Chapter 41
THE FLATMATE
Each of my Cinderella manèges pushed my lungs to their limit, but the applause and the orchestra drowned out my recovery, and I successfully stayed upright, albeit with tilted vision.
Getting through two laps of pirouettes around the stage made my thirty-two-count cha?né turns in Nutcracker rehearsals easier by comparison, although my long-awaited role as the Sugar Plum Fairy still called for perfection in every phrase.
I tried to embody Sander’s lightness, to make my landings as soft as the chimes from the celesta in the orchestra pit, which I had to strain to hear upstage.
After our first performance of the run, when Sander and I met in the dressing room corridor to debrief and brush glitter off each other’s hair, he asked if I had any plans for Sunday night.
‘Writing Christmas cards and having a long soak in the bath, probably. Why?’
‘My flatmate has kindly offered to host a small birthday celebration for me. Would you like to come?’
‘So you do have a birthday! I didn’t know you were born in winter. Or that you had a flatmate.’
‘He is my oldest friend. But not in ballet, so…’ He crisscrossed his hands back and forth: Never the twain have met.
Which is how, at last, we got to see where Sander lived. When Jamie and I met up outside Kentish Town station, he couldn’t help but point out that Hampstead Heath was less than thirty minutes’ walk up the road.
‘I still think it’s a bit of an oddball move to traipse around the brush so close to sunset, but hey, that’s just me.’
‘No longer a believer in bisexuals, are we?’ I countered.
‘Still invested in the answer either way, are we?’
Touché.
The ground-floor flat was spacious, half a dozen conversations bouncing off the high Victorian ceilings, and Christmas lights were strung across enormous windows.
Sander brought me into the kitchen, where a bald man who could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty years old was ladling mulled wine into plastic glasses.
‘My flatmate and oldest friend: Glen.’
‘Ah, you must be the famous Trix. Enchanté.’
‘A pleasure to finally meet you,’ I said, struck by his voice. Although much closer to the RP English that my parents had been raised to speak than Sander’s accent, it was cut with something else I couldn’t place. ‘I don’t believe any of us have been to your flat before.’
Sander shrugged and waved over Carolyn and Armand, who had just arrived with little Layla. ‘I thought, why not invite you all at same time?’
I scooted out of the narrow kitchen with my wine and got chatting with Isabel and Crystal, who had cracked one of the windows open to let their cigarette smoke out.
‘You’ve never been here before?’ Crystal asked me, her eyebrow quirking suggestively. ‘Really?’
‘Really, honestly, never.’ I’d given up many weeks ago on trying to stop the turn of the rumour mill, having received multiple variations on “I knew it” from my closest friends. Even Carolyn had accepted the idea as gospel.
‘I should have known it would be impossible not to,’ she’d said, kindly enough. ‘And it has given you this gorgeous new glow, onstage and off.’
‘Is he, you know, good?’ Violeta had asked.
‘As much stamina in bed as he has onstage?’ Grace had asked.
‘How does he measure up?’ Crystal had asked, bony elbow lightly jabbing me between the ribs.
Following Sander’s lead, I either shrugged or took a sip of whatever I had in my hand at the time. Insisting that the rumour wasn’t true, that Charlie and Isabel had made an Olympic long jump to their conclusions, only gave credence to it.
During one of our rehearsal breaks, I’d asked Sander if it bothered him as much as it was bothering me.
‘I’m used to other people’s speculations. This is just one more.’
That was all he had to say about it, leaving me with nothing to go on, as usual.
It would have hurt if the rumour bothered him, but at least it would have offered some clarity.
If he’d said he was flattered, shown something like swagger and pride, I would have been both thrilled and full of dread.
His casual refusal to lean one way or the other was somehow the best and worst option.
Still, it was one of the rare moments he showed that he was aware of his own elusiveness.
I’d seen it during our run of The Dream, on our continental summer tour, and when he kept me company during the Great Storm.
I played that night on a loop whenever I couldn’t sleep, conscious of the extra space in my bed, analysing our murmured conversation in the dark for clues.
There was a huge chunk of his life, his past, that he couldn’t bring himself to share with anyone.
Not even the person he spent the most time with.
Where that door was closed, however, there might be a small window in the form of Glen.
Charlie pulled Sander into a conversation about his latest idea for a new neoclassical piece (‘Right, so, hear me out: we hire a theremin player…’), and I sidled up to Glen by the radio, where Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” was thawing some of the chill out of the drizzly evening.
‘So how far back do you and Sander go?’
‘Oh, since we were children. We grew up together.’
‘How lovely. And, remind me, where was that again?’
‘Not far from here.’
That took me by surprise. ‘Here in Kentish Town? Or here in the UK?’
‘Yes. What about yourself, where did you grow up?’
Interesting. Very interesting. Given we’d only met an hour ago, I decided not to push. ‘Wimbledon. But my parents moved to South Kensington while I was boarding at ballet school. Are your parents based in London? Are Sander’s?’
‘His parents are very rural, always have been. Neither of them are great fans of cities, least of all London.’
‘Oh. I could never imagine being anywhere else. How long have you two lived here, then? Did you move to London at the same time?’
‘More or less. We have been here since…’ His gaze wandered to a wall calendar in the kitchen. ‘Goodness. Ten years already.’ He looked genuinely startled.
‘It hasn’t felt that long?’
‘Nowhere near that long.’ He blinked, then repeated how pleased he was to have finally met me in person. ‘Whenever I’m back in town, Sander has a fresh batch of praises to sing for you. Not that you would want to hear him sing. It’s enough to scare the foxes away.’
Across the room Sander turned his head and laughed. ‘You are no better!’
‘I am better,’ Glen told me conspiratorially.
I laughed, but was still processing two very different things, and felt unsure which to ask about first. ‘When you say “back in town”, do you mean from out of the city, or out of the country? Actually – so sorry, how rude of me, I haven’t even asked what it is you do for a living. ’
His mouth hung open a little, then closed, and I suddenly got the impression that he hadn’t meant for me to get this far in the conversation.
‘I am a buyer.’
‘For a department store?’
‘Not exactly. More bespoke. I…’ He gulped, as if I were forcing him to use a muscle he hadn’t exercised for a while.
‘I procure certain items for private clients. Where you might walk into Fortnum & Mason’s and buy something yourself, they send me to do it on their behalf.
Although, given how often you and Sander feature in the papers, I’m curious to know if you get recognised. You know, out in public.’
‘Every now and again. But only around Covent Garden. Without all the stage make-up I can walk around quite freely. Sander gets recognised much more often, for obvious reasons.’
‘Obvious reasons?’ The faintest note of anxiety.
As if the universe were trying to antagonise me, the song “Hungry Eyes” started playing from the stereo.
It had been all over the airwaves since Dirty Dancing came out in October – Fiona, Isabel, and I had seen it and, like everyone else, melted over the steamy romance between Johnny and Baby, culminating in that final lift with the beautiful lines.
‘Well…’ While Sander’s back was turned, I made a quick up and down gesture. ‘You know. He’s prolific. He always looks stunning. He’s the company’s star. He’s breathing new life into the old stories and the Dance Hall alike.’
Glen finished his cup of wine, then regarded me enigmatically enough that I wondered if it was a habit Sander had picked up from him, or the other way around. ‘How funny.’
‘What is?’
‘That’s almost word for word what he says about you.’