to
him
?’ She looked at me and I could feel one of her ‘and fast’s coming. ‘Don’t you realise the effect you have on people, Elizabeth. No, you don’t, do you, you never did. Look at yourself. You’re all the things the rest of us dream about; sensuous, long-legged, voluptuous; you’ve only got to move and something happens to a man. Jesus, there are things about you . . .’
‘Janice . . .’
‘Like the way you make someone feel they’re the most special person alive. What’s the name of that song “From a Jack to a King”. Even the bloody sun comes out when you laugh. And it’s not just men, you have that effect on women too, so God only knows what you’re doing to those poor little buggers down there, locked away in that school. Try looking at yourself through their eyes. One day you just appear in their lives; you don’t speak like them, you don’t act like them, nobody knows anything about you. You’re a mystery . . .’
‘Stop talking rubbish. I’m just an ordinary person, Janice, like anyone else. I don’t talk about my past because it’s too painful. But you know what happened, how my parents were killed, then I came to London and trained – with you – as a nurse, so why don’t you drop all this nonsense about a mystery?’
She sighed. ‘You really don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You say things in that funny, rich, accented voice of yours and everyone stops to listen. I’ll bet he’s smitten: I’ll bet they all are. Well, I’m going to get you out of there, and fast. It’s time you came back to the real world. What’s his name, anyway?’
‘Alexander. Alexander Belmayne.’
If her eyes had been any rounder they’d have burst out of her head. ‘Alexander Belmayne! The one you wrote to me about? The one you couldn’t stand, who made your life a misery?’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘Jesus, you’re in bigger trouble than I thought.’
