Chapter Sixteen
Chapter
Sixteen
“This really is the most gorgeous of rooms.” Marina sighs wistfully when I reluctantly join them in the ballroom a few minutes later.
She holds her arms out and closes her eyes. “Dance with me, Arthur Elliott.”
The look of panic he sends me shouts, “Help me, Melody,” so loudly that I’m surprised I can’t hear him. He’s frozen to the spot and Marina opens one eye and eyeballs him sharply.
“What are you waiting for?” she snaps. “Music? I’ll sing if it helps. We can waltz.”
“It doesn’t help,” he whispers hoarsely.
She opens both of her eyes and puts her hands on her hips.
“Artie, there’s going to be a ball in here on Saturday evening and we’ll be guests of honor because Melody is going to send those ghosts into never-never land and be the hero of the hour.
If you’re lucky, you might be able to waltz Hells Bells around this very dance floor. Won’t you be glad you practiced then?”
He looks conflicted, because I’m sure that somewhere in his head he’s already imagined tripping the light fantastic with Hells Bells on Saturday night.
The difference between imagination and reality has never been starker.
In the end, Artie does what he always does: exactly what Marina tells him.
Stepping forward, he places an uncertain hand into her outstretched one and the other stiffly on her waist. He’s standing so far away from her that his arms are at full stretch.
“Have you ever waltzed before?” she yells.
He flinches. “No. Why are you shouting?”
“Because you’re standing so far away you’re practically in Wales!
Get over here and stop pratting about.” She hauls him inward a few feet until he’s standing ramrod-straight in front of her.
I wonder why she’s doing this; she can’t really be that desperate for Artie to waltz her around the ballroom.
“Right. Now, listen to me and do exactly as I say. Melody, can you please clap out a waltz for us to follow?” She looks at me as if I’m supposed to know what the frig a waltz sounds like.
“Er, no?”
She huffs her fringe out of her eyes and demonstrates. “For God’s sake! Am I the only one around here who watches Strictly? Listen and repeat after me. One, two, three. One, two, three. Like that.”
“Got it. Count to three. I think even I can manage that.”
Marina scowls at me. “With rhythm, Melody. With rhythm.”
I clap out the beat like a performing sea lion and she narrows her eyes at me suspiciously without comment.
“Okay, Artie. Lead me off.”
His eyes are wide as dinner plates and a bead of sweat drips from his hairline into his eyebrow.
“Fine, I’ll lead,” Marina sighs, resigned, and with that she starts dragging him around the room.
“Clap, Melody! Clap!” She has to prompt me in between shouting out instructions at Artie, because I’m too busy laughing at their clumsy dancing to remember what I’m supposed to be doing.
And suddenly I know. I know exactly why Marina is forcing Artie into waltzing stiffly around the room with her.
It’s for me. She knows how much I don’t want to hang around in here waiting for Britannia’s macabre aerial show to begin, so she’s taking my mind off it by turning herself into my very own comedic warm-up act.
I don’t know what I did in a past life to deserve a best friend like Marina Malone in this one, but it must have been something pretty damn magnificent.
I start to clap. If Marina and Artie can waltz for me, then the least I can do is give them a beat to follow.
“I do believe you’re getting the hang of this, Artie Elliott!
” Marina laughs with delight. To give him credit, he does seem to have mastered the basics, as long as you ignore the fact that he’s scowling with concentration and clearly counting under his breath.
I mean, he’s never going to give Bruno Tonioli a run for his money, but he could probably make it around the floor at a pensioners’ tea dance without breaking anyone’s toes.
“What’s this, auditions for Billy Elliot?”
We all stop, as if we’re playing musical chairs and someone pressed the pause button, and then I spin slowly and eyeball Leo.
“Can I help you with something?”
If I didn’t know him better, I’d describe the look that momentarily crosses his face as vulnerable. “Are you waiting for Britannia to perform?”
I don’t especially want him to watch it with me. I need to concentrate, and given how he’s feeling about Britannia at the moment, I don’t have time to hold his hand and rub his back through it.
“Not exactly, but if they show up, I’m here and I’ll watch closely.” I’m hoping that he gets the message and leaves, but he doesn’t.
He heads further into the room instead and sits on one of the high-backed chairs set around the walls.
“Then I’ll wait too.”
I glance toward the door. “Where’s Nikki and Vikki?”
“With Lois and Barty back in the reception hall. I’d rather them not be here for this, to be honest. They’re…easily disturbed by my emotions, shall we say.”
I mull that over. I’m not entirely convinced that they’re particularly useful to him in any capacity besides making it appear as if he’s constantly surrounded by his adoring fan club.
They flap and they fawn, but I’ve never seen either of them wield a notebook or pen.
On the other hand, they certainly have his interests at heart; they’re sort of like his occasionally lethal kittens.
Marina and Artie have given up on the waltz and she’s adopted something more like the march, all the way across the ballroom to Leo.
“You can’t stay in here if you’re likely to lose your shit, knobchops. You’ll distract Melody while she’s working.”
I highly doubt anyone’s ever called Leo knobchops before, not to his face, anyway. He looks deeply affronted, so I step forward and lay my hand on Marina’s arm to smooth the waters.
“It’s okay, Marina, he can stay. He might be helpful, an extra set of eyes and all that.”
She squints at him menacingly and then forks her fingers quickly toward her own eyes and then at his.
We’re saved from having to keep this not very passive but really rather aggressive conversation going by the sudden appearance of Britannia Lovell among the chandeliers over our heads. I scan the ceilings and see Dino is here too, over on the far side of the room.
“They’re here,” I whisper, and Artie discreetly reaches for his notebook and pen from the back pocket of his jeans while Marina pulls her phone from inside her bra and clicks record.
They have different styles, these two, but they’re both ready to help me capture as much detail as possible for us to pore over afterward.
They’re limited, of course; they can only see and hear things through my eyes and ears, and unusually in this instance, Leo’s too.
Leo is out of his chair, his eyes trained on Britannia as she begins to perform.
“She’s there.” I point out Britannia for Artie and Marina so we can reimagine it later from Marina’s video footage. “And Dino is at the other end.” I watch, enthralled, as Britannia’s performance begins.
“She’s laughing,” Leo murmurs beside me. “How can she laugh when she knows what’s coming?” He sounds like a little boy lost.
“I should think she’s grown pretty accustomed to it after all of these years,” I say. “She doesn’t feel any pain.”
We watch her closely as she swings with effortless grace. “She looks more like an exotic bird than a woman,” I say. “Free-falling. Swooping.” I follow her looping progress with my outstretched hand, sketching her movements in the air for Marina and Artie.
I must look as if I’m conducting an invisible orchestra; the performance is certainly enthralling enough to warrant musical accompaniment.
If I were conducting a big band, I think they’d be playing something hauntingly beautiful, perhaps with a menacing, portentous underscore to herald the upcoming shift of mood.
There’s a jaunty air of carnival, of sickly sweet cotton candy and poisoned toffee apples, a sense of euphoria walking hand in hand with darkness that has me clammy and laying my hand over my racing heart.
“It’s not the same watching it when you know how it ends,” I murmur.
“Remember to watch the ropes. Look out for fraying, signs of tampering, anything suspicious.” Marina is my quiet prompt to stay focused, because she knows that if I don’t, then I’ll have to do this again until I’m satisfied that I haven’t missed something crucial.
It’s difficult to know if Britannia is even aware of our presence. I guess she must be, realistically, but she seems so in the moment, so at one with Dino and the trapeze, ethereal and otherworldly and magical, that she’s in another place entirely.
“She looks like an angel,” Leo breathes. “Doesn’t she?”
It’s awkward, really, listening to my ex turn himself inside out with admiration for another woman, even if she is long dead.
I briefly consider admiring Dino’s Lycra-clad package, tit for tat, but actually I’m more saddened than I am angered, because Leo seems genuinely unable to hold back either his words or his thoughts.
He’s as swept away by the performance as the performers themselves are, leaving me to do the heavy lifting when it comes to looking for clues.
I walk slowly into the center of the ballroom, and high above me, Britannia steps inside her hoop and begins to twirl. I watch her from every angle, narrating the scene for the purpose of the video as I go.
“It’s soon,” I breathe. “It’s going to happen soon.”
Dino has moved across into position and I can see the trapeze in his hands as he prepares to toss it out toward Britannia. I make a dash because I want to get a look at the ropes before he lets go, but I’m a fraction too late to get a clear view.
“Crap it.” I curse myself for being too slow, but then I gasp, because as I’m watching the empty trapeze swing overhead, I run my eyes up the length of the ropes and I’m almost sure I can see fraying about halfway up.
I cry out, “Stop!” a fraction of a moment before Britannia reaches out to grab the ill-fated swing, but it is as if she cannot hear me, because she’s smiling, wide and triumphant, ready for her final flight that will bring the house down.
It doesn’t, of course. It brings Britannia down, hurtling, screaming, smashing to the floor in a jumble of bones and blood-soaked rhinestones.
Leo is beside me, on his knees, and now Dino is here too, his chest heaving as he gathers Britannia into his arms.
Just like the last time, Britannia opens her eyes, only this time she doesn’t look at me. She only has eyes for Leo.
“I wish it didn’t always have to end like this,” she breathes, blinking blood from her eyelashes.
Leo reaches out and desperately tries to clutch her red-smeared hands as they fade, as if he can save her, or comfort her at least. And then both Britannia and Dino are gone, leaving us silent and shell-shocked, even though we knew what was coming.
Leo holds his head in his hands and I nod discreetly to Marina and Artie to head on out and leave us alone for a couple of minutes.
When we’re alone, I kneel beside Leo and smooth my hand down the back of his dipped head. His hair is as warm and slippery thick as I remember it and I soothe him for a slow minute while he gathers himself.
“Okay?”
He nods, then shakes his head with a tiny, helpless shrug. “Why? Why does she keep performing over and over, when she knows how it ends?”
It’s a question I’ve pondered too. “The ride must be worth the fall,” I say softly, and then he looks up at me and I inhale sharply with shock.
“Leo…” I reach for his hands and turn them palms up and he sees what has me so rattled. His hands and face are covered in Britannia’s blood.