Authors: Karen Swan
‘Won’t you come in for a drink?’ Sophie offered, motioning to the vodka.
‘No. I’ve made enough of a nuisance of myself already.’
‘Nonsense,’ Russell said expansively.
Adam looked at him. ‘Have a nice night,’ he said, and walked down the corridor and out of sight.
‘Well, that was embarrassing,’ Russell said, as Sophie carried on looking after him.
There was a long silence. From the way both of them had reacted, Russell had no doubts Adam Bridges was the man she was involved with. And from the look on his face at seeing Sophie looking so
wild and exciting and passionate, if she hadn’t been on his radar before tonight, she certainly would be now.
Russell straightened himself up. ‘I’d better get going too,’ he said quietly.
Sophie snapped out of her daydream and looked at him. ‘No. No, don’t do that. Stay,’ she said, but it was clear that the moment had gone.
‘I’ve got an early start tomorrow, and you’ve got a big deadline to meet. Get a good night’s sleep.’ He moved forward and pulled her hands into his, pulling the
T-shirt away from her breasts in the process. He looked down at her slender, freckled frame under the strip light. It was so erotic having her standing half-naked in a public place like that. He
kissed her hands softly. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
She smiled but felt relieved he was going. She’d had the most glorious afternoon and evening with him but she’d been wretchedly drunk, and finding Adam waiting for her had been an
abrupt way of sobering up. She had to stop drinking so much – it always got her into trouble. Look at what had happened last time, in St Moritz.
She let herself back into the apartment, dropping her bag and wet T-shirt to the ground. The Ribena bottle was still on the worktop, the mugs where they had left them on the coffee table.
Pulling off her sodden jeans, she padded naked across the apartment to the studio. The white shrouded canvases looked ghostly in the dark, the night lights of Chicago city muted by the rain that
had obscured the glass in the floor-to-ceiling windows.
She stepped over the threshold into the little room and recoiled as her foot became wet. Looking down, she saw the floor was covered with water. She gasped in horror. What had happened? A burst
pipe? It couldn’t be. The rest of the apartment was dry and there was nobody above the studio.
Above . . . Shit! She looked up and straight out into the twinkling night sky. There was no blurred vision from this aspect. She’d left the skylights open. The flash flood.
With a trembling hand, she lifted the dust sheets that were clinging wetly to the easels. Before her eyes, the exquisitely rendered dancers were running and coagulating like hot wax into a
bleary, abstract palette.
Numbly, she flicked through them all, but of the seventeen finished canvases only four were salvageable. Baudrand had wanted twenty-five, but as she looked around at the smudged and distorted
artworks she knew it was impossible. Quite literally, the sky had fallen in.
Pia flung down the towel furiously and the piano player nervously took his hands off the keys, trying to look invisible.
‘It’s no good!’ she cried. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t.’
‘Nonsense,’ Evie said throatily. ‘You’re rushing, that’s all. Take a break.’
Pia shook her head, raising her hand for the piano player to start up again, but the boy – a local music scholar – took one look at Evie’s face, and decided to remain
invisible.
‘Take a break, and that’s an order, my girl,’ Evie growled. ‘You’re exhausted. And I won’t have you getting another injury just because you don’t know
when to stop.’
Pia hobbled over to where Evie stood and sat on the high stool, taking a swig from her water bottle. Evie couldn’t help but be heartened by the fact that she looked such a mess again. She
had rolled the offensively pristine red leotard down to her waist and knotted a grey T-shirt of Will’s, with the sleeves torn off, under her bust. She’d cut the feet off some 10-denier
tan tights and was back in her flat ballet shoes.
And she looked great on it. Her curves were coming back and she looked strong again. The stretching and resistance exercises they’d been working on – day in, day out, for weeks
– had built up her muscle mass and Evie felt she was back up to eighty-five per cent of her old fitness. The K wires were coming out tomorrow and the plaster would be off too. She’d
technically be free to dance again. As far as textbooks went, she was a model patient. But something was still missing: self-belief? Confidence?
Certainly, the commitment was there. Pia never missed a session (well, she couldn’t when she lived only up the lawn) and she’d memorized the music and steps of
The Songbird
within a week of being handed the score. Every afternoon – after a morning’s physio – she walked through the steps in her weight-bearing cast. She couldn’t spring, jump,
spin or twirl; and of course she wasn’t even allowed up on
demi-pointe
yet. But, step by step, they paced through the ballet, like a horse being walked the course, repeating it over
and over and over until Pia’s brain swam with markings and cues, and she knew the shape of that ballet better than the contours of her own face.
It had to be that way. The dancers chosen from the Royal Ballet were already in rehearsals in London, but Pia wasn’t strong enough to join them and was going to have to wait until they
came down the following week to rehearse with them. Evie didn’t want her going back on
pointe
until five days before the gala – the latest she could possibly leave it –
and anyway, Rudie Bianchi, her chosen partner, had performance commitments until the night before. They would only have the dress rehearsal in which to dance her ballet together for the first
time.
In all, it meant she would only have seven days in which to rehearse with the (almost) full company, orchestra and costumes for the debut of
her
ballet and the single most important
performance of her career – a schedule that, even taking the fact that she was coming back from injury out of the equation, was scarcely possible. Tanner Ludgrove had been right –
although she’d die rather than admit it – but what else could they do? Ava had been over in Chicago and in full rehearsal with Adam for several weeks now, and thanks to Will
enthusiastically timetabling her return for this global coup, the culture vultures were tearing up the columns in anticipation of the dance-off. Images of the ballerinas were everywhere, with Ava
giving interviews left, right and centre. Pia, by contrast – and to Will’s huge chagrin – refused to grant a single one, and it was taken as an own-vote of no confidence, but that
didn’t stop the magazine and newspaper editors rehashing old interviews – anything to justify putting her picture in their publications. Circulations were soaring as a result and the
media juggernaut was hitting top speed. Pia couldn’t stop it now, even if she wanted to. She just had to keep going, stepping one foot in front of the other.
Evie walked over to her bag and grabbed a bag of marbles, placing them strategically around Pia’s feet.
‘Don’t tell me you want to play?’ Pia said drily. ‘I should warn you – I was my school’s champion.’
Evie shot her an unamused smile. ‘Pick them up,’ she ordered.
Pia looked at her, perplexed, then reached down. There was no point asking why. The woman’s techniques just got odder. Ice massage and wobble boards, okay, Pia could see the point. But
marbles? She bent down.
‘With your toes, please.’
Pia looked back up at her. ‘Seriously?’
Evie watched her as she extended her leg, hovering the cast above the scattered marbles. They looked tiny by comparison. Pia couldn’t even see them round the cast. She lowered her foot
jerkily, like a toddler on a JCB, and sent them rolling away.
‘See, I can’t do it,’ she said, pulling her leg up. ‘It’s useless. I can’t do anything.’
‘Try again,’ Evie said calmly. ‘It’s not supposed to be easy. Once it’s easy, it’s pointless.’
Pia tried again. ‘Uuurgh!’ she shrieked, frustrated. ‘What’s even the point of this? What have I got to do next? Grab a brush between my toes and paint you a
landscape?’
Evie paused. ‘Well, I guess we don’t have to do this,’ she said finally. ‘If you’re happy for Ava to
own
your ballet . . .’
Pia’s eyes narrowed contemptuously. ‘She’ll never own anything of mine.’
‘Really?’
‘Damned right.’
‘People are saying she’s already got your ballet company, your roles, your dance partner. Hell, she’s even got your old assistant.’
‘What?’ Pia’s heart thumped at the mention of Sophie.
Evie saw the jealousy flare in her. ‘Oh didn’t you know? It’s all very sweet. I think they’re even considering getting matching tattoos: “BFF”. Apparently Ava
discovered she’s a talented artist and Baudrand has appointed her resident artist for the ChiCi. He likes the idea of having his own Degas, you know,’ she drawled. ‘So
Sophie’s shadowing Ava and they’re throwing a big exhibition of her works on the night of the gala.’
Pia bit her lip and looked away. She could just imagine it – Sophie and Ava laughing together, while she was stranded here, trying to pick up goddam marbles with her toes. Her isolation
bit at her again. She said nothing but her cheeks had pinched white. She looked down and slowly, precisely, clawed her toes and picked up the smallest marble on the floor.
It took thirty-five minutes to collect all forty marbles. Evie, pleased by her patient’s new-found determination, said she could stop after twenty. But Pia ignored her and grimly carried
on.
Afterwards, Evie watched her go back up the path to the house on her crutches and she realized that the missing part of the jigsaw had been found now. It wasn’t strength or technique or
commitment that she’d been lacking. It had been drive. In order to dance, Pia Soto needed anger.
Sophie saw him before he saw her, and she looked into the road to see whether she could cross. She couldn’t. Four yellow cabs were chuntering down the street and a DHL
van was double-parked on the other side, forcing the rest of the traffic into the central reservation.
It was too late anyway. He’d spotted her.
‘Hey!’ he called. ‘Fancy seeing you here. I thought you’d have moved to a swanky new district by now.’
‘Hi, Greg,’ she said wanly, wondering what he was on about today. It was the first time she’d left the apartment since the sky had fallen in and ruined her paintings.
After two days of mute shock, which had been spent in bed studiously avoiding calls from everyone – including Russell – she’d switched into manic mode and managed to get twelve
canvases completed. There was still one week left and she figured she could whip up another six by then, but she was still going to be seven short and she’d have to ring Baudrand this
afternoon and give him the bad news.
Lack of courage, food and milk had forced her out of the apartment, and as she wandered aimlessly round the block rehearsing her excuse, fielding Greg’s amorous advances was the last thing
she wanted to do.
‘You’ll need to go incognito soon, you know,’ he said. ‘Dark glasses, wig . . .’
‘I don’t think so, Greg.’
‘Well,’ he said, sucking on his teeth. ‘If they’re gonna keep up this kind of scrutiny on you, you might think differently.’
‘What are you talking about?’ she sighed wearily. Baudrand had been bigging up her talent and the exhibition, using anything and everything that he thought would give the ChiCi
production more press coverage and a higher pro-file.
He tapped the Sunday papers under his arm.
‘Can I see?’
‘Sure,’ he said, delighted to get a few extra minutes in her company. He unrolled the papers and handed her the Sunday magazine.
She looked at the cover. It showed one image each of Pia and Ava, both performing
Sleeping Beauty
. The picture editor had managed to get matching shots of them in spectacular
attitude croisé devant
from the Rose adagio, and the art department had tattered the edges of the photos, making it seem that they were mirror images. In between them was a picture
of Sophie, the one taken for all the exhibition publicity. Sophie hated it. It didn’t look like her – they’d tonged her hair and put eyeshadow on her – but that was the
least of her worries right now.
She frowned at the implication that she was piggy in the middle between the two primas. She flicked to the centre spread. They had managed to get some paparazzi pictures of her walking along the
streets with Ava and Pia. More specifically, the paparazzi had been shooting Ava and Pia and, to the picture editor’s delight as he researched the archives for this particular story,
he’d found these ones where Sophie was in shot too.
‘Mind if I take this, Greg?’ she asked, walking away before he could reply.
‘Uh, sure,’ he said, watching her go. ‘So, does this mean you’re not up for dinner in the next few days, then?’ he called after her.
There was no reply.
‘Yeah,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Best to let things settle a bit.’
Sophie let herself into her apartment and shut the door behind her. Leaning against the door, she studied Russell’s head shot. He was wearing the pink shirt he’d worn to their
interview and he was looking into the camera like the cat that’d got the cream. She looked away and began to read the opening paragraphs.
The Chicago City (ChiCi) Ballet’s debut production of
The Songbird
, which opens next Saturday, seventeen hours ahead of the rival production being hosted by
the Royal Ballet in London, will be the climactic finale to a rivalry between the two starring primas, a rivalry that is fiercer than any other since Bachon and Posevina thirty years ago. Ever
since they were students at the Bolshoi, Ava Petrova in Russia and Pia Soto in the fledgling academy in Brazil, they have battled for supremacy against each other – wooing audiences,
judges, advertisers, sponsors, patrons and ballet companies – in a bid to outgun each other. Their strengths lie in different areas but as the ChiCi prepares to launch the career of its
exciting new resident artist, Sophie O’Farrell, on the same night, with a dazzling exhibition of both primas dancing for Chicago in the past year, will their weaknesses rest, for once, in
the same place?
The enigmatic Irishwoman (pictured right), who trained briefly at the Slade School of Art in London, finds herself at the heart of the two women’s relationship and keeper of each of
their secrets. As Soto’s former PA, she was well known in the ballet community for being the Brazilian dancer’s closest confidante and loyal to a fault. However, in the wake of her
career-threatening accident in January this year, Soto fired O’Farrell without explanation. Soon afterwards, confidential information came to light about Soto’s luxury break in St
Moritz as the guest of jewellers Cartier, and insiders privately began to ask questions about the source of this information, which led to the abrupt termination of Soto’s lucrative
contract with rival firm Patek Philippe.
It was Petrova’s sharp eye and patronage, soon after she arrived in Chicago following her stand-in spell for Soto during the company’s East Coast tour, that gave O’Farrell
next week’s potentially career-defining opportunity. But damaging stories about Petrova’s alleged bullying of her new partner, principal Adam Bridges – also
O’Farrell’s occasional lover – continue to be leaked to the press, and have raised questions about O’Farrell’s loyalty to Petrova too.
The fortunes of her career and personal life have rested in the hands of both diminutive giants, and as media scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic intensifies upon them all in the next six
days, it will remain to be seen whether she is an innocent being manipulated by bigger egos or a woman determined to find success by any means possible . . .