Prima Donna (50 page)

Tanner noticed her knuckles had whitened around her drink.

‘The Bolshoi Ballet in Russia announced it was going to open an academy in Santa Catarina and they were giving full scholarships. I knew it was a way out for us – an education, a
home, a career – so I stole a book showing ballet steps and copied them. Then I taught them to my little brother on the way home from school.

‘We couldn’t afford for all three of us to go, so my mother gave me all her money so that we could take the train to the auditions. She was going to join us as soon as she’d
saved up enough for her train ticket. We didn’t tell my brother that we wouldn’t be going back, regardless of whether we got in or not. We couldn’t go back.’ She paused for
a moment, and Tanner saw that her eyes had misted. ‘But I can’t imagine what my father must have done to my mother when he found out we’d gone. It was so bad that she was forced
to tell him exactly where we were, and she never would . . . she never would have done that unless he’d really . . .’ Her voice trailed away and she took a long, slow gulp of her drink.
He noticed her hand was trembling.

‘Pia, you don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to.’

‘But I do!’ she said sharply, her eyes bright with tears. ‘I want you to know why I’m the way I am, to know that I wasn’t always such a bitch.’

‘God! I don’t think you’re a—’

‘Yes, you do! You despise me. You can’t help yourself. You just said it. But I used to be different. I used to be a better person than I am now.’ She took a deep breath and
looked back at the party but she wasn’t seeing anything.

Tanner watched her. ‘So what happened?’ he asked quietly.

‘My father came to the academy and snatched my brother while I was in the audition. He was only eight. He just took him – he wasn’t interested in me – and I never saw him
again. Actually, I never saw any of them again.’

‘But what happened to them? Surely you can trace them?’

Pia shook her head lightly, determined to keep her composure in front of everybody, in front of him. ‘No. I already tried that. My father never returned to the village where we grew up. My
mother thought he’d gone to Rio so she went there, but . . .’ Her voice cracked and she fell silent for a long moment. ‘I discovered later that she couldn’t get a job so she
ended up working for one of the cartels, anything to get some money together to find us. One day there was a shootout with the police and she got caught in the crossfire. It’s pretty
commonplace.’

‘Jesus!’ Tanner spluttered. ‘And your brother?’

‘I never managed to get a trace on him, but the odds were slim. Did you know that a child’s chance of dying in the drug areas of the
favelas
is nine times greater than in
the Middle East?’

Tanner shook his head. ‘I . . . uh . . . God, no. I had no idea.’

‘No? Well, did you know that drug gangs account for half of all child murders here?’

Tanner shook his head.

‘Mmm. Up to ten million children live on the streets and seventy per cent of those are boys. What about this: in São Paolo, twenty per cent of homicides committed by the
police
are against minors. Did you know that?’

Tanner looked down at her anxiously. ‘You know an awful lot about this, Pia.’

‘Well, I have to. It’s because of me that these statistics are the odds my little brother will have had to battle.’

‘But how can you say that? How on earth can you think you’re responsible?’

‘Because in going to the audition I forced my father’s hand. It’s because of what
I
did that my brother was taken away, and then my mother went to find him and was
killed herself. It’s because of me that my family was sacrificed.’

‘But you’d found a way out for you and your brother.’

She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t being selfless,’ she snapped. ‘I was being selfish. There were other ways we could have escaped him, but I
wanted
to dance,’
she said in a disgusted tone. ‘I wanted to. So, yes, I make it my business to know the horror of what I put my family through, to never forget for an instant the price they paid for my
freedom and my desires.’

Tanner saw the tears begin to stream down her cheeks and reached into his pocket. She turned away from the other guests. He pulled out a clean hanky and passed it to her, but she didn’t
respond. Gently, he lifted her chin with his hand and began dabbing under her eyes.

‘Do you know for a fact that your brother is dead?’ he asked.

‘No. But I’ve hired the very best investigators to look for him and there’s been no trace. He had . . . he had this birthmark on his arm, a port wine stain in the shape of a
sickle. It’s quite distinctive, the kind of thing people would remember, but there’s been nothing, no reports of him at all.’

He stroked her cheek with his thumb. ‘And your father?’

She shrugged. ‘I neither know nor care.’

There was a long silence as Tanner absorbed her revelations. It put Silk’s duplicity into perspective. It also explained a lot about her – never staying in one place too long, the
lack of close friends or family, her distrust of people, keeping everyone at arms’ length, always being the aggressor, her ferocious ambition, her obsessive desire to remain independent and
unbeholden. He hadn’t quite been able to reconcile her frigid resistance to Will with her promiscuous, party-loving reputation, but now he clearly saw why she needed to remain in control. She
would never again give anyone any power over her destiny.

‘If it’s so painful for you, why do you dance?’ he asked quietly.

‘Because I have to. It’s my punishment, the price of my freedom – all the pain, the hours, the injuries . . . I welcome it. The suffering makes me feel better. Why
shouldn’t I suffer? My family did.’

She stared into the distance at the sooty mountains backlit by the orange sky.

‘But it means you’re . . . you’re torturing yourself with it.’

She shook her head. ‘No, not all the time. It is different on the stage to in the studio. It’s not punishment then. It’s a release. When there’s an audience and the
orchestra just keeps on playing, when they don’t stop every time I make a mistake or miss a beat, but just keep going and take me along with them, that’s when I feel at peace. I can
just . . . disappear into the music and forget what I did for a while.’ She stared at her drink. ‘It’s exhausting for me
not
to dance, actually.’

He thought back to her agitation with Violet during her convalescence. ‘That must have made your recuperation doubly hard.’

She shrugged.

‘Have you ever told anyone this before?’

‘No,’ she said, meeting his eyes. ‘Why do you think I’ve told you?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said haplessly. ‘Maybe because you’re never going to see me again?’

‘Aren’t I?’ she asked.

‘Well, I’m going back to England tomorrow and you’re – what? Where will you go? Off into the sunset with Paolo?’ He thought he’d choke on the words.

‘I’ll go back to the Bolshoi.’

‘To Russia?’

‘No. To the academy here. I’m in training.’

‘For what?’

‘Varna. It’s an international dancing competition. I have to win it. It’s the only way I’ll make Assoluta now.’

‘What’s Assoluta?’ he asked, baffled.

‘Prima Ballerina Assoluta. The untouchable status every ballerina aspires to. Only a few ballerinas in every generation are awarded the honour.’

‘And you’ve got to win this competition to get the title?’

‘Well, I’ve got to win the competition in order to get to La Scala, to get to the choreographer who’ll have the power and the desire to give me the title.’ Tanner looked
lost. ‘It’s a long story,’ she sighed.

‘Right. And once you’ve made Assoluta – what then? Carry on touring the world? You can’t keep running, you know.’ His eyes roamed her face and the sight of his
concern made her want to fall into his arms.

‘I may retire,’ she said. Then shrugged. ‘Or I may not. But it will mean that I’ve gone as far as I possibly can, and . . . while I can never justify the decision I made,
at least I can live in the knowledge that I took the opportunity ballet gave me to its fullest potential. My family’s suffering won’t have been
completely
for nothing. One of
us got away. I’ll never be free of my past, but I think this will be the best way for me to learn to live with it. It’s my redemption.’

Tanner stared at her, recognizing the weight of the history she carried about on those tiny shoulders. She was a fugitive from her own past, always on the run. He couldn’t bear to think of
her living with the burden of guilt, day after day, wrongly blaming herself for the sins of her father, as unable to stop dancing as the ballerina in that film, the one with the red shoes. He
desperately wanted to take her in his arms and slough the guilt off her, but he feared that if he started touching her he’d never be able to stop. All the feelings for her he’d tried to
deny were refusing to stay in their box. It had been so much easier when they hated each other, when he could transpose the passion into aggression. But now, with the barriers down . . .

He shook his head, conflicted. He couldn’t get involved with her. She was his boss’s son’s girlfriend now. That made her toxic. If he claimed her for his own, he’d lose
the client that was going to save his business. It would force him to go begging back to Silk, the man he held responsible for his father’s death, and he’d end up hating them both if he
did that.

And yet the thought of never seeing her again, of losing all contact with her . . .

He noticed Paolo approaching from the flank and felt panic rise up inside him, like bile. They were running out of time.

‘You know, seeing as we’re friends now,’ he began, ‘we should stay in touch. That is what friends do, after all.’

Her spirits slumped at his platonic tone. ‘It’s not much of a friendship,’ she said flatly.

‘It could be.’

‘We’ve been friends for only ten minutes.’

‘Half a day, actually. We started being friends when you thanked me earlier. And this time tomorrow, it’ll be a day and a half.’

‘This time tomorrow you’ll be halfway across the world, remember?’

‘Well, you know where I live,’ he shrugged. ‘At least I’ve
got
an address.’

Pia cracked a weary smile. ‘That is true.’

‘You should try getting one of those instead of a new boyfriend.’

‘You think so?’

‘Definitely,’ he said as Paolo reached her, running an arm round her waist and kissing her on the shoulder.

‘Hey, baby,’ he slurred. ‘Why are you standing here talking to him all night? You’ve been driving me crazy standing here and ignoring me. I give in, you win.’

Pia raised her eyebrows, unimpressed. She’d forgotten all about him.

‘Look, they’re lighting the candles. Quick, take one and make a wish.’ He reached down and picked up a couple of the floating lanterns. ‘Go on,’ he grinned.
‘Make a wish.’

He lit his candle and closed his eyes, releasing it into the night sky, like a dove. ‘Can you guess what I wished for?’

Tanner had to fight the urge to deck him.

‘Go on, your turn.’

Pia closed her eyes and made her wish. Tanner watched her lips move, like a little girl learning to read. She opened her hand and the lantern floated dreamily away, along with the thousands of
others that were heading for the vaulted star-studded sky. She looked over at Tanner.

‘Come on, baby, let’s go make up,’ Paolo whispered not very quietly in her ear.

Tanner swallowed hard, but he gave away nothing. How could he? There was nothing he could do. He coughed and looked away.

‘Why not?’ she said, looking at his set jaw.

Tanner looked back at her. ‘Pia, are you sure you . . . uh . . . ?’ His voice trailed off. He glanced at Paolo, who had screwed his eyes into lasers and was staring at him hatefully,
full of drink and just gunning for an excuse to lay into the man who’d been chatting up his girlfriend all night.

‘Nothing,’ he said finally. ‘It was good chatting with you.’

‘Chatting,’ she echoed blankly, and he thought he saw a dullness come into her eyes. ‘Yes. It was.’ She looked at him for a long moment. ‘Well . . . if I’m
ever in England, I’ll be sure to look you up,’ she said lightly.

If.

Tanner nodded and watched her go, the folds of her skirt bouncing jauntily around the butt she’d so insistently pressed into his groin that very afternoon. He felt his heart plummet to his
boots at the prospect of never seeing her again. Suddenly that two-letter word – ‘If’ – seemed like the biggest word in the English language.

‘Are y’awake?’ Tony whispered into her ear, sliding under the blankets and wrapping his cold body around hers. There was no central heating in the old cottage
but, even though it was the middle of July, the fire still crackled brightly across the room.

‘Well, I am now,’ Sophie mumbled into the wall, flinching beneath his cool touch. ‘What time is it?’

‘Late,’ he murmured, feeling her warmth seep into him, inhaling the smell of her hair on his pillow. ‘But I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said, nuzzling into
the crook of her shoulder, his hand beginning to roam up her taut tummy towards her breasts. He liked the feel of them, the way they moulded to his touch, responded to his mouth. He rolled her onto
her back.

She looked up at him sleepily. ‘It went well, then?’ she smiled, corkscrews of hair obscuring her vision. The Brazilian perm had almost given up the fight now and her ringlets were
asserting themselves more strongly each day. He preferred her hair like that anyway. He could imagine how she’d looked as a little girl growing up here. That super-sleek city look she’d
been wearing when she arrived was too groomed for walks in the fields and sex in the hay. It was like someone coming for dinner but keeping their coat on; he thought she might just get up one day,
and leave – good to go.

‘Better than well. I’ve been offered a contract,’ he said, walking his fingers back down, down, all the way down between her legs.

Sophie gasped with delight on both counts. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, instantly awake, lacing her arms around his neck, pulling him down to kiss her. He tasted salty, of beer and
peanuts, but she liked it. ‘It’s a two-album deal –’ he said, in between kisses – ‘I’ve got to record it . . . in Dublin . . . But if that does all right .
. . who knows? . . . Madison Square Garden, here I come . . .’