Chapter 62
GET IT IN WRITING
Trix, you’re starting to scare us.’ Fiona half-rose from her chair but couldn’t quite bring herself to follow my slow circles around the meeting room. I’d never been in here before, and was unused to having a view directly over Bow Street. Even the afternoon sunbeams looked strange.
‘Have you eaten today? You look…’ Jamie might have spent the rest of the hour grasping for a tactful word if not for a knock at the door.
Jackie entered, gestured for our three guests to follow, then poured them each a glass of sparkling water. Their eyes immediately landed on the thick manila envelope in the middle of the table.
‘Will you need anything else?’ Jackie asked, one foot already on the other side of the threshold, clearly unsettled by the energy in the room.
‘I think we’re all right here, thanks, Jackie,’ Charlie said, doing his best to look relaxed. She clicked the door shut.
‘Please, sit.’ I remained standing because there weren’t enough chairs to go around, but also because I couldn’t bear to be still. ‘Thank you all for taking the time to meet with us.’
I briefly introduced Fiona, Charlie, and Jamie to the three critics who had watched us countless times from the red velvet stalls.
‘It’s not every day that the BCBC’s prima ballerina rings the switchboard and asks for me personally,’ Bill Gordon said. ‘Then I rock up and find these two on the front stoop? Consider me intrigued.’
I braced a hand on the back of Fiona’s chair and controlled my breath. ‘All three of you reviewed Romeo and Juliet on opening night.’
‘We did indeed.’ Erin raised an eyebrow in Terry’s direction. ‘You spilled vodka over my notes during the interval.’
‘I am no saboteur,’ Terry said coolly, bubbles of water gleaming in his silver beard as he drained his glass. ‘Only irredeemably clumsy.’
‘I presume you haven’t summoned us here with your fellow dancers as witnesses because all three of us inadvertently wrote something libellous?’ Bill said, looking around the room as if expecting to spot a BCBC solicitor in the corner.
My fingers tightened around the chair. ‘Who did I dance with?’
Fiona steepled her fingers together and pressed her head into them. ‘Trix, really…’
‘Who was my Romeo?’ I said, louder.
The critics glanced at one another, silently conferring, in mild disbelief that I’d interrupted their day to ask such an easy question.
‘Well, Max Breton,’ Erin said, trying to read my detached expression. ‘Obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ I echoed. ‘But who did he replace?’
Jamie sighed through his nose.
‘Replace?’ Terry said. ‘I thought Max had always been your Romeo for this run. A double debut.’
‘It was supposed to be Aleksander Sylvan. It was always supposed to be Sander.’
The silence between the critics acquired a new weight. Erin glanced at the manila envelope again, eyes narrowed.
‘Aleksander… Sylvan? Should that name mean something to us?’
‘A guest principal?’ Terry suggested.
My friends shifted in their chairs, their second-hand embarrassment building like kettle steam. I, on the other hand, was perfectly calm. This was the response I’d prepared myself for, a hit I could take. It was the next step that made me feel dizzy with nerves.
I leaned into the middle of the table, opened the envelope, and slid out my four-day-old copies of Danseuse, The Thames Horizon, and The Greater London Gazette. The wait for them to read their respective reviews was intolerable.
Erin looked up. ‘My God. Aleksander Sylvan.’
‘Sylvan!’ Bill palmed his brow. ‘Of course!’
‘How did his name escape all three of us?’ Terry asked, the hint of a smile fading as soon as he saw the rest of our expressions. ‘Patricia, are you well? You look like you’re about to be sick.’
‘Wait wait wait, give me that,’ Charlie said, snatching The Greater London Gazette from across the table, Fiona doing the same with Danseuse. Jamie leaned over one, then another, making his way around the table. Sander’s name echoed in faint whispers like an invocation.
I took Jamie’s vacated chair and withdrew the rest of the envelope’s contents: copies of performance shots and backstage snaps, collected from Carolyn and Armand’s house. Everyone’s eyes widened, the recognition strengthening.
Jamie went through the photos like a card deck, abandoning thoughts while they were still forming. ‘But… but that’s not… but I don’t… how could I have—?’
‘Trix…’ Fiona took my arm and stared at it, questioning what was there, what else might be hidden. There was horror in her eyes, and shame in her voice. ‘How did we forget him?’
‘You’re the only one who didn’t,’ Charlie said to me, rising from the table with The Greater London Gazette still in hand. ‘How did you remember? What the fuck is going on?’
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, the critics returned from the BCBC’s admin office, having conducted telephone surveys of their culture desk colleagues. They all took their seats as if they’d narrowly survived a small explosion.
‘No memory of him whatsoever,’ Erin confirmed. ‘Not until I told them to go and look through the back issues. Were your teams the same?’
Bill and Terry nodded, dazed.
Erin turned to me. ‘But I don’t understand. I simply do not understand how—’ Her gaze landed on the three pieces of A5 in my hands. ‘What’s that?’
I had shown the original note to Fiona, and reminded Charlie and Jamie that they’d seen it before.
‘Something I can’t make sense of on my own.’ I passed the photocopies across the table. ‘I want you each to read it and tell me if anything on the list, anything at all, means something to you.’
‘Aleksander wrote this?’ Erin asked.
Terry held the note up to a stray sunbeam. ‘I’d no idea his handwriting was so dreadful.’
‘I know.’ I laughed, hollow. ‘Well… does it mean anything? To any of you?’
‘Is that an “N” or a “V”?’ Bill muttered.
‘Is that a pound sign?’ Terry asked.
‘I thought it was a list of reminders,’ Charlie said. ‘Only because I keep endless lists like that for stage directions. You know: upstage left enter, dagger, garland, wine cup, that sort of thing.’
‘But why address it to Trix?’ Jamie pointed out.
‘Oh, this is a note for you?’ Erin said. ‘Perhaps that explains why you’re the only one who remembered him while the rest of us forgot.’
‘Explain?’ Bill scoffed, the sound at odds with his expression. ‘What do you mean explain? This is the very definition of “inexplicable”.’
‘That’s exactly where we are,’ I said, relieved to voice some of the thoughts that had been swirling in my head. ‘There has always been something inexplicable about Sander, behind his eyes, around the edges.’
Something not of this world. But I couldn’t bring myself to share that one just yet.
‘Have you reported this to the police?’ Bill asked, clinging to the familiar.
‘Reported what?’ Charlie said. ‘A missing person who, as far as anyone outside this room is concerned, doesn’t exist?’
‘Have you spoken to any other reviewers, Trix?’ Fiona asked. ‘The Times? The Observer? Anyone whose reviews came out later in the week?’
I had. Half a dozen telephone calls from my kitchen; half a dozen apologies for cryptic questions and wasted time.
‘There were eight other critics in the audience on opening night, yet none of them mentioned Sander’s absence in their reviews. You’re the only ones. Can you tell us exactly what happened on Tuesday night, from the moment you arrived at the Dance Hall to the moment you left?’
They obliged. We listened out for recollections of anyone suspicious among the audience, the front of house staff, the pedestrians on Bow Street.
But, Terry spilling vodka on Erin’s notes aside, they’d had two perfectly ordinary intervals, noticed nothing unusual about the drinks or the colour of the sky through the Conservatory ceiling.
Nothing to indicate a shift in the cosmos.
‘And after the performance?’ I asked, hope slipping away. ‘Did you talk to anyone in the bar, the lobby? By the stage door? Or did you go straight home?’
‘None of the above,’ Erin said. ‘I went back to the office.’
‘As did we,’ Bill said. ‘Terry and I share a building just off the Strand. Fifth floor versus third.’
‘One of many reasons why Covent Garden Dance Hall is our favourite venue: the short commute.’
‘You went back to work?’ Charlie said. ‘I didn’t know arts desks had night shifts.’
‘Unofficially.’ Bill moved the various publications around the table, separating them out. ‘The paper’s open for all the other sections that do, so we can come and go as needed.’
‘Our chief likes a next-day review as much as yours.’ Terry nodded at him, before looking back to me. ‘All copy has to be filed before midnight, when we go to press.’
The word “midnight” sent a chill through me. It carried a new shadow. I looked questioningly at Erin.
‘The magazine always goes to print mid-month. Your Romeo and Juliet opening night might not have made our deadline if I weren’t such a night owl myself. I was determined to file just before the cut-off at midnight. A good BCBC review always makes Danseuse readers happy.’
‘You all filed your copy before midnight. You wrote up your reviews and sent them off… before midnight.’ I took Sander’s original note from my pocket and turned it over in my hand. ‘Before midnight on the first night of a new run.’
‘Almost sounds like a prophecy, when you put it like that,’ Jamie said in a half-hearted reach for levity.
‘Not the word I would use.’ My gaze shifted to Bill as he reacted to the time on the wall clock.
‘I have another meeting across town. Nothing quite like… this.’ He was slow to stand, patting his pockets down as if he might have emptied them all at some point without realising. ‘Was there anything else, Patricia? I’m sorry not to have been more helpful.’
‘That couldn’t be further from the truth. You have no idea how helpful you’ve been. All of you. Really. Before you leave, though – my telephone number is on the back of your photocopies. If you think of anything, no matter how insignificant or far-fetched, please give me a ring.’
‘I will. Thank you,’ he added reflexively, although neither of us could have articulated what there was to be thankful for.
The three of them had probably walked in expecting a priceless bit of BCBC insider gossip and a negotiation about press embargos.
Instead, they were walking away unable to fully trust their own memories.
Once they left, the rest of us sought something to do with our hands – Charlie stacked the water glasses, Fiona pushed the chairs in, Jamie gathered up the reviews and photographs, and I slotted them back into the manila envelope, saving three shots where Sander’s face was in clear view: Basilio in Don Quixote Act III, Des Grieux in Manon Act I, and Siegfried in Swan Lake Act I.
Three shots where Fiona, Jamie, or Charlie shared the frame with him.
‘Hold on to these. In case…’
‘In case we forget again?’
‘Don’t worry, Trix.’ Jamie put a hand on my back. ‘We won’t. I don’t know who or what made us forget him in the first place, but ten years of dancing together – that knowledge isn’t going away again without a fight.’
I gently pushed the photo towards his chest. ‘Keep it anyway. Keep it in your locker here. Not at home, where it might be tidied away.’
Charlie exhaled gruffly, tapping his photo as if he could make Sander leap out of it and into the room with us. ‘It’s a good thing you arranged this on our day off. I don’t know how I would have gone into an afternoon of rehearsals, and then R & J, with this hanging over me.’
I sighed. ‘You already have. Twice.’
All of them froze. Fiona stared at every corner of the room as if the entire building were haunted, then at me.
‘We’ve forgotten him twice?’
‘I showed you the newspapers, you remembered, and then within hours you’d forgotten again,’ I said, all my weariness surfacing. ‘But photographs seem to help. His name in print helps. An echo, in lieu of the real… the real…’
Three sets of arms encircled me as words melted into tears. Three promises that everything would be all right, that we would find a way through this. Whatever this was.