Page 135 of Tendu: Dancing in the Castle

“I’ll come too. If it’s the police again, I’d rather get it over with. And I don’t want you to go out the door and come back in. It’s been bad…” I slapped my hands over my eyes. How bad had it been for him, to see my reaction, to be so rejected?

Hugging was gentle. Everything was gentle. I made him turn away as I got dressed, though he’d already seen. He forbade more apology, telling me that I had done nothing wrong, and then that love transcended any need to say sorry. Such an idea seemed poetic to the point of silliness, and I surprised us both by laughing which hurt my stitches. And he said sorry.

It was a dishevelled pair that sat down in the new office across the desk from two imposingly smart men in dark suits. I didn’t take in who they were and just sipped Holly’s sweet tea. With Aleks’s hand in mine, these strange men could talk about an educational trust and funding and liability all they wanted. The piece of paper that was passed across the table had a very large number on it. Aleks got angry. He suspected they’d known Michelle was unstable. He said what they were offering me was an insult.

Two more bits of paper appeared before I understood. And really, it was so simple. “You’re going to give me money to never talk about any of this, and never sue.”

I was right, but there was a bit more to the meeting than that. Aleks was being offered complete control of the school and a virtually unlimited budget in the first year to turn the castle into a centre of excellence for dance in Scotland.

That was good. It would be so very good. For him. For me. For everyone. “I’ll sign,” I said. “I accept.”

Aleks shook his head. “You have the right to seek proper compensation. And not be gagged in this way.”

“You won’t get more than this,” said one of the suited men. “Take it to court, and you may get nothing.”

I smiled at him, a remembered task in mind. “I have an extra condition, something I want you to arrange for me.”

“Yes?” the elder of the suits asked, and I made the deal.

Emotions returned. Physical strength too, a little more each class as Aleks’s hands guided and corrected. I worked hard to perfect my tendu and really began to understand the importance of the seemingly simple stretch of the foot. I was wary of the other therapeutic exercises, worried about a connection to Amalgamation C, though he assured me there was none.

We had a conversation about the peculiar nature of the sequence. Aleks told me that the stone in the roof had been dislodged by the piano foot when it went through the floor. I had not made it fall. Of course I hadn’t. The idea that a combination of movements could cause telekinetic effects was nonsense, springing as it did from the obsessed and deluded mind of Michelle. I’d been subjected to an extreme form of aversion therapy, and the result had been terrible, but that was all over now.

The fact that I had almost walked away from Aleks was a frequent source of horror to me, and I held on to him whenever possible.

“Can you at least put each other down at meal times?” moaned Justin.

“I think it’s lovely,” said Bekah. “The mum and dad of the castle should always be together.”

“I am liking this thought,” said Aleks.

I liked that he smiled.

When he wasn’t teaching, I often sat in his new office with him, the room we’d nearly gone into during the Christmas party. I loved the patterned tile by its door, the one that looked like Jackie’s house. I loved the wide window that overlooked an old shrubbery garden behind the castle. I loved Aleks’s enthusiasm and ideas about how to make the school great. I loved him.

Holly coming into various rooms and saying “Oh man,” became a farcical and common occurrence. It always seemed to take place mid-embrace.

“She thinks we’re having sex all over the place,” I said.

“I know,” he replied, laughing into my neck. It was good we could laugh about it, the fact that what Holly thought was happening everywhere was, in fact, not happening at all.

February turned to March. The nights grew lighter, and the days longer. I returned to teaching, preparing Bekah’s class for their first exam. The syllabus was exactly the same as when I’d done it myself as a student, and I found it just as robotic and boring as I had back then. I asked Aleks if I could do a freestyle class for my pupils as well, and he said yes at once, making me suspect he would refuse me nothing after all that had happened.

I sat in his office one morning, while he was teaching, and used the big computer to register my students for their exam. I had to verify my email address and waited impatiently for my mail to load. It had been a long time since I’d bothered to check email; I’d barely done it since being at the castle. The mail page was colourful as it displayed an animated logo in front of me. It had two reds that didn’t match. Images flowed through my mind as I stared at the jarring and offensive colours. I remembered Michelle leaving for Christmas. I remembered Michelle returning after Christmas. The first Michelle had been happy and friendly, telling me she’d email me. The second one had morphed from warm to cold as she’d observed Aleks and me together.

Was I about to face that promised Christmas email now? What was it about? Aleks. The therapeutic work. Something she’d wanted me to see to make him look bad or unattractive? Had she known about us, back then? No. The transformation to bitter and mean had been too instant, too extreme.

My heart hammered as the slow rural internet started to open the page properly. My fingers were sweaty on the keyboard. And then it wasn’t there. The email. The Michelle email. There was the new registration message from the exam board, and marketing from various places where I’d bought clothes and theatre tickets. That was about it. I scrolled up and down, desperate to find the dreaded communication. I searched all the folders from spam to trash and back again. Nothing. Maybe she’d forgotten to send it. Maybe she’d already been beginning to break down then. She’d been unbalanced all along. A damaged person. I knew bad things had happened to her. She’d said as much in the lower dungeon, the real dungeon. That day. That night. While that film was playing.

The film of her and Aleks. And it had been Aleks in the film. Of course it had. The concept of a ‘different man’ had fooled the broken part of my subconscious, but it wasn’t actually true. Aleks had made love to Michelle. Aleks had kissed Michelle. He’d given her those soft kisses that I knew so well. Lots of them.

The door opened and the man himself came in, happy for a moment before seeing my face. He transformed from positive to negative as he regarded me. His smile faded away completely as I stood.

I pushed the chair back. I leant forward and put my hands on the desk to steady myself, to brace for the emotional tempest that approached. I looked up at Aleks, and the air around me turned to a brilliant and violent red, little yellow sparks dotted through it.

“It was you.” I didn’t sound like myself, as if I was the one who was a different person. But I wasn’t. And neither was he. “You kissed her.” That was the worst thing. I didn’t know why, but somehow it was.

He didn’t try to deny it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If you could know how much I wish I had not.”

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