Too Beautiful to Dance Read online

  For the party tonight the girls had insisted she at least make an effort to look glamorous. They had swept her off to a fashionable department store in the West End, a place Sara would normally avoid like the plague, where the price tags made her blanch – how could anyone justify spending so much on a dress? The rake-thin assistant, who existed presumably entirely upon pine kernels, looked her up and down with barely concealed disdain, swallowed bravely, and ushered her into a luxurious changing room, saying that she would bring her a selection of suitable dresses, although they didn’t have so much choice in her size. She then produced a series of insubstantial dresses in floating chiffon, designed for an anorexic sixteen-year-old, not a chubby middle-aged woman nearing fifty who did not feel it was fair to inflict the sight of her upper arms on the wider public.

  She could feel herself getting hotter and hotter as she tried on the dresses, and at one point became trapped trying to get a dress with a tight bustier-style top off, wedging her arms above her head as if about to dive into a swimming pool, and had to call the girls in for help. Emily looked at her in horror and said, ‘God, Mother, have you seen the size of your thighs? How can you bear it?’ Meanwhile Sara emitted muffled protests and implored them to tug, praying that the assistant didn’t pull the curtain aside at that precise moment to reveal her big pants and dimpled thighs to the entire floor.

  Eventually the girls pronounced one bearable. It was made of black silk, with a reasonably high neckline – Sara decided cleavage was a no-no with the crêpey skin dividing her breasts. The bodice was reasonably tight fitting without being too uncomfortably grippy, and it definitely made her look slimmer. The skirt flared out into a flattering, mid calf-length, and with heels she thought she would feel almost elegant.

  ‘Are you sure this isn’t a bit young for me?’ she asked, for reassurance, turning this way and that to see herself from all angles in the full-length mirror. Standing on tiptoe to simulate high heels, she twirled around and the silky skirt flared outwards.

  ‘Do not do that,’ Emily said, her head critically on one side. ‘Sumo-wrestler knees, Mother. Bad sight of the week. Keep them covered at all times. But, overall, it’s OK. I don’t think anyone will actually be frightened.’

  Lottie, much kinder, was sitting on the ornate changing-room chair trying not to laugh, composing her features into an expression of encouraging approval, thin legs crossed in skinny jeans.

  ‘It makes you look really nice,’ she said, nodding. ‘Honestly. You hardly look fat at all.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sara said.

  Of the two girls, Emily was most like Matt, in looks and personality. She’d recently finished a degree in journalism and was about to start work on a commercial radio station which was owned by a friend of Matt’s – although she flared up with rage if the word ‘nepotism’ was as much as breathed in her hearing.

  Lottie, three years younger, was currently on a gap year. She hadn’t done as well as she had hoped in her exams, and had been forced to take up a place at her second choice of university. It was a rather soulless, campus university in the Midlands and she’d been miserable there from day one. A friend suggested she come travelling with her to Thailand, and against their parental wishes she had chucked in the course after just three weeks and disappeared. Matt said she was a fool, but Sara said she was, after all, on the cusp of becoming an adult and she had to start making her own decisions, even if they were the wrong ones.

  Before the party, Lottie had been home from Thailand for just a week, and they were doing battle with university forms yet again, something which Sara had hoped had gone for ever. She was nagging her to get on with it, but you couldn’t push Lottie too far as she simply retreated and curled up within herself. She bruised, emotionally, far too easily – as a child she’d been constantly saving fledgling birds, baby mice and stunned hedgehogs from the side of the road, only to see most of them, inevitably, die, whereupon she cried heartbroken tears and buried them in shoeboxes packed with cotton wool. The garden in the house by the common was dotted with little crosses made from lolly sticks.

  ‘Tell me truthfully. Is this me?’ Sara asked, opening the door as Catherine arrived, half an hour earlier than the other guests. The dress had felt much tighter when she put it on tonight.

  ‘Heavens. A little – well,’ Catherine put her head on one side, composing her features, ‘It’s a little – funereal – but it suits you.’

  ‘Explain exactly how that is a compliment?’

  ‘It’s just not your normal kind of thing. But no. Honestly. It’s lovely. Very . . . slimming.’

  ‘Gee, thanks. You look amazing.’ She looked Catherine up and down. Catherine was wearing a skin-tight dark green satin sheath dress, and impossibly pointy black court shoes, more weapons than footwear.

  ‘I know,’ she grinned. ‘I might even pull tonight. I am on the lookout, between you and me, for a nice young man. Don’t care what he does – I just want to feel firm young flesh beside me.’ She shivered with pleasure. ‘You should hear what Alice says. You know she’s met a twenty-four-year-old guy at the gym? A musician – of course he’s after her money but apparently . . .’

  Sara shuddered, and held up a manicured hand. For the first time in years she had had a manicure yesterday, and kept glancing down, surprised, at her painted red nails. They did make her hands look more elegant. Perhaps she should look after herself a little more; the manicure and pedicure had been fun, although she’d been very embarrassed at how much dead skin had been rubbed off her feet. It was like descaling a kettle.

  ‘Spare me,’ she said. ‘I am too old for scurrilous tales.’

  ‘All night,’ Catherine replied, ignoring her. ‘At least FOUR times.’

  ‘I’d be so bored,’ Sara laughed, despite herself. ‘Wouldn’t you? And my back locks if I stay in one position for more than ten minutes, and I get dreadful pins and needles. I drive Matt mad tossing and turning all night. Anyway, who’s to say that we old married couples don’t have amazing all-night sex?’

  ‘Do you?’ Catherine asked, fascinated, following Sara into the hall and unwrapping her cashmere pashmina, while looking at herself appreciatively in the mirror.

  ‘You know perfectly well I wouldn’t tell you even if we did. I’ll hang that up for you. You don’t want to keep it on, do you?’

  ‘Nah. It’s like being wrapped in a horse blanket. Bloody things. At least you still have sex. Most of the long-term married people I know – and God knows, there aren’t all that many left – haven’t slept together for years. Chrissie says the nearest thing she gets to an orgasm these days is the new Boden catalogue hitting the doormat. She and Clive haven’t shagged in four years. She thinks it may well have dropped off.’

  ‘No Milo?’ Sara asked, diverting the subject. Catherine often told her far more than she needed to know about the sex lives of their friends, whom Sara then bumped into in Waitrose and thought, ‘Blimey’. Milo was Catherine’s only child, who had been invited because the girls thought he was so cute. He was currently doing nothing after his A levels, which he’d taken at an expensive boarding school, paid for by Catherine’s second ex-husband. He had done spectacularly badly and had recently announced he was starting a band rather than going to university. Catherine said so far this consisted of sleeping all day, strumming a few exhausted chords on his guitar, sitting on his bed wearing boxer shorts before pulling on the same clothes he had been wearing for a week and disappearing into the night, failing to return until the early hours. She only knew he was in the house, she claimed, by the empty Marmite jar on the kitchen table and the trail of toast crumbs leading to his bedroom. Emily had promised that if he did start a band, she’d try to get him some airplay on her radio station, maybe even an interview. Matt said it was highly unlikely, because he was usually too stoned to start a sentence, let along a band.

  Catherine doted on him, and Sara thought privately that she had spoilt him, allowing him to run wild and treating him less like a son than a
petted confidante. He was hilarious on the subject of his mother’s complicated and eyebrow-raising love life.

  ‘No, sorry. He had a better offer, some kind of heavy jamming and smoking session at a mate’s house.’

  ‘Don’t you mind?’ Sara said.

  Catherine smiled at her, pityingly. Sara had always been so naïve about these things.

  ‘My disapproval isn’t going to stop him, is it? They all smoke weed. He’ll grow out of it. Anyway, I’m hardly in a position to complain, am I?’

  ‘True.’ Sara disapproved deeply of her friend’s occasional cocaine habit, although Catherine claimed she now had it firmly under control.

  Catherine grinned at her. ‘You’re such a prude. Everyone does it. One day I just know you’re going to break out and do something outrageously wild. No one can be so perfectly behaved all the time.’ She glanced down with satisfaction at her flat stomach, encased in tight green satin. ‘This cost Maurice’s credit card over a thousand, I’m pleased to say,’ she said. ‘Roland Mouret,’ she added, inserting a cigarette into ruby red lips. ‘Thank God for my dear ex-husband and his flexible friend. Ha! That makes two little flexible friends he possesses. The only trouble is I cannot breathe. Don’t let me eat anything. Not even the teeniest weeniest nut. I sense that tonight I am going to meet a stunning new man.’

  ‘You know most people coming already,’ Sara pointed out. ‘I didn’t invite many of Matt’s work colleagues, because the list would have been endless. Most of our parties seem to end up business meetings with drink, and I wanted this to be a proper birthday party, just for friends. So sorry, no toy boys I can think of. I should have got the girls to invite some of their friends, but then I’m not sure that would have gone down very well, the thought of you preying upon them . . .’

  ‘Like an elderly mantis? Thank you, dear friend. Talking about being disapproved of – is your mother coming?’

  ‘She couldn’t leave the dogs, and Matt won’t have them here.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that. Sorry. But you know she always looks at me as if my life has gone so tragically awry. Richard’s not coming either, is he? Such a groper.’ She shuddered at the thought. ‘As if I’d go anywhere near him. I’m not that desperate.’

  ‘I could hardly not invite him. He’s Matt’s oldest friend, and he’s been through a bad time.’

  ‘He’s been through a bad time! Are you in touch with Jo?’

  ‘I spoke to her last week. He’s not paying her anything at all, you know. She’s beside herself. I think his business is going under, yet again. Matt hates me taking sides but it’s so . . .’

  ‘No wonder he’ll be here, then. He’ll be trying to tap Matt for a loan.’

  ‘Matt’s not that stupid.’

  ‘Let’s hope not. Why on earth does he put up with him, though? He’s bound to get hideously pissed.’

  ‘Please don’t give me something else to worry about, there’s enough as there is. The caterers only got here half an hour ago, they’re still putting out the glasses. At least Richard’s not my problem, thank goodness,’ Sara said. ‘Can you grab a drink, while I make sure everything’s in place?’

  Catherine picked up a glass of champagne from the kitchen table and wandered into the living room. Even knowing the style of the room as well as she did, she paused in the doorway, her eyes wide. Sara had arranged hundreds of candles on every available surface, and their flickering, cathedral light mingled with the tiny white spotlights suspended on steel wire cords which ran the length of the room just below the high ceiling. With the huge arched warehouse windows reaching from floor to ceiling, the view over London was breathtaking. Tonight, the panoply of lights within the room seemed to stream out into those of the city, stretching away like glittering gemstones on a sea of black velvet.

  Having put the canapé tray down on a coffee table, Sara paused for a moment to look out of the window at the far end of the room, the chatter of their guests rising and falling behind her. Moments later, she sensed Matt standing close by.

  ‘Make them all go home now,’ he breathed softly, dropping his mouth to kiss her black silk shoulder. ‘I’m bored of talking rubbish to people who are not you. Whose idea was this?’

  ‘Yours. And after all this cost and fuss?’ she asked, as his arms folded around her, a feeling of warmth spreading from his touch.

  ‘I’m sure it was yours, actually. Why didn’t we just take the girls out to dinner somewhere horribly expensive?’

  ‘Because you like parties,’ she smiled, leaning back against his familiar contours. Their bodies fitted perfectly together, like the pieces of a jigsaw. ‘Stop pretending.’

  ‘How well you know me.’ His hands slid upwards to the underside of her breasts, smoothly gliding over the layered silk. Automatically she breathed in, feeling her stomach turn over. Even after twenty-six years of marriage, he could still do this to her.

  ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he whispered. ‘Sod the party.’

  She laughed. ‘Grown-ups don’t do that sort of thing,’ she whispered back. ‘We’re not teenagers, remember?’

  ‘Who cares? Go on. I dare you. We can lock the bedroom door. No one will know.’

  ‘No,’ she said, pulling away from him. ‘You shocking man. How can you think such a thing? Come on. Once more unto the breach,’ she ordered, smiling at his reflection. His arms tightened around her, pulling her back, close to him.

  Catherine, looking over at them, silhouetted against the dark window, grimaced in envy. They were the only couple she knew who touched each other in that intimate way. As if they still loved each other. If only. No. She mentally shook herself. She was not going to wallow in any form of self-pity, that was the trouble with drinking too much champagne. It made her maudlin.

  ‘Not going to go,’ Matt said in a childish voice, and Sara could feel his mouth smiling against her ear. He smelt strongly of aftershave and cigarette smoke.

  ‘You have to. You’re the host. Go sparkle,’ she said, her breath misting the window.

  ‘Twenty-six years of me,’ he murmured. ‘Twenty-seven, actually, with the year we spent dating. How on earth have we got this far? You are the most tolerant woman, you know. Do I have to make a speech?’

  ‘You love making speeches.’

  ‘What if I break down in tears when I thank my lovely family for all these years of blissful happiness?’

  ‘The girls will be physically sick?’

  He laughed. ‘I will say it, though. Not exactly in those words,’ he added hastily. ‘But I do believe it, you know.’ He pressed his mouth against her neck in the briefest of kisses, his voice low and insistent. ‘You’re everything to me. I couldn’t have achieved any of this without you. You are infinitely precious – essential – to me.’ Sara closed her eyes, her heart filled with a rising sense of joy. They were so very lucky.

  ‘I love you,’ she murmured. Then she swivelled in his arms to face him. ‘Now go and do your social thing. Go chat someone up,’ she added briskly.

  He smiled, his mouth curving at the corners, dark eyes glinting. ‘You look beautiful, tonight.’

  ‘Do I?’ she said, surprised.

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded, looking down at her, his eyes fixed intently on her face. ‘Never leave me,’ he added suddenly. She stared up at him, astonished – it was not the kind of thing that Matt would ever normally say. As their eyes met, she felt a sudden jolt. What had she seen, just then? A flicker, a shadow of uncertainty, even fear, flashing behind his eyes? She shook herself. I’m imagining things, she thought. Her eyes searched his face, but abruptly he had turned away and walked back towards their guests, reaching out to take a glass of champagne from a passing waitress. He drained it in one swallow.

  ‘Just hang on a minute.’

  Richard reached out to grip Sara’s elbow as she walked towards the kitchen carrying two over-flowing ashtrays and four empty wine glasses.

  ‘What have you been saying to my wife? Or rather my ex-wife?’ Drunk, his northern acc
ent was far more pronounced. Sara looked around, hastily, to see if anyone else could have heard, but the rest of the guests were too far away in the living room. He must have been waiting here, by the door, to catch her.

  ‘This isn’t the time,’ she said, quietly and firmly, pulling away to try to make him release his grip, but her hands were too full and there was nowhere she could put the ashtrays or the glasses down, so she was forced to stand close to him, trapped.

  ‘Would you like me to call you a taxi? You seem rather tired,’ she said, trying to keep her voice light.

  He leant towards her, his face red and sweating. She drew back as she smelt his stale breath, his mouth close to her face. ‘Come on, I know you’ve been talking to her, encouraging her. She’s been threatening me with her solicitors. Bloody Legal Aid, just because it doesn’t cost her anything. It’s costing me a fortune to fight this, she knows I can’t afford . . .’ She could see how blotchy his skin had become, his eyes red-veined, the skin beneath puffy. He used to be so good-looking – he and Matt were lethal womanizers when they shared a flat, when she and Matt had met.

  Richard’s first marriage had lasted just five years and then he’d married again. Sara liked Jo, his second wife, and she’d been sympathetic when Jo rang her a month or so ago, in tears. It was an awful mess, and Matt had told her not to take sides, even though Richard was patently in the wrong and, to her mind, spiralling out of control, drinking far too much. She and Jo hadn’t been particularly close friends, and Sara had been, initially, surprised by the call. When she put the phone down, she realized that what Jo wanted was for Matt to intervene, because he was about the only person that Richard still listened to.

  Sara had talked to Matt, as she’d promised Jo she would. He’d said it wasn’t their problem, but, knowing Matt as she did, she knew he would have tried to reason with Richard. This had clearly not gone down well. So why had he come, tonight, if things were so tricky between them?