Cold Burn
Max and I walked forward to a standing ovation, our thin costumes cold with sweat.
We held on to each other, fighting the emotional and physical exhaustion that only a MacMillan ballet can bring.
I knelt in révérence to him, and to the audience, then stood back so that Max could bow alone.
I smiled for him, tears still smarting in my eyes from the final minutes of the death scene.
She wiped my make-up off. How shameful, how utterly mortifying, that she was mothering me when she had an actual child at home, a child whose bedtime she’d missed to watch our opening night.
‘Are there still people outside?’ I asked, while getting dressed with all the speed and mobility of an arthritic pensioner.
‘It’s rammed.’
‘Oh God.’ My throat burned. ‘I don’t think I can face them.’
‘Of course you can. You must. They’re waiting for you.’
‘They wanted to see us. They’ll want to know where he is, and I…’ My arms gestured to the expansive emptiness where answers should have been. ‘I don’t even know what they’ve been told.’
‘That Sander was indisposed. That is all they need to know. Come on now, before they lock the building with us still inside.’
When we eventually made it downstairs, Max was waiting at the corner just before the stage door, wearing a self-conscious smile. ‘I didn’t feel brave enough to go out there by myself.’
‘Oh, you… silly thing.’ I patted the back of his neck, feeling worse and better simultaneously. ‘Come on. Let’s act for a few minutes more.’
‘That’s the spirit.’ Carolyn’s face was already lifted by the smile she reserved for balletomanes and the press.
I have no memory of getting home. I must have taken a cab, because of all the opening night bouquets.
I didn’t read any of the cards. All I read, over and over again, was Sander’s note.
I smoothed it out on the kitchen counter at four o’clock in the morning, sleep refusing to come even after the post-show adrenaline had ebbed away.
S ’6 rep. A ’9
F ’7 I A
F ’8 II O1
F ’6 II No. 18 ￡ntr.
J ’7 TD
B pdd
x x x
The items looked like combinations to a safe, like wartime SOE codes, like abbreviations of names, like anything and nothing. Did that last word in the fourth item begin with a “￡” sign? Or was it an “E”?
I rested my head on folded hands, but no matter how long I looked away from it, the note stayed the same.
There was no reason to panic – to worry, yes, but not panic.
It was entirely possible that when I next walked into the Dance Hall, Sander would be there.
I’d scold him for scaring the living daylights out of everyone, most of all me, and he’d cradle my face and apologise and say, “You will not believe the story I have for you,” and in a matter of weeks it would be something to laugh about.
By half past five, I gave up on the thought of sleep and left my flat as soon as I knew the building would be open.