Chapter 55
ANY ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN
Time stopped in the worst way possible. The air had left me. There was nothing to breathe.
I had no idea what my uncle knew. If all he had extracted from Glen were my border crossings and nothing more, then I had to keep Trix safe. I could not let him see how important she was to me.
Through a single, forceful squeeze of her hand, I cast a spell as blunt and rudimentary as a conker falling to the earth: Move, and do not stop for me.
The effort of not watching her walk away almost made me weep.
They followed me past Frank, through the labyrinth of corridors, all the way up to the dressing room, in silence.
The only dancer still there was Stephen. He must have been doing extra drills in the studio – his cast’s stage call was the next day. My uncle and Glen were polite enough to him, but kept their spoken words to a minimum.
In a strange way, it was good that it was Stephen.
We were not close, and he did not seem eager to stick around and make small talk, as Charlie or Jamie would have done.
I fought the urge to pass him a farewell message for the rest of the company.
The number of things within my control was diminishing rapidly.
The fact that my uncle had even allowed me to lead them back here felt like a miracle, until I watched his gestures in the mirror.
Any attempt to explain will come to nothing.
Ah. So he was taunting me. An appetiser before the main course.
Still, I tried. My first attempt, written on a blank piece of paper, went nowhere – none of the words corresponded to what I was trying to say. Then, from a place of inspiration that might as well have been lunacy, I said to them, aloud:
‘There are still performances for the rest of the year. Guest runs. Charity galas. I must write out a list of roles which will need to be reassigned once I am gone. Names and scenes. Dates. That is all.’
My kin might not have understood love, but they valued etiquette. In concession, Uncle Wick gave Glen a hard stare, then jerked his head at the wall clock.
‘Y-you…’ Glen lost his nerve and let his hands speak for him instead: Five minutes.
I sweated through them all, until I had a shorthand list which would look mundane enough to them but meant everything to me, and, if she found it – I prayed to the stars that she would – to Trix.
As soon as I got up from the table, my uncle clamped his hand on my shoulder, his fury searing through my bones. He raised a hand to stop Glen from leaving with us.
You have one more task here. By way of demonstration, my uncle took a photograph of me from a corner of the mirror, one that George had taken of me and Mikhail Baryshnikov when we performed with the ABT in New York.
He crumpled it in his hand, then opened it to reveal nothing but dust. You may not return until his image…
and his “name”, he added, narrowing his eyes at me, have been erased from this heathen den.
As we walked through Covent Garden, I tried to look in as many windows as possible. Shopkeepers doing the last trade of the day. Friends clinking wine glasses. Bartenders shaking cocktails. A few people turned away from their cigarettes with a little gasp – ‘Oh! Was that Aleksander Sylvan?’
That was the last time I heard my name spoken aloud.