I hear the hush first.
Programmes close. Someone coughs in the third row. The orchestra tunes below me. I stand just offstage with the velvet curtain against my arm. Dust, perfume, resin, hairspray. Elena kneels at my feet, tightening the satin ribbons around my ankles.
“Too loose.”
“They’re fine.”
“They’re always too loose.” She pulls harder.
“You’ve been saying that for fifteen years.”
“Forty-two.” She looks up and smiles.
Marina passes behind us.
“Shoulders.”
I straighten.
“Not like a soldier.”
I let them drop. Her stick taps once as she disappears into the wings.
Daniel is already onstage, one hand at his side, waiting for mine. Elena follows my eyes.
“You always did stare at him.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
She kisses my cheek. Powder and cigarettes.
“Go on.”
I press two fingers beneath my sternum. Marina used to say balance began there.
“From the centre,” she calls from the dark.
Tchaikovsky begins. I step into the light. My shoes brush the marley.
Daniel takes my hand. His hand is warm where it always was. We move without speaking. His hand finds my waist. He taps twice before he turns me. The floor gives slightly beneath my foot. He turns me and catches me.
“You’re rushing.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“You left for Berlin.”
The music takes us apart. Elena is waiting beside Marina now. My mother stands behind them, shoes in one hand, as she did outside the studio when I was seven. Daniel holds out his hand.
“Ready?”
Marina made me repeat it until my toes bled. She raises one finger.
“Centre.”
Daniel lets go. I turn. Once. Then again. He reaches for me. I reach back. Almost.
Click.
The music stops. There is no stage. No satin shoes. My legs lie beneath a hospital blanket. My hands rest where someone placed them. Grey walls. Linoleum. Disinfectant. A plastic cup beside the silent speaker.
“There we are.”
The nurse checks the tube at my wrist, then the brace at my neck.
“Time for your medication.”
A pill touches my lip. Water reaches the corner of my mouth, cool and slightly metallic.
The door opens. Clara comes in, her hair in her signature messy bun. She sits beside me and takes my hand.
“Hi, Mum.”
“Your mum was a dancer, wasn’t she?”
Clara looks at me. “Still is.”
“You know what I mean.”
The nurse leaves. Clara stays. Her thumb moves once across the back of my hand. Then she switches the speaker on. The music starts halfway through.
The velvet curtain touches my arm again. Daniel is waiting at centre stage. Elena is beside him. Marina is in the wings. My mother is in the doorway. Daniel holds out his hand.
“Again?”
I take it. And turn.
