I Hope You Dance (6 page)

By late afternoon, we were about done. Maggie, who had been cooperative but uncommunicative, suggested we stop and have a drink.

I shook my head, my hands beginning to tremble. Two cups of coffee seemed like a ludicrous waste of non-existent money.

“Why don't we go home and I'll make us one there?”

Clang. The shutter in front of Maggie's face slammed down. She turned away, her offer of forgiveness spurned, and began clomping back towards the car park.

Rats. I resisted the urge to start pulling out my hair. I hated this. Hated having to scrimp and worry and scuttle about the shops with hunched shoulders, always, always, always thinking about money.

“All right.” I hurried after Maggie and stopped in front of her. “I would love to have a drink with you. Here. In town. You pick somewhere.”

The cost of half an hour chatting with my daughter, without her checking her phone once? Priceless.

When the alarm went off on Tuesday morning, it felt as though a bear was sitting on my chest. I lay there for a long time, ignoring the ticking of the clock, my eyes squinched tightly shut against the beams of sunlight poking at me from the edge of my curtains. I could hear my parents rattling about in the kitchen, the faint sounds of another argument drifting up the stairs. Maggie was in the shower, next to my room, the water making spattering sounds on the wall beside my bed.

This was it. My summer of hiding and indulging my despondent emotions was over. Time to set off on the road to recovery. Today was going to be a good day. Maggie would have a great start at her new school, I would get myself a job and then cook us dinner to celebrate. I pushed off the bear with the strength of my forced optimism, clambered out of bed and went to get on with my new life.

 

“Ruth Henderson?” Vanessa Jacobs stopped straightening cardigans on the rack in front of her and peered at me through chunky-framed glasses. “Wow. You'd better come into the back.”

I followed her through the shop, the sign of which said “Couture” in simple, thin lettering on a plum background, down a long, slim space lined with uncluttered rows of boutique-style fashion. At the far end stood a glass counter containing a couple of displays featuring accessories, including locally made jewellery and designer handbags. It was tasteful, elegant and about five zillion
miles from the nearest orange puffa jacket. Vanessa Jacobs had come a long way.

She offered me a low stool in front of a full-length mirror, set among piles of boxes.

Ah. Now this could be a problem. I had sold all my decent clothes, bought using Fraser's secret debt mountain, for pitiful and desperate amounts on internet auctions. My mother declared that my few remaining items, worn to death over the previous couple of years, were in no way suitable for an interview with Southwell's queen of fashion. Ever prepared, Mum triumphantly produced a chocolate coloured shift dress, the label still attached.

“I mentioned your wardrobe deficiency to Lois, and she gave me this! She bought it for a conference and then found it was too small for her.”

A dress too small for five-foot-nothing, tiny Lois. Yes, I contained about as much fat as a diet yoghurt at that point, but I stood several inches taller than Lois, and shared my father's sturdy frame. Squeezing the dress on, I managed to wrestle the zip all the way up to the top with a little help from an empty stomach and Maggie. I had not, however, yet managed to successfully take more than the shallowest of breaths, sit down properly or bend my body further than about two inches in any direction.

I looked at the stool. “Actually, I'm fine standing.”

Vanessa raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow at me. She waved her hand at the piles of cardboard boxes and cellophane-wrapped outfits hanging from the ceiling all around us.

“There's not enough room for both of us to stand. Please sit.”

Oh dear. Gingerly, apprehensively, with as much care as Neil Armstrong landing Apollo 11 on the moon, I lowered myself the long, long distance down to the stool, wondering if my backside would ever reach the shiny black seat.

Come on, Ruth. You can do it. Take it steady now.

The dress material began to stretch and strain impossibly taut around my hips and back as the angle forced my body forward in
order to avoid toppling over. My knees began jutting up higher than my hips as I closed the gap an agonizing fraction at a time. I grabbed onto a nearby clothes rail for balance, smiling valiantly at Vanessa as I descended the last few inches. She watched me, her expression blank, as I finally hit the wooden surface. At that moment, in the clumsy silence, was a distinct
rrriiiiiippp
.

Vanessa took a tiny step back, her eyes widening in horror and surprise. I felt a gentle waft of cool air on my back, right above the top of my faded knickers – a noticeable contrast to my face, burning with mortification.

I took a deep, rallying breath –
rriiippp
. Squared my shoulders –
rriiippp.

Fine, this is okay; this is salvageable. She doesn't know what's causing the ripping sound. Maybe it's just my stomach gurgling with interview nerves. Or a mouse scrabbling about behind the skirting board. Or a ghost… Just sit absolutely still, do not move a SINGLE MUSCLE below your neck, and get through the next few minutes.

Vanessa narrowed her eyes. “Is there a problem?”

“Nope. No. Not a problem. I'm great. It's great to be here. This is great. Isn't it? I love job interviews…” My voice trailed off into one of those weak, embarrassed laughs. Vanessa perched herself on the edge of a normal-sized metal chair a few feet away, and smoothed out her black silk skirt. The mass of frizzy curls that had spent the nineties in a pineapple ponytail were now sleek, chestnut ringlets. She pursed glossed-up (and I suspected plumped-up) lips and stuck out her large, pointy chest.

“Well, you've certainly embraced the size zero look. Half my customers would pay to show that much skeleton.”

Yes, Vanessa. I should write a book.
“
The Bereavement Diet: How Losing Your Partner Can Lose You Those Pounds!” Or “The Poverty Plan to a Slimmer You: If You Can't Buy, You Can't Eat!”

“Um, thanks. You look, um, great. The shop too. That's… great.” I squeaked that last word at a pitch I suspected was undetectable to human ears.

Vanessa raised one eyebrow. “Yes. Perfect exam results might get you a nice certificate, but they can't teach you how to succeed in the real world. Business acumen is what matters, not being able to complete a quadratic equation.”

I was further impressed. I couldn't remember Vanessa ever turning up to a maths lesson, let alone listening enough to pick up words like “quadratic”. Or “equation”.

“So. Tell me about yourself. What have you been up to since leaving Southwell? Didn't you go to university?”

“Yes. I went to Liverpool, to study maths. But only completed my first year.”

“Really?” Vanessa's two-inch fingernails tapped away on her iPad screen. “What happened?”

“I had a baby.” Vanessa Jacobs knew this, of course. She knew that I knew she knew. This was about establishing the pecking order. As if it needed to be established. I remained frozen, sitting bolt upright, trying not to be distracted by the breeze tickling my spine.

“Yes, I heard a few rumours. We all presumed it must be David Carrington's. But then, if it was, you wouldn't be needing a job, would you?”

I said nothing. The prickles of heat intensified across my chest and neck. There was no way on this earth I was going to let Vanessa Jacobs see how his name affected me. See how the memory of her smirking over his shoulder as she wrapped herself around him still punched me in the gut.

“Your boyfriend died?”

“My partner. Yes.”

“Sorry to hear that. It must be depressing finding yourself alone at your age.” Vanessa swiped a hand across the screen of her pad. She did not look sorry. “Work experience?”

“I've worked in various office jobs. Temping, admin stuff, some accounts.”

“CV?”

“Yes.”

She looked up, waiting.

“It's in my bag.” Squeak.

“Well, can you please get it out of your bag so I can see it?”

No! I can't actually. This preposterous dress designed for an underfed child pixie will not allow me to do that.

She tapped her pointy shoes a few times on the wooden floor.

As slowly as if either trying to hide the fact I was drunk, or missing several of my vital faculties, I leaned forward and reached the corner of my bag with the tips of two fingers. Quickly coughing to smother the sounds of the further destruction of the pixie dress –
rriiippp!
– I yanked the bag close enough to open it and remove my CV while still on the stool. As I attempted to lift it out, it got caught on the bag's zip. I could feel the sweat dripping at the edge of my hairline, and prayed it wouldn't cause my foundation to run. After what seemed, both to me and I'm sure to Vanessa, like several hours, I managed to wrestle the document free and hand it over with minimal movement. My potential boss scanned it.

“No retail?”

“No. But I'm a quick learner, and prepared to work really hard. I could do a probationary period…” Yuck. I was grovelling. To Vanessa Jacobs. In a dress with a gaping hole down the back. I wanted to slap myself.

She held up one hand, like a stop sign. “You see, Ruth. My problem is this. We have a certain
image
to uphold at Couture.” She was rolling her words around her mouth, enjoying this, treating me like an idiot. “We are very proud of our clientele.” Who was the “we”? Mum said she worked by herself. Did she include her fake boobs as a separate person? “Our ladies expect a certain standard. A visit to Couture is not simply a shopping trip, but an experience. An event. We provide a complete service, including image enhancement, capsule wardrobes and personal styling. For that, the staff need to project Couture's three ‘c's – competence, confidence and chic.”

She looked me up and down over the top of her glasses. Squinted
at my ill-fitting outfit, my sensible work shoes and flushed, blotchy complexion. “You don't have any of those things.”

She sat back, and waited. I stared at the floor, remembering when Maggie brought home the African land snail from her infant school and Fraser trod on it. I considered my bank balance, added to that Maggie, and the image of day after day after day of living with my parents. Then took a deep breath.

“What about if I got some new clothes? I'd be happy to stay in the back, clean up, sort stock. I am great at accounts. That would leave you more time with the customers. The clientele.” I paused for a couple of seconds. “I know your grandmother needs quite a lot of looking after these days. I could help free up some time for you to be with her.”

She stared at me, confirming that yes, I was making a veiled threat referring to her grandmother's toenails.

“New hair. New make-up. New shoes. New attitude. If you come back tomorrow looking reasonable I'll let you have a couple of sample outfits from the shop at a discount. You can pay for them out of your wages. But I am serious about the attitude. No one wants to buy clothes from a failure. And you stink of failure.”

“Um. Would it be possible to take a jacket now? A long one?”

 

What I should have done then, I suppose, was stop in at the hairdresser's to book myself an appointment for that afternoon, before going home to raid my mother's shoe closet. But like any sane woman in my situation, I instead called in at the delicatessen and bought myself the largest cheesecake in the display case – a caramel baked mud cake with cappuccino flakes and extra whipped cream. I ignored the spasm of guilt at breaking into the emergency ten pound note hidden in the side pocket of my purse. The green and pink zebra-striped coat Vanessa had grudgingly lent me screamed “emergency”.

As I rounded the corner into the cul-de-sac, my mobile rang. It was the school secretary. Could I please come in and have a chat with the headmaster about Maggie's first day? As soon as possible.
No, I wasn't to worry. Nothing bad had happened to her. But she was in big trouble.

To my great relief, Mum's car was in the drive when I huffed up the road to drop the cheesecake off before heading over to the school. I let myself in, took a couple of minutes to change, hide the ruined dress under my bed, brush my hair (for the second time that day!), blow my nose and restore my make-up, then snagged the car keys from the wooden love-heart pegs by the front door.

I decided to take the cheesecake with me, eating a third of it sitting in the school car park, figuring I would need the energy boost before facing yet another headmaster's office. At least there was a new headmaster, new school building and therefore new office since I had donned the Southwell Minster school uniform, which slightly helped me to remember that I was the parent here, not the naughty school girl.

The headmaster seemed like a nice, if slightly world-weary, bloke. He hadn't wanted to suspend Maggie on her first day, despite this being the standard procedure for grabbing another girl by her ponytail and slamming her head into a locker, then wrestling her to the ground in some sort of rolling around cat fight.

Maggie wielded her sympathy card with skill and expertise.

“She disrespected my hair. Said my alcho mum had cut it.”

Currently, her hair was mostly short and black, to represent being severed from her old school, her friends and her house. A white fringe hung down past her nose, signifying the part of her that wanted to hide. One blue streak remained tucked behind her ear, as somewhere behind all the fear and sadness was a strand of hope that felt excited and optimistic to be starting a new school (I wondered if a boy in a battered black jacket had anything to do with this).

“And that my druggie dad dyed it.” Oh dear. “Someone told her about my dad, so she shoved her face right up into my personal space and laughed. She said that explains it.”

Maggie looked straight at Mr Hay. “Sir, are your parents still alive?”

“We're not talking about me, Maggie.”

“Sir, if someone said your dad, who had died, had coloured your hair, wouldn't you get mad? Wouldn't a normal, rational, human reaction be to slam their head into the nearest hard object? I'm fourteen. The nerve synapses to my pre-frontal cortex are breaking down, I am pumped full of crazy teenage chemicals and there isn't a single other person in this whole school who's got my back. If I had let that comment slide, I would have been done for.”

“In situations like this one, the best course of action is to talk to a member of staff.”

“Get real, sir. You know in situations like this one talking to a teacher is a suicidal course of action. Sir –
she brought my dad into it
.”