Prima Donna (54 page)

It was nearly forty minutes later that Ava came on. The lots she had drawn meant she was on last, and the audience was restless to compare the two primas.

Sophie heard the first strains of Tchaikovsky’s score drift over the theatre and she squinted appraisingly as Ava came out in a tutu so historic and tiny it could have belonged to Dame
Margot Fonteyn. Silk feathers wrapped around her ears in the classical style, the tulle layers of the skirt as frothy as foam.

Talk about variations on a theme, Sophie thought to herself as Ava danced the steps with more exactitude and power than Pia, her feet pattering across the floor in tiny staccatos, her arms
beating and stately, her neck extended majestically. The audience loved it, rising to their feet yet again and apparently forgetting that they’d done the very same for Pia’s quite
different, more sparkling interpretation just an hour previously.

She realized Ava had been right that day at their first lunch, when she said that every champion needs a rival. The audience loves to see the gods do battle, Sophie mused, watching them all clap
and call excitedly. Pia’s joyous etherealism or Ava’s steely classicism? Who cares, so long as they promise to duel to the death?

Everybody knew there was no way either of them would be going out before the third round. The organizers would have a riot on their hands.

Sophie casually let the judges file out, before she jumped up from her seat and darted backstage. She needed to alert Pia to what she was up against. Sophie strode down the corridor. Pools of
light from open communal dressing rooms dotted the concrete floor but most of the rooms were empty as the dancers had moved off in secretive pairs to discuss the other performances, or hung around
in the wings, soaking up the vibe. Many were outside for cigarette breaks, relieving the tension with some much-needed flirtation. The competition gathered together all the greatest luminaries in
the ballet world and the combination of talent, ambition, physical perfection and adrenalin meant it was like the Olympic village: seduction was rife.

But Pia wasn’t among them. She had already changed into her
Sleeping Beauty
costume when Sophie walked in. Her back was turned to the door but Sophie could clearly see her
reflection in the mirror.

‘Pia, what’s wrong? What is it?’ she asked, astonished to see Pia look so . . . forlorn.

Pia wiped her cheeks hurriedly. ‘Oh,’ she said turning away. ‘It’s nothing.’

Sophie hesitated. ‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’

‘I’m just tired,’ Pia shrugged. ‘I’ve not been sleeping well.’

Sophie stared at her. She didn’t look tired. She looked like Sophie felt. Broken-hearted; broken. It looked like Sophie wasn’t the only one with a secret.

‘Because of the wall?’ Sophie said lightly, knowing when not to push. She sat down in the tub chair.

Pia laughed. ‘Yes, exactly. It’s that bloody wall keeping me awake at night. I might need to go five-star, after all.’ She looked back into the mirror and began to fix her
make-up, which had smudged under the eyes.

They sat in easy silence together.

‘So tell me,’ Pia said, gathering her voice. ‘How did Ava dance it?’

‘You didn’t see?’

Pia shook her head. ‘No. I’m not going to give them all the satisfaction of spying on her like some peeping Tom.’

‘You’re determined to confound expectations, aren’t you?’ Sophie said. ‘Have you come across her yet?’

Pia shook her head. ‘Don’t intend to, either. There’re a hundred and forty dancers here. That’s more than enough to separate us – at least until the third
round.’

‘Mmm,’ Sophie sighed.

‘So come on, tell me. Don’t keep me hanging.’

‘Well . . . she gave it more attack. Her
fouettés
were sharp and her extensions were . . . acrobatic, I guess you’d say, but her arms were stiff, and as for her
épaulement
– well, she was just vertical, like she was being pulled up by strings. Personally, I thought she played it more Odile than Odette.’

Pia considered for a moment, then continued reapplying her maquillage.

‘Well, at least she’s not copying how I’m dancing,’ she muttered. ‘Although it’s hard to know whether that’s a good or bad thing.’

Sophie gave a small cough. ‘Have you seen who’s on the panel, Pia?’

Something in Sophie’s voice caught her attention and she spun round to face her.

‘A few. They were still confirming names when I asked. I know Carlos is here and Ivan, of course, Mary—’

‘It’s Baudrand. He’s here.’

Pia paled. ‘As a judge?’

Sophie nodded.

Pia blew out slowly through her cheeks. ‘Well,’ she said finally, in a low voice, ‘at least we know who it is Ava’s got in her camp.’ She shook her head
despondently. ‘I can’t believe they’d allow it. She’s in his company. She’s his prima. And everybody knows
our
history. He has a clear bias.’

Sophie chewed her lip for a moment. ‘Well, there may be some light on the horizon.’

Pia looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I saw Will. He’s on the jury too.’

‘Will is?’ Pia asked, incredulous.

Sophie nodded, leaning forward. ‘That’s what I thought. I don’t understand how he can be. He’s a banker, isn’t he?’

There was a long pause. Pia was deep in concentration. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘Although you could be forgiven for thinking he’s the chief executive of the Royal Ballet,
he spends so much time there. Time and money. ’

‘But why? Does he
really
love ballet that much?’

Pia shrugged. ‘He probably secretly prefers just looking at pretty girls in tutus, but once these men get to a certain level of wealth they like to be seen to be influential in the right
circles. It’s a snobbery thing. Ballet is high culture and becoming a patron puts a stamp of old-money credibility on their self-made millions. He’s not unusual by any means.
Hedge-funders are the biggest private benefactors to ballet and opera now. They’re the ones with all the money. The grand old families simply can’t compete any more.’

‘He just didn’t seem the type to try so hard,’ Sophie mused.

‘Oh, trust me – he is! Tanner told me some things about him and he’s a desperate social climber, trying to get into all the right clubs. It’s just the kind of thing he
would
do.’

Sophie’s ears pricked at the mention of Tanner again, but she let it pass. ‘I thought he was just feigning an interest in it to get to you.’

‘Oh no, he’s serious about ballet all right. He’s one of the Royal’s biggest patrons. That’s how he managed to get them to dance with me for the premiere of
The
Songbird
. Rudie told me he donated a good few million for a new wing and he developed their Young Artist’s Programme.’

She nodded suddenly and sat bolt upright. ‘
That
’s probably why he’s here – to lure the cream of the crop in the senior events and cherry-pick the up-comers in
the juniors.’

Sophie tipped her head in assent. ‘Or that’s his
official
reason, at least,’ she said slyly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He went out of his way to say hello to me. He would have known I’d come straight to you.’ She sighed and raised her eyebrows. ‘I bet he’s here to win you
back.’

There was a long silence.

Pia collapsed her head onto her elbows. ‘Oh God, probably. He doesn’t like to lose – ever. I made it impossible for him to find me after I left. I changed my phone, left the
country . . . But with all the headlines about me and Ava going head-to-head again . . . He must have realized this would be his first opportunity to catch up with me.’

Sophie raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. ‘Well, I guess his being here doesn’t have to be all bad news,’ she said slowly.

‘You think?’ Pia snorted. ‘I don’t know what it’s going to take to get rid of the man. He just never gives up.’

‘Maybe, but perhaps you should play that to your advantage for the time being.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if Ava
has
got someone in her pocket, it surely wouldn’t hurt for you to have someone in yours . . .’

Pia looked at her. Aside from the fact that it hadn’t occurred to her to win on anything other than merit, the thought of allowing Will close to her made her skin creep. She despised him
for taking the credit for saving her life and letting her rant against Tanner. And in the light of what he’d done to Tanner’s family as well it would be a double betrayal. And yet . .
.

She sighed heavily. Tanner wasn’t interested in who she did or didn’t go to bed with. He’d made that plain in Brazil. And if Ava was manipulating the scores, she couldn’t
afford to be naive. This was her last chance to get to La Scala and make Assoluta. She had to win here. Only then could she truly be free.

She was going to have to do whatever it took.

‘Right, well, that’s the loos done and the floors. I’ll come back on Thursday and do the bedrooms and I’ll try to make a start on those windows.
They’re a disgrace. And I’ve left a pie on the side for you. Just slide it into the baking oven for forty-five minutes.’

Tanner smiled patiently. Mrs Cooper might be a battleaxe, but she was a damned fine housekeeper, and he’d quickly grown tired of running out of milk and scorching his shirts. Besides,
she’d been his father’s housekeeper when they’d lived in the big house and, to her credit, she’d refused to stay on when Silk took up residence, and she had continued to
drop in twice a week to help his father, even though he couldn’t afford to pay her.

‘Thanks, Coop,’ he grinned. ‘You’re a star. I don’t know what I’d do without you. ’

‘No,’ the old woman said, knotting her headscarf. ‘Nor do I. If only you’d married that girl, you wouldn’t be in this mess.’

‘Well, I hardly think marrying a girl for her housekeeping abilities is a sound basis for a happy marriage,’ he laughed. ‘No?’ Mrs Cooper said, sending her eyebrows
heavenwards. ‘It never did me and Len any harm.’

Tanner hastily readjusted his features. ‘Well, that’s true. Maybe I . . . uh . . . maybe I have been looking at everything the wrong way round.’

‘Mark my words. A clean home is a happy home. Find a girl to keep house and you’ll be a contented man.’

An image of Pia with a pinny and duster wafted in front of his eyes and he tried not to let his mirth reach his eyes. ‘Right. Got it. You know, you should look at going into the dating
business, Coop. You could make your fortune.’

She cuffed him round the ear. ‘Don’t mock me, my lad,’ she said, before winking and opening the door. ‘Thursday, then.’

‘Thursday.’ Tanner peered out into the evening sky. He didn’t like the look of the clouds. ‘Think I’d better bring the horses in. Thanks, Coop,’ he called
after her as he loped across the yard, Biscuit scampering at his heels.

Velasquez’s ponies had made a good transition to the British soil and climate, and their journey over had been seamless (his had been less so, as he was tormented by the retreating vision
of Pia and Paolo and with a planeful of horses in his charge he’d been unable to plumb the depths of Velasquez’s in-flight hospitality). Still, they wouldn’t appreciate the kind
of storm only the British summer could conjure up. There had been flood warnings in force for days.

He gathered them in from the paddocks and stabled them all, scattering fresh sweet hay for them. By the time he came in two hours later it was dusk and fat raindrops were beginning to scattergun
the ground.

He tried to remember what Coop had said about the pie. Thirty minutes in the roasting oven, was it? He poured himself a whisky and noticed a piece of paper she’d wisely pinned to the top
of the pie: ‘Baking oven, forty-five minutes.’

He duly obliged and wandered aimlessly round the house. He’d come to dread the evenings. During the day he could busy himself with the horses – some of them had come down with
laminitis on the lush Dorset grass, a few others had a sweet-itch problem that had been aggravated by the English weather – and with Cowdray this weekend and Cartier the week after, he was
rushed off his feet, medicating and training them up in time for the highlights of the polo year.

So the days had passed in a much-welcomed blur since getting home, but come the evenings . . . well, Rob was always off with Jessy now – things had started to get pretty serious between
them – and Jonty was incommunicado, buried somewhere deep in the bowels of Cambridge’s Squire Law Library. Usually it took half a bottle of one of his father’s single malts to get
the memories from Brazil out of his head.

He ambled into the drawing room – which, even after Coop’s expert attention, was really far too shabby for such a grand name – and stared out of the window. He could just make
out the gleam of lights shining from the big house through the trees and he briefly imagined Violet over there with Will. He was amazed at how little he cared. She wasn’t the one in his
thoughts these days.

He turned away from the window and picked up a copy of some magazine Coop had left behind. She was an absolute workhorse and took great pride in her work, but it didn’t matter what she was
doing: every afternoon, come four o’clock, she would down tools, make herself a weak coffee (she kept a jar of Marvel in her bag) and read a magazine for exactly thirty minutes. Usually it
was
Woman
or
Woman’s Digest
, something like that.

But today it was
OK!
and today it was not okay, because there, on the front cover, looking sensational and subdued, was Pia. She was surrounded by grubby-faced children in T-shirts, all
climbing over her, so that all that could really be seen of her was one thin, finely muscled arm, that gleaming ponytail and her ripe, laughing mouth.

Tanner sank into the nearest chair and stared at the image. It felt almost impossible to believe that he had ever been in her orbit. Minutes passed before it occurred to him to flick through the
magazine to the article, which ran for six pages from the centre spread. Every page was crammed with pictures of her with the children. In most she was laughing with them, but some – where
she was standing apart, being shown their living conditions – showed her crying.