The Summer We Danced

‘That must have been difficult—living so far away from your dad.’

‘He came to visit sometimes and I’d come back for school holidays,’ she said, ‘but Daddy had to work in the daytime so I’d go to Granny and Grandpa’s a lot.’

Poor kid, I thought. Sounds as if she hardly knew the man, although I had to concede that may not have been his fault. However, since he hadn’t bothered to turn up for his daughter on time I wasn’t feeling very inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. I held out my hand. ‘Come on, then. Let’s go and see if anyone’s looking for you.’

Lucy’s thin fingers slid into mine and I helped her to her feet. All three of us made our way back to the hall, but it was as cold and empty as it had been when we’d left it. Lucy’s eyes began to fill.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, squeezing her hand gently. ‘He can’t be too far away. ‘

I tried phoning her dad once more and I was just listening to it clicking into voicemail when there was a loud pounding on the outside doors, the sound of two heavy and rather determined fists coming down again and again.

‘Lucy? Lu-ceeee!’

I ran, pushing through the swinging doors that led to the vestibule and then to the main doors, where I found the heavy bolts that slid across the top of the doors and the one that went down into the floor drawn. I released them as fast as I could and came face to face with a rather wild-looking man.

‘Where’s my daughter?’ he half-yelled. ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’

And then he stopped and stared at me. ‘Flip?’ he said, his face completely transformed with shock.

I heard a rushing sound in my ears. ‘Tom?’ I croaked back.

Nine (#ulink_b5897b21-2b78-59c3-b4f9-6d3f09e62226)

Tom? Tom Boyd? For some reason I really hadn’t expected to bump into him back in Elmhurst. I don’t know why but I’d imagined him in a swanky Thames-side apartment, living the champagne lifestyle with a beautiful and elegant wife by his side.

I waited for the smile full of mischievous energy, the one he’d always worn as long as he’d been awake or not in double history, but his mouth remained open and then he closed it again and it became a thin, grim line.

I was having the weirdest sensation. On one hand, this man in front of me did actually look as if it could be Tom Boyd, twenty years older. The nose was still long with that little bump in the middle, the eyes the colour of freshly-peeled conkers, and even though there were speckles of grey at his temples and he wore it shorter than he’d used to, he still had the same wavy, dark hair.

But that was where the similarities ended.

The Tom Boyd I’d known had been the joker of the pack, the cool guy that all the guys had wanted to hang with and all the girls had wanted to kiss. And many of them had got their chance. Tom had been ringleader and rebel, the one most likely to get a ticking-off from Miss Mimi and the one most likely to climb the kitchen roof at the back of the hall, just because someone had dared him to.

This man didn’t look anything like that Tom.

But it had to be. Because he’d called me ‘Flip’. No one else had ever used that nickname for me, before or since.

At the time I hadn’t even been sure I’d liked it. I didn’t like the word; it sounded silly and juvenile. But I’d liked the way Tom had said it, with a twinkle in his eye and a dare on the tip of his tongue. It had reminded me of the glamorous actresses of Ginger Rogers’ era, who’d played women with nicknames like ‘Teddy’ or ‘Nan’: sassy and sexy and not afraid of anything, especially the man they had wrapped around their little finger.

‘What … what are you doing here?’ he stammered.

I stepped back and allowed him access. ‘It’s a long story. I moved back and …’ I trailed off, not really wanting to share my life story. It wasn’t really relevant and it would be better if I just got straight to the point. I cleared my throat and started again. ‘The long and the short of it is there’s a problem with the electrics and we’ve had to cancel classes this morning. Lucy’s fine,’ I added quickly. ‘I’ve been dialling your mobile but it’s been going straight to voicemail.’

He dug into his pocket, pulled out his phone and stared at it in confusion. ‘Didn’t hear the stupid thing. Had it on silent for something last night and forgot to turn the ringer on again.’ He turned and gave me a quizzical look. ‘We’ve cancelled the classes?’

‘I mean, Miss Mimi cancelled them. I’m just helping out.’ We crossed the vestibule and I frowned. ‘What I don’t understand is how the doors got locked,’ I said as we entered the hall.

Miss Mimi paused from marking what looked like a jazz routine and turned to face us. ‘Oh, I did that, dear,’ she said, nodding at the door, ‘while you were making some of those phone calls. I thought it’d be a good idea to stop just anybody wandering in.’

I stared at her. I wanted to reply, but I literally had no words in my mouth. Had she always been scatty and disorganised like this, or was this something new?

‘Hello, Daddy,’ Lucy said, her brows low over her eyes, but there was no jubilant rushing into the arms of her father. She turned to me and said politely, ‘I need to get my bag from the kitchen.’

‘I’ll get it for you, if you like,’ I told her and set off to do just that. When I entered the corridor I found I had a little shadow. Lucy had followed me. We went to fetch her bag together in silence, but it wasn’t an awkward silence, and Lucy didn’t seem to be one of those chatty little things like Honey was. She seemed quite happy tagging silently along after me, reminding me more of my cat than my niece. Roberta would follow me round the house and sit in whichever room I was in, just for the company, not because she needed me, or anything as demeaning as that, and Lucy had this same sense of self-sufficiency about her.

When we came out the kitchen we bumped into Miss Mimi and Tom in the corridor.

‘And you’re sure you checked the fuses?’ he was saying.

‘I had a look last night,’ I said. ‘They’re pretty old, but they seemed okay to me.’

Tom turned sharply to look at me. ‘You did?’

‘Yes,’ I said, half a smile on my face. ‘I’m not seventeen any more, you know, Mr Tom Boyd. My worldly knowledge now extends beyond nail varnish, boy bands and reading Smash Hits! inside out every week.’

His laugh was more grunt than chuckle. ‘You never were one of those girls,’ he said as he flipped the cover of the fuse box open, without even the need for a chair to stand on. ‘I’ve got a torch in my car,’ he announced, and before I could offer the use of my phone for such purposes, he strode off back into the hall and off in the direction of the car park.

No, I hadn’t been ‘one of those girls’ when I’d known Tom before. The kind of girl he’d been interested in. The kind who could always do her hair perfectly or put mascara on without blinding herself with the brush. I’d just been slightly geeky, rather shy, dance-mad Pippa. Firmly in the ‘friend zone’.

I let out a long and loud sigh.

No matter. That had been a long time ago. Things had changed. I had changed.

For one thing, I was no longer in any danger of facial disfigurement every time I put make-up on; that had to be something worth celebrating. And if Tom Boyd had been out of my league when I’d been seventeen, he was even more so now I was more than double that age. And double the size. I wasn’t making that mistake again. I’d punched above my weight with Ed and look where that had got me.

Tom returned, hardly casting a glance at me as he focused on shining the bright beam of his torch on to the fuse box. He changed the angle of the light, made a few humming and ha-ing noises.

‘What’s the verdict, Thomas?’ Miss Mimi asked, and I had the urge to laugh. I felt as if we were in one of those melodramatic medical soaps of yesteryear, all clustered round a difficult patient. If Tom had turned and asked for a scalpel, I had no doubt I’d have reached into my bag and placed an emery board into his outstretched hand.

He grunted. He seemed to do that rather a lot. Something the old, carefree Tom would never have done. Burst into a peal of uproarious laughter? Yes. Grin that grin of his that had made my heart beat faster and my toes tingle? Certainly. But make a noise that made him sound like his dour Scottish father? Not a chance.

He switched the torch off. ‘Let’s talk in the hall, where we can see what we’re doing.’

We all trooped out into the hall again, which was getting dingier by the second. Grey clouds had gathered overhead and the first speckles of dank January rain were clinging to the tall windows.

Tom shrugged. ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ he asked Miss Mimi.

‘Oh, the good news,’ she replied. ‘I do so like good news.’

‘The fuses look okay to me.’

Miss Mimi’s smile was radiant. I waited for her to ask the obvious question, but she didn’t say anything. After a few seconds, in which Tom was equally loquacious, I decided to put us all out of our misery. ‘And the bad?’

Tom shot me a wry glance. ‘The fuses look okay to me.’

‘Very funny,’ I said, frowning. Hmm. There must be just a tad of the old Tom left in there after all. Kind of darker and more twisted, but still in there. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘That something more complicated than a blown fuse is causing your electrical problems,’ he said, directing his answer to Miss Mimi.