Chapter 4
Ava
I check the mirror. Even in the dark car, the flush on my face is obvious, and the corners of my mouth are still tipped upward.
If I walk into the flat like that, Nevin will know I wasn’t at physio this afternoon.
No, I need to look as if the Pilates reformer shredded my spirit, exhausted from hours of intrinsic footwork under Margot’s thumb.
Not beaming from two hours hiding in a cinema, munching popcorn with a stranger.
Nevin’s teammate, no less.
Ugh.
I finished my rehab block in the P-med suite at four and drove back to Stirling, hoping he would be there again.
How am I making an impossible situation even worse? What the hell is wrong with me?
I toss the phone onto the passenger seat. It lands face up on the worn fabric. My right wrist aches, but it’s a phantom sensation. I rub the skin there, right where the bone protrudes.
Coming home after the film last Tuesday was a nightmare.
When I got back, Nevin was waiting in the kitchen, polishing a wine glass with a cloth. Without even batting an eyelid, he kept rubbing at a smudge on the rim with calm precision.
‘You’re late.’ The words were level. No inflection at all.
‘I’m sorry.’
His gaze lifted. It travelled from my trainers to my face and stayed there, dissecting. A faint line appeared between his brows. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it.
‘Where the fuck were you, Ava?’
‘Nowhere. Driving.’
Then the glass shattered in the sink.
He turned and grabbed my wrist to hold me there. To make sure I listened. The clamp of his fingers cut off the blood.
‘Why do you lie to me? I only want to know you’re safe. I need to know you’re safe!’
As it turned out, he had driven all the way to the Tramway in Glasgow. He had brought flowers. Roses, the long-stemmed sort you see in films. He had made reservations at a posh bar in the Merchant City because he had planned to surprise me with a romantic evening.
And I wasn’t there.
He sat in the car park for an hour, watching every dancer leave, until the building went dark. Then he drove home to Stirling and waited. Cleaned up and rehearsed his questions.
A romantic gesture. That’s how he framed it. The roses wilted on the worktop while he held my wrist. Dead petals scattered across the granite, blood-red confetti for a party no one was having.
‘Ungrateful, stupid, lying bitch.’
I managed that night by dissolving. I let my shoulders drop, let the tears spill, told him I was struggling with the injury, the pressure, the fear. I assured him I didn’t want to burden him and that it was all too much. That was true.
The second I made myself small, the flip switched, and Nevin grew gentle.
The fury was replaced by suffocating sweetness.
He pulled me into his chest, stroked my hair, crooned that he would take care of everything, because I’m ‘unbelievably precious’ to him.
He said that there’s nothing more important to him than us.
Not sure that’s the case anymore. But it’s what he keeps saying.
I think Nevin loves a broken thing because it gives him something to glue together, which makes him feel useful and powerful.
It’s impossible for me to be the girlfriend who went to the cinema by herself.
That would imply independence – or disobedience, depending on your point of view.
I can only be the fragile creature who drove around aimlessly because she couldn’t bear to tell him she had been sidelined.
I have to let the pain in my foot be the headline act.
I probably should have ended it in August.
We were arguing about a dress he thought was too low-cut and too tight for his cousin’s daughter’s christening. He didn’t yell; he went stone-cold and didn’t say one word to me for the entire day. At the end of which I stood in the hallway, keys in my palm, and thought about walking away.
I could have marched out. A clean break.
But clean breaks are for people with somewhere to land.
Laurel was already packed for Hong Kong.
Perhaps she would have stayed for me, but I would never do that to her.
And neither of my parents were an option.
I can’t live in Northern Ireland or Aberdeen and dance in Glasgow.
Not that I would ring them. The last thing I remember before they stopped pretending is Dad’s voice through the wall, going at Mum about the fees, the endless number of pointe shoes, the petrol.
I know the feeling. My credit card has been hitting its limit on a regular basis. And since the pay scale at Scottish Ballet leans more on prestige than pounds, I don’t have enough savings for a large deposit, let alone a hotel bill.
Nevin offered me stability: a full fridge, being able to turn the heating on whenever I like, and someone else paying the council tax. So I stayed and told myself that this, too, shall pass.
What the hell am I still doing here?
I should put the car in gear and navigate the roundabouts to Nevin’s flat. Our flat.
And yet I don’t start the car.
The dashboard clock says 19:14. If I drive fast, I can be there in seven. If I drive slowly, I can buy myself ten more minutes of oxygen.
God, I’m hard work. I know I am. I’m a collection of neuroses. My schedule is antisocial, and I’m often too tired for sex. Who else signs up for that?
And… He tries.
When I had a panic attack after the audition in October, Nevin found me hyperventilating outside and didn’t tell me to calm down. He held me, bought me a brownie, and spent the evening on the sofa watching three hours of documentaries, massaging my feet.
That version of him exists. It surfaces after every storm, tender and exhausted, as if the rage costs him too. It’s episodic, like the weather.
I let out a rough laugh. Love isn’t like the fairy tale I just paid to watch. It’s a task and constant compromise. Especially when the other person is so generous. Nevin organises our life. He owns the flat; he pays the bills.
Relationships with artists and athletes are difficult by nature, I suppose. And you don’t throw away a contract because the rehearsals are gruelling. You work through the cramps. Everything worthwhile has a cost.
My thumb traces the rim of the steering wheel.
Why did I come back here tonight?
To thank him. That’s the script I rehearsed.
I wanted to thank the nice wall of a man for not blowing my cover last week.
Bear – I still don’t remember his real name, and the shame of that heats my neck – didn’t ask for anything.
He didn’t demand I explain the tears or the limp.
He offered me a snack and insulted a fictional prince to make me smile.
In screen three, I wasn’t an injured ballet dancer, or a disappointing girlfriend, or a negligible daughter. I wasn’t too much or not enough. Bear held the popcorn bucket out, as if it were the most common thing in the world to feed the stray next to you.
And he kept my secret.
That’s the part that snags. Athletes talk.
Changing rooms are echo chambers for gossip.
But he didn’t say a word. Perhaps he didn’t care enough to mention it.
Or he saw the panic in my eyes last week – the terror of being found out and having to deal with the consequences – and decided not to be the reason for trouble.
A giggle bubbles up. I actually laughed today. More than once. I forgot I could do that.
A soft knock on the window.
My spine snaps straight, and the air punches out of my lungs in one sharp gasp. For one hideous second, I’m back in the kitchen, pressed against the worktop.
Then I turn my head.
Red beard. Broad shoulders blocking out the orange lamplight. Green-brown eyes, the shade of moss after rain. It’s him, stooped almost double to peer through the glass. One massive palm raised in apology, a crooked grin on his lips.
My lungs unlock. Air rushes in, and with it, a flood of relief. I fumble for the crank. The pane jerks down in fits and starts, letting in a cold November breeze.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘You didn’t.’ My fingers still tremble against my thighs.
One eyebrow lifts. He doesn’t call me on it. Instead, he holds up a coil of red wool. ‘You left this under your seat. Took me a minute to find your car.’
My scarf. The one Mum sent from Ballyclare last Christmas. I hadn’t even noticed that I left it.
‘Oh.’ I reach through the gap and take it from him. ‘Thanks. I didn’t… Thanks.’
He is close enough that I catch his scent. Warm cedar and washing powder, clean and uncomplicated. The lamplight turns his hair into copper wire. Beard trimmed close enough to show the jaw underneath. My stomach does a weird flip.
Okay. He is fit. So what?
‘You okay there?’
‘Fine. Only a bit jumpy.’ I wind the scarf around my neck. ‘Long day.’
‘Know the feeling.’ He stands there with his fists shoved into his pockets, breath misting in the cold, and waits.
My ribcage eases by another notch. Something about him pulls at the air, a gravity that slows everything down.
‘I realised,’ I say, ‘I don’t actually know your name. Your real one. If you want to share it.’
‘Scott.’ A pause. ‘Scottie, if you’re being friendly. Kerr, if you’re about to blow a whistle and tell me I’m offside.’
‘Scottie. A bit dainty, isn’t it? For a man of your dimensions, I mean.’
‘Oi. It’s a solid Scottish name. And I’ve yet to meet anyone brave enough to call me dainty to my face.’
‘You just did. I’m Ava. MacKinney.’
‘Nice to meet you properly, Ava.’ A smirk slid up one half of his face. ‘Though I’ll probably still call you Marzipan.’
‘Fair enough.’ My cheeks burn from grinning.
His eyes cut to the cinema for a half-second, then return to me. ‘Look, I’ve got Digestives in the car. Proper ones. You still hungry?’
Biscuits in a car park with a man built like a wardrobe. Why am I so tempted?
‘Are you trying to lure me into your van with sweeties?’
‘It’s not a van. It’s an Audi. And if I were luring you anywhere, which I’m not, I’d use something a lot more enticing than a McVitie’s.’
My stomach growls audibly. That traitor. ‘I—’
Then my mobile’s ringtone slices through the moment. Nevin’s face blazes across the screen, face-up on the passenger seat where I tossed it.
Scottie’s gaze drops to the phone. There’s a flicker behind those loch-green eyes, quick as a fish darting under the surface, gone before I can name it.
‘You probably should get that.’
‘I probably should.’ I don’t move as the phone keeps screaming.
‘Bye, Ava.’
‘Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Bye. Thank you, I mean it.’
He steps from the window, giving me space I didn’t ask for but need. ‘See you around.’
I snatch the phone from the seat, jab the green button, and press it to my ear, cranking the window up with my other.
‘Hi, the physio ran late—’
Nevin’s voice cuts through, but I’m barely listening.
I check the mirror again. My eyes are too bright.
Too alive. I need to kill that before I get home.
So after I hang up, I grind my knuckles into my sockets again, smearing the mascara, dragging the skin down until I appear haggard.
Pain is the only currency Nevin accepts without question.
If I seem broken, he’ll be soft. If I seem happy, he’ll be suspicious.
And I look way too happy for someone whose career is hanging on by a silk thread.
In the rear-view mirror, Scottie Kerr stands under that sputtering lamp, hands in his pockets. A solid hill in a hoodie with all this quiet mass the rest of the world has to bend around.
I turn the key. Time to go back on stage.