Prima Donna (13 page)

She took out her beloved sketch pads, specially chosen for the rose-beige wove paper she preferred, and flicked through the pages. They were just some more line drawings, sketches she’d
been working on – most recently of Pia’s neckline and upper-back poise – and hadn’t yet taken back to the studio to refine and perfect.

One in particular caught her eye. She tipped her head to the side and held it up to the light. It was good, beautifully balanced, lifted. She could really use this.

Just then the door to the changing rooms opened. Instinctively, she snapped the book shut. Her drawings had always been private and she hadn’t shown them to anyone, not even to Lucy.

Hurriedly, she jammed the sketchbook in her bag, but it was a large A1 format and it caught on the zip as she pushed it down, forcing the pages to bow open and scatter across the floor like a
deck of cards.

‘Jeez . . .’ Sophie muttered, clambering to pick them up as they wafted around. She grabbed them all in a messy clutch and stood up again. A stray sheet beneath the bench caught her
eye.

She shot back down awkwardly on all fours – well, when you’re five foot eleven it’s hard to do it any other way – and reached her arm under the bench. Her hand felt
something smooth but it wasn’t paper. She withdrew her arm and pressing herself further downwards, looked beneath the seat.

A pair of black satin
pointe
shoes were facing her.

‘Are you looking for this?’ a heavily accented voice above the bench enquired.

Sophie looked up. Two glacial-blue almond-shaped eyes blinked at her, a pursed, sweetheart mouth betrayed no trace of a smile, mouse-brown hair was scraped back into a face-tightening bun, and
tiny hands the size of rabbit paws were holding the sketch.

‘Miss Petrova!’ Sophie exclaimed, recognizing her immediately. ‘It’s such a pleasure to meet you. An honour actually,’ she gushed, wincing as she heard herself. An
honour?

Ava Petrova nodded in agreement. She knew it was. Sophie tried to gather her limbs about her and get to her feet. When she did, she saw Ava came up to her armpits. She instantly slouched down
and began trying to smooth her curls.

‘I heard you were coming to guest with us this season.’

Ava nodded but didn’t reply. She was staring at the etching she still held in her hands.

Sophie swallowed nervously. Of all the people . . .

‘It’s just so wonderful . . . we’re all so excited.’ She was babbling but she couldn’t stop herself, even though Pia would consider such flattery to her sworn enemy
nothing less than high treason.

Ava looked up.

‘All?’

Sophie knew instantly who she was referring to. Talk about the rock and the hard place.

Ava tipped her head to one side. ‘And what do you do here? You’re clearly not a dancer.’

‘No, I . . . I uh . . .’ Sophie stammered, offended by the dig.

‘You are too tall,’ Ava said, smiling suddenly and fixing her ice-blues on Sophie with instant, intense friendliness.

‘Oh yes, that’s right. I am,’ Sophie shrugged, as though that was the only reason she wasn’t part of the company. Nothing to do with the fact that she’d never taken
a dance class in her entire life and had all the rhythm of a limpet.

Ava’s eyes narrowed again as she glanced back at the sketch of Pia. ‘Anyway, it’s clear you are an artist.’

Sophie gasped with astonishment. ‘Who, me? Oh no. No, no! I’m no way good enough to . . . I mean these are—’ She motioned towards the sketch. ‘They’re
nothing. Just scribbles. Doodles, really.’

There was a pause.

‘Doodles?’

‘Yes, uh – it means—’

‘I know what it means,’ Ava clipped. She waved the sheet in her hand. ‘
This
is not a doodle.’

And she turned on her heel.

‘Wait! Oh my God, please don’t go off with that. Please give it back to me, Miss Petrova, please . . .’ But Ava was out of the room and marching down the corridor, peculiarly
flat-footed in her
pointe
shoes, the blocks knocking on the floor as she went.

Sophie chased after her – but what the heck was she supposed to do? Rugby tackle Ava Petrova to a halt?

‘Wait, please!’ she cried, skittering after Ava, much to the amusement of the class in Studio Two, who had broken for lunch and were milling about in the corridor.

Despite such short legs, Ava displayed impressive speed and she reached Monsieur Baudrand’s office in record time. Without bothering to stop at Lucy’s desk – or indeed even
acknowledge Lucy at all – she strode straight through to Baudrand’s inner office.

Sophie arrived two seconds later, panic written all over her face.

‘Please,’ she panted, holding on to the door frame. ‘Say she didn’t just go in there.’

‘She
did
just go in there,’ Lucy replied, her pretty pink face scrunched up indignantly.

Sophie bent double, her hands on her knees.

‘Then please,’ she panted. ‘Tell me Baudrand’s not in there.’

‘He
is
in there,’ Lucy replied. She threw her hands out in amazement at the farcical scene. ‘What on earth is going on?’ she cried, her long blonde ponytail
bouncing excitedly behind her.

‘Oh God,’ Sophie wailed, collapsing into a chair and dropping her head in her elbows. ‘I want to die.’ She shook her head mournfully. ‘Could somebody just give me a
break,
please
? For once?’

Lucy twitched her lips and sat back down. Whatever was happening inside Baudrand’s office, she’d know the upshot of it sooner rather than later. God, she loved her job.

‘Mint?’ she asked, deciding to let Ava Petrova’s blatant disregard for protocol slide this time.

Sophie sat back up and leant her head against the wall. ‘No. I shouldn’t even be here. I’ve been sacked, remember? Officially I have no business being here. I am technically
trespassing.’ She narrowed her eyes at Lucy. ‘This is all your fault.’

‘Clearly,’ Lucy replied, sucking vigorously on the mint. ‘But we’ll still go for lunch after this, right? You’re going to have even more to tell me once this is all
done and dusted.’

The phone on Lucy’s desk buzzed.

Sophie shot her hand out to stop her. ‘Don’t answer it,’ she ordered dramatically.

Lucy raised her perfectly tweezered eyebrows and picked it up. ‘Yes,
monsieur
?’

There was a pause.

‘Yes,
monsieur
.’

She put the phone down and looked at Sophie.

‘They want you to go in.’

Sophie shook her head, rooted to the spot.

Lucy got up from behind her desk.

‘Go on,’ she said, pulling Sophie up by the elbow. ‘It’ll all be fine.’

She opened the door and pushed Sophie through.

‘Aaah, Sophie,’ Monsieur Baudrand said in his distinctive way. She had always liked the way he said her name. So-phee. But not today.

Ava was sitting on his desk, her legs swinging. He was sitting behind it, his five-foot-six frame practically hidden from view, although what he lacked in height, he made up for in width. He was
in his late sixties and still impressively muscular, with a drum-like torso, stocky legs and large, hairy hands. He was almost entirely bald except for a narrow white curtain of hair that swept
from the midline of his skull around and over his ears, tapering down into sideburns and finishing with a flourish in a pointy goatee. Unlike the dancers of his company, who liked their clothes
distressed, Baudrand preferred to dress like an architect, favouring turtlenecks and Yohji Yamamoto trousers in various shades of grey, accessorized with black-rimmed tinted John Lennon glasses,
which did a heroic job of minimizing his bulging, goitrous eyes.

‘Monsieur Baudrand, I can explain . . .’ Sophie said hurriedly. ‘Those aren’t what they look like. Honestly. They’re just private sketches. Doodles.’ She cast
a furtive glance at Ava, who had raised an eyebrow again. ‘I was never going to sell them or show them to anyone, I promise. I know I never had “official access” and I would never
betray Pia or the company’s privacy.’

There was a brief pause as Monsieur Baudrand tried to swallow down a smile.

‘
Au contraire, ma cherie
. I think that’s precisely what you
should
do.’

Sophie’s heart skipped a beat.

‘Huh?’

‘This is excellent, Sophie,’ he said, waving the sketch of Pia. ‘Intimate, charming, elegant. You have perfectly captured and communicated an entire mood, not just a pose. I
assume it is not the only one?’

His eyes moved pointedly to her bag and the wad of papers clearly sticking out.

‘I – uh . . . No,’ she said finally, her shoulders sagging. There was no point in lying.

‘May I see?’ He held out a hand.

Sophie handed them over, and watched as he and Ava fell upon them, scrutinizing, analysing and adoring.

‘Ava is right,’ he said. ‘We have been missing a trick. Thank God Pia fired you.’

‘Oh yes! Thank God,’ Sophie echoed sarcastically.

‘Why yes! Can you imagine what she would have been like if we’d told her we wanted to poach her personal assistant as the company’s resident artist?’ He shook his head,
tutting. ‘
Non
,
non
,
non
,
non
. I think we all know what a little madam she would have been about letting you go for the greater good.’

Sophie gasped, looking from him to Ava and back again. ‘The resident . . . You can’t be serious.’

‘But I am.’ He smiled at her. ‘Did you have a formal training? It seems to me you must have.’

‘Not really. I was invited to apply to the Slade in London, but—’

‘The Slade! I thought so. It is clear as day that you have superb talent; and what luck,
non
, that we should discover you in this, our centenary? We shall hold a series of grand
exhibitions throughout the year; your work can showcase the behind-the-scenes aspects of the company as well as the public performances. We shall set you to work immediately. It goes without saying
that we shall need a series of drawings of Ava, now that she is our guest artist for the spring repertoire. And we must capitalize fully on her talent and fame while it is ours to boast
about.’ He looked adoringly at Ava, who smiled back triumphantly. ‘You will go back to New York and shadow her for the rest of the tour, with immediate effect.’

Sophie shot a nervous glance at Ava. Living in the pocket of Pia Soto, and now shadowing Ava Petrova. Frying pan to fire, surely?

‘I shall ask Lucy to arrange the first exhibition for all your work, which we shall host at the next charity gala, and we’ll get on with organizing prints, greeting cards, posters
– that sort of thing.’

He stood up and walked around the desk to her. He reached up and she bent her knees so that he could kiss her on both cheeks.

‘Congratulations, So-phee. It seems Pia Soto is not going to be our only claim to fame. Just think – all this time and we never knew we had our very own Edgar Degas, hiding in plain
sight.’

The car swept down the drive and Will looked over at Pia. She had been furious when the doctors had discharged her into his care and she hadn’t looked at him, nor said a
word since they’d left the hospital. As if the past few days hadn’t been tricky enough anyway. Her wound had become infected – practically giving him a stroke as they waited to
find out whether she’d been exposed to MRSA – and Evie Grainger was refusing to break her contract to come back to treat Pia. Will had tried upping her money, even going up to double
her fee, but she was adamant she didn’t want to come within a fifty-mile radius of Pia – something about a rumour Pia had once planted and which had swept the ballet world about her
manipulating more than just stiff arms and legs on her physiotherapy table.

Will looked back out of the window. He hadn’t told her about the short-term replacement he’d got lined up for her yet. He had a feeling she wasn’t going to take the news too
well.

As the car approached the house, he saw that his housekeeper and the groundsmen were waiting outside on the steps, like Victorian serving staff, as per his instructions. The driver opened the
door for Will and he jumped out, going round to Pia’s side.

‘I can’t get a wheelchair over this gravel,’ Will said. ‘I’m going to have to carry you into the house myself.’

Pia shrugged, she was used to being lifted.

Will lifted her easily, taking extra care not to catch her plastered leg in the door jamb, pausing for a moment for her to take in the impressive sight that awaited her.

‘Your new home,’ he said grandly.

‘My nursing home, you mean,’ she replied curtly, her eyes sweeping casually over the Regency period curves, smooth putty-coloured render, the run of arched sash windows and the stone
verandah that stretched across the entire first floor. It was a beautiful house but she’d rather die than admit it. Even the roof – pitched and slate-tiled – was pretty,
punctuated with three crescent-topped dormers and a medley of chimney stacks, two of which were already puffing. She may be a foreigner to these shores, but she’d hobnobbed with its upper
classes long enough to know that this was the epitome of English country living.

Will clenched his jaw at her snippiness and carried her forward. It wasn’t quite the response he’d been hoping for.

‘Pia, I want you to meet Mrs Bremar, my housekeeper,’ he said, introducing a short plump woman with grey curled hair. ‘Besides the fact that she’s the best housekeeper in
the county – and I know this because the Duke of Lamington keeps trying to poach her from me,’ he boasted, ‘she was also formerly the matron at the cottage hospital down the road
and will be supervising your nursing care in the next few days as well; just until we’re sure the infection has completely disappeared and your blood pressure’s behaving
itself.’

‘Welcome to Plumbridge,’ Mrs Bremar said with a friendly smile. Pia nodded back, a hint of a smile actually softening her features.

He moved up a step to a striking-looking woman with almost-black hair that fell down her back; her shoulders cut a strong line, wider than her hips, and she had a long torso with a hard flat
stomach that came from good genes, not sit-ups. Her face was handsome, rather than pretty, with a defiant jawline and generous mouth but she had the thickest lashes Pia had ever seen and
extraordinary eyes, in honour of which she had clearly been named.