Prima Donna (4 page)

‘How was class?’ she asked.

‘Ugh, don’t ask. Badlands was in a particularly foul mood today. And my right hamstring’s bothering me a bit,’ he said, absent-mindedly rubbing it.

‘Well, what are you doing here, then? You should have gone to the physio,’ she scolded, feeling panicky at the thought that she might be held responsible for aggravating a possible
injury. She knew from Pia’s insurance paperwork that her legs were insured for $1.5 million. Adam’s must be much the same.

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, but if I saw her, I wouldn’t be able to see you,’ he winked.

‘God, you shouldn’t be missing Mary just to come and sit for me,’ she gasped. ‘It’s not like it’s for an exhibition or anything. I mean, no one will ever even
see it and . . .’

‘I’m not missing Mary,’ he smiled, laying a warm hand on her arm and twisting her words. ‘And anyway, it’s not bad. I just need to get some ice on it before
tomorrow.’

‘Well look, there’s an ice machine in the hall. One of the
considerable
perks of being on this floor,’ she said wryly. ‘At least let me get some for
you.’

‘Thanks, that’d be great,’ he said, dropping his kitbag on the floor.

Sophie grabbed the plastic ice bucket and walked out into the hallway. As the ice machine rumbled into life, she checked her appearance nervously in the glass of the fire cabinet. She’d
spent the best part of two hours trying to get her hair sleek and she’d put on a new tinted lip gloss – she checked there was none on her teeth. She felt ridiculously nervous, hardly
able to believe that Adam was sitting in her room. He was always so
nice
to her but he’d been her fantasy lover for so long, and every day watching him train and perform with Pia was
filled with emotional drama – titillation when he caught her staring and grinned at her; despair when she caught him staring, with the same wistfulness, at Pia.

Everybody knew he was mad about Pia; everybody except Pia, it seemed. She horsed around with him in class and looked lovingly in his eyes during performances, but as soon as the rehearsal was
over or the curtain dropped she raced off to be with her latest lover. No one had ever known Pia to stay for a single drink, not for celebration’s sake and certainly not to socialize. She
didn’t need to make friends with the staff. She was the star. And although Adam had the talent to shine as brightly as she did, he lacked the attitude. He was too affable, too approachable,
too ready to smile – and so, as far as Pia was concerned, once the work was done he was lumped together with the rest of them.

But only to Pia. To Sophie, he might be a team player but there was nothing pedestrian about him. She sighed as the ice clattered into the bucket. She didn’t blame him for not noticing
her. She never had stood out – well, not in the ways that counted anyway. She was skinny, not slender; lanky not statuesque; pale but with a ferocious blush on her. She was always popular but
never the leader, and she harboured no illusions about one day being the cleverest or the prettiest girl in the room – she moved like Olive Oyl, for starters.

Still, her overall grace and grooming had come on in leaps and bounds in the three years she’d been working for Pia. She knew now that sparkly eyes, glowing skin, glossy hair and a perky
walk came from facials at Bliss, olive-oil hair soaks, Bobbi Brown eyeshadow, ice baths and hot sex, and although Pia led the last two by example only, Sophie had absorbed the rest by osmosis.

She trotted back to the room, cheered that he had at least agreed to help her out today. In fact, he’d been really interested when she’d accosted him at the first night after-show
party and tipsily asked if she could draw him.

‘Here you g—’ She trailed off, dropping the bucket.

Adam had stripped down and was walking naked towards the bathroom. He turned and her jaw dropped as deep as a
plié
.

‘You don’t mind if I take a quick shower, do you?’ he asked. ‘I stink.’

Sophie shook her head mutely.

‘Besides, I figure if you’re going to be drawing me in the buff, there’s no point in me being coy, is there?’

Sophie shook her head again. Who’d said anything about drawing him nude? He must have just assumed it. Then again, ballet dancers viewed their bodies as the tools of their craft –
although Pia was preternaturally aware that hers also doubled as a weapon of mass seduction – and, as such, they didn’t share the modesty or vanity of the civilian population. If he
wanted to be drawn nude, who was she to stop him?

‘There’s a bottle of vodka in my bag,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you pour us both a glass and chuck some of that ice into it? It’s not that cold, I’m
afraid,’ he said, disappearing into the bathroom.

Sophie nodded and swallowed hard. She heard the water start running and she tried to galvanize herself into action but her heart felt like it was perilously close to having an attack and she
didn’t dare move for another minute. Adam Bridges was naked in her room! Christ Almighty!

Oops. She caught herself blaspheming and cowered slightly, as though expecting a finger of lightning to strike her down. Think, Sophie! What would Pia do?

She rolled her eyes. She knew perfectly well what Pia would do. She’d get naked too and that would work because she had the body of a goddess. Adam would come out of the shower and pick
her up and make sweet love to her right there. If he came out and found Sophie standing there naked, he’d call 911. Or security. Or his mum to come and take him home.

She was still standing there when she heard the water turn off. Quickly, she ran to the bedside table and grabbed two water tumblers, half-filling them with the vodka. She was picking the ice
bucket off the floor as he walked back in, a towel round his waist.

‘Here,’ she said, dropping a clutch of ice cubes into the tumblers and handing him one.

His eyebrows shot up and he burst out laughing. ‘Whoa! You’ll have me dancing on a hangover tomorrow!’ He looked down at her mischievously, a twist of hair flopping forward.
‘You’re not trying to get me drunk, are you, Miss O’Farrell?’

Sophie blushed beetroot. ‘God, no!’ she said, her Irish accent getting stronger with her embarrassment. ‘I just thought it might calm your nerves a little.’

‘My nerves? But I feel fine.’ He paused, intrigued by her fluster. ‘Are
you
nervous?’

Sophie swallowed nervously. ‘I feel fine,’ she croaked.

‘Okay, then,’ he said, clinking her glass and taking a huge glug. He looked around the small cuboid room. The hotel was a shrine to minimalism, with dark wenge-wood consoles, grey
walls and coir-covered floors, and on the more illustrious upper floors that restraint felt chic. But down here, where you could almost stand on the bed and touch the walls, it felt naked and mean.
Sophie must just have been grateful to find she had sheets on the bed.

‘So how do you want me?’ he smiled.

‘I was thinking maybe . . .’ She tried to think of a suitable pose. ‘How about if you sit on that chair?’ she said, pulling the chair out from under the desk.
‘It’d be good to get some kind of after-class, repose position.’

‘Okay,’ he said, whipping off his towel and sitting forward on the chair.

Sophie blinked hard. ‘Great,’ she croaked again. ‘Can you, uh . . . yes, rest your elbows on your knees,’ she directed. She stepped back to look at him. His muddy-blond
hair – wet from the shower – could easily be passed off as sweaty from rehearsal, and his damp, pale gold skin glistened like it always did after sixty minutes of spins and lifts. His
eyes were blue and pronounced, his mouth wide, and he had a long, straight nose with fared nostrils,
à la
Nureyev, that added drama and passion to his heroic characterizations and
had audiences, if not Pia, swooning.

He looked up at her. ‘This okay?’

‘It’ll do,’ she joked, hoping her knees wouldn’t buckle as she walked over to where she’d set up her easel, and shifted it into position. A shaft of light from the
window fell onto his shoulder and sat there like an angel. ‘Can you drop your head? Look exhausted.’

‘I can certainly do that,’ he sighed.

She picked up her charcoals and began to draw. She didn’t need to watch what her hand was doing. She just let her eyes travel over him, absorbing his physique critically, mathematically
– the proportion of his neck to his hand, the distance between his jaw and his eyes . . .

Even relaxed, his body was astonishing. The curve of his calves was more sculpted than any mere man could attain from rugby or running, the swell of his thigh harder and more sharply contoured;
his shoulders were like boulders, and his forearms – after years of bench-pressing ballerinas – were as big as most men’s biceps. His was the body beautiful incarnate – Man
as da Vinci sketched; Man as Rodin chiselled; Man as God intended; Man as she dreamt about.

Time passed slowly, but he didn’t complain or move or fidget. His body had been trained in the art of being still, as much as it had been trained to move. The more junior the dancers, the
longer they had to hold single positions for long periods of time and though Adam’s senior status meant he was in a permanently dynamic mould, he had paid his dues and worked his way through
the ranks. His body remembered it well.

‘So tell me how you met Pia,’ he said after a while, keeping his head lowered.

‘Just the usual way – through an agency,’ she replied. ‘She’d been through everyone else on the list and I was the last person they had to put forward. They were
getting desperate and I guess she was too.’ She shrugged. ‘To this day I don’t know why she hired me. I can’t type for toffee, I’m the most forgetful person
you’ll ever meet and I don’t have a qualification to my name.’

‘You don’t? But you’ve always looked overqualified for the job to me – and incredibly well organized, whatever you might say to the contrary.’

‘Well, that’s just down to the reign of fear that hangs over me. If I wasn’t so damned frightened of losing my job every day, I wouldn’t get anything done. This is the
only job I’ve had where I wasn’t fired in the first month. I was temping before this and, honestly, some of my bosses couldn’t stomach my
coffee
, much less my
spelling.’ She shook her head, baffled. ‘I don’t know why she puts up with me really.’

‘Funny. It’s not how I see you at all.’

You see me? Sophie thought, forgetting to draw.

‘So is this what you’re doing during rehearsals? Sketching?’

‘Yeah. Mainly.’

‘I always thought you were making up lists to keep the Pia roadshow rolling forward.’

‘Pia does too. But I don’t think she cares, so long as I’m on top of everything for her.’

‘Well, be careful. She’ll get jealous if she thinks she isn’t occupying every single waking thought in your head.’

Sophie smiled, rolling her eyes. ‘That’s for sure.’

Adam watched her. Trailing behind Pia she always seemed so . . . not subdued, but diminished somehow. Shadowy, like she was only there in body, not spirit. But she looked different behind that
easel. Stronger, more vibrant, empowered. Beautiful, even.

‘So why are you a PA and not an artist, then?’ he asked. ‘Even just watching you now it’s clear this is where you’re meant to be.’

‘I wish,’ she shrugged. ‘But there’s no money in it.’

‘There’s no money in ballet either. Not really. Not unless you make the top one per cent—’

‘Which you have,’ Sophie interrupted.

‘Luckily,’ he said. ‘But I had no guarantees of making it. And I would have done it for nothing anyway. Just getting to spend my days dancing is the privilege. I can’t
imagine life without it.’

‘That’s because you’ve trained all your life to get to where you are now. It’s part of your DNA. It’s not the same for me.’

‘You’ve never had any formal training? You sure look like you know what you’re doing.’

‘Well, I was invited to apply for a place at the Slade in London, if that counts for anything—’

‘Invited? You mean you didn’t take them up?’

‘I couldn’t. I didn’t have the formal qualifications to get in,’ she sighed.

‘So then why did they invite you?’ Adam asked, baffled. ‘I was waitressing at the time in this little cafe near the College and one of the professors happened to see me
sketching one day in my break. He was just being kind.’

‘I doubt it was that,’ Adam argued. ‘He would have seen straightaway that you had talent. You should have followed it through. You never know, he might have been able to bend
the rules for you.’

Sophie’s cheeks pinked. ‘It wasn’t that easy,’ she said tightly. ‘I had other things going on as well . . .’

Adam narrowed his eyes. ‘By which you mean man trouble.’

‘No,’ she replied.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he muttered, his eyes twinkling. ‘So how about now? Are you seeing anyone?’

‘No. No . . . Not enough time really,’ she added lamely. As if that was the real reason.

‘Yeah,’ he concurred. ‘I’ve got that problem too.’

Sophie busied herself with a detail on his hair. She didn’t want to hear about his supposed women problems. He’d slept with at least half the girls in the corps and the other half
were just watching and waiting for their turn. The ballet world’s gruelling hours, long tours and punishing performances – alien to office workers and commuters – meant they
bonded into a tight-knit family and affairs were commonplace. Adam had a reputation for casual flings but he was so committed to his work (and his unrequited love for Pia) and so courteous and
disingenuous afterwards that the girls could never hate him; the only perceived slight was in not being seduced in the first place. If he had women problems, it wasn’t due to lack of
opportunity.

He let an easy silence grow between them as Sophie leant in towards the easel, working on the shadowing across his face.

‘So where is Pia at the moment anyway?’

Sophie felt herself deflate at the wholly expected turn of conversation. As ever, all roads led to Pia.

‘In Aspen, with Andy.’

‘They’re still together?’ He looked up, surprised.

Sophie nodded.

‘It’s been a while now. By Pia’s standards, at least.’