Without Looking Back

  ‘No!’ she protested. ‘I don’t want it to get wet!’

  ‘It’s going to get wet anyway,’ Louis replied. ‘Put it on – you’ll be warmer.’

  Grumbling, she obliged, threading her arms beneath the pink straps. Louis picked up her towel, rolled it up and put it back in her rucksack.

  Max suggested food and so they cycled back towards the village, Max trying to scare Millie by shooting down past her without touching his brakes, Millie’s shrieks echoing against the hillside. They left their bikes in the main street and stepped into the oily fug of the burger bar. The burly man at the counter recognized them and asked them where their dad was and Max told him about the job interview in Windermere. Then they ordered and sat around a grubby formica table. As they began to tuck in, a noisy group of school kids entered, jostling and shouting and laughing and chatting. Millie looked up in surprise, hurrying to finish her mouthful so she could speak. ‘Why are they all dressed the same?’

  ‘It’s called school uniform,’ Max told her. ‘It’s what they wear to school in England.’

  ‘They have to wear ties to school?’ Her eyes widened in disbelief. ‘Will we have to go to school here in England?’

  ‘We will in September,’ Louis told her. ‘After the summer holidays.’

  ‘So you’ll have to wear a tie then,’ Millie informed him.

  ‘You will too,’ Louis said.

  ‘Girls don’t wear ties, silly.’

  ‘Yes they do,’ Louis replied, turning round in his seat. ‘Look at that girl’ – he pointed to a long-haired brunette who was waiting for her order – ‘she’s got—’ He broke off as the girl, holding her tray of food, turned round. There was a surprised silence.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ said the girl.

  ‘Hello,’ Louis said, his mouth suddenly dry.

  Another silence. The girl turned away again to say something to her friend.

  ‘Who the hell is that?’ Max hissed.

  ‘How come you know her?’ Millie asked, her voice very loud.

  ‘She’s just a girl I bumped into the other day at the leisure centre,’ Louis whispered back angrily, flushing at their conspicuous reaction.

  ‘What?’ Max sounded outraged. ‘When?’

  ‘What’s her name?’ Millie wanted to know.

  Louis gave Millie a vicious kick under the table as the girl suddenly moved away from her friends and came towards their table. ‘Hi,’ she said again. ‘Are you brothers and sisters?’

  ‘Yes,’ Louis said quickly, pressing his foot hard against Millie’s. ‘That’s my brother – um – Josh, and my sister, Katie.’

  Millie clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Max elbowed her, hard, and she stopped.

  ‘I’m Tess,’ the girl said. ‘What’s your name?’ She was looking at Louis.

  ‘Liam,’ Louis said, his cheeks hot.

  Millie took a deep breath and held it. Max glared at her.

  ‘Are you new around here?’ Tess asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Louis said.

  ‘We come from New Caledonia,’ Millie said in a rush. ‘But we live here now.’

  Max shot Millie a warning look.

  ‘New Caledonia?’ Tess repeated. ‘Is that a country?’

  ‘It’s an island in the South Pacific,’ Louis answered quickly.

  ‘Wow.’ Tess looked impressed. ‘And so now you’re living here in Grasmere?’

  ‘No,’ Millie said. ‘We live in the old farmhouse above the village.’

  ‘Oh, I thought that was the Daniels’ holiday home.’

  ‘It used to be,’ Max said quickly. ‘But we’re renting it.’

  ‘Oh.’ She eyed them all with interest. ‘So, are you all dancers?’

  Millie burst into giggles again.

  ‘No way,’ Max said with a dramatic roll of the eyes. ‘Just him.’

  Louis shot Max a look of fury.

  ‘Louis is really good,’ Millie pitched in. ‘He can do grand-jetés and fouettés and backflips and one-handed cartwheels . . .’

  Tess was frowning. ‘I thought you said your name was Liam,’ she said to Louis.

  There was an awful silence.

  ‘That’s – er – Louis is just his nickname,’ Max stumbled, a flush spreading across his cheeks.

  ‘Yeah,’ Louis pitched in desperately. ‘My name’s Liam. Katie just calls me Louis and Loulou and stuff like that for fun.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Tess gave an easy laugh. ‘Well, it was really nice to meet you all. Liam, you should really consider coming to the dance classes at the Windermere leisure centre. They’re every Monday and Thursday at five.’

  That evening, at dinner, they told Dad about their morning spent at the lake. Dad expressed immediate concern about them swimming out of their depth and so Max quickly lied and assured him they hadn’t. They then told him about the girl in the burger bar, leaving out the bit about Millie’s slip-up. Dad looked really pleased. His eyes brightened still further when Louis mentioned the dance class. ‘That’s a great idea,’ he said. ‘Thursday at five? We can all drive over and I’ll give Max a game of table tennis.’

  ‘And me, and me!’ Millie piped up.

  ‘Of course “and you”, sweetheart. Do we need to get you any special clothes, Louis?’

  ‘Pink tights and ballet shoes!’ Max choked on his own wit.

  ‘Tracksuit bottoms and jazz shoes,’ Louis replied, shooting Max a withering look.

  ‘OK, I’ll have a look in the phone directory and see what I can find,’ Dad replied.

  In the bed on the other side of the room, Max was sprawled on his back, one arm above his head, breathing deeply. A thin shaft of clear moonlight slanted between their beds and across the floor. Louis lifted up his arm to look at his watch. The luminous dial read a quarter to one. He couldn’t sleep. He wished he could fast-forward to Thursday. He wished he could fall asleep. But sleep was one of those strange things which only crept up on you when you weren’t thinking about it. He wondered what the dance class would be like. Maybe he’d be the only boy. Maybe he’d be so stiff from all this time off that Tess would think he had been boasting. He pointed his toe beneath the covers. Turned his leg out and raised it gently up from the mattress. Then, with a flick, he bent his knee and extended his leg towards the ceiling, sending the duvet slithering down to the floor.

  He got out of bed and padded from the room. He crossed the landing: snores were already reverberating from hehind Dad’s closed door. He crept down the stairs, unlocked the front door and walked out barefoot into the night.

  The tops of the dales were hidden in mist and a strong full moon hung low in the night sky. The air was very still, very quiet, as if the entire world was holding its breath. The farmhouse, the car, the barn all looked unfamiliar in the strange white light. The cold, sharp stones of the courtyard were suddenly replaced by soft grass as Louis walked down to the bottom of the garden, gazing out towards the hills.

  He stopped, placing his feet in fourth position, and did the slow arm movements of a port de bras to silent music, the soles of his feet stroking the damp grass, a gentle breeze tickling his bare skin. In the moonlight, his T-shirt and pants were a ghostly white and his arms almost silver. He took his hands up above his head, breathing in deeply, lifting his leg to arabesque, pulling in his stomach, raising his chin and staring out at the line that separated the earth from the sky. Slowly, very slowly, he tilted his weight forward and lifted his heel off the ground.

  ‘Wow!’ The word was only whispered, like a tiny puff of air, but it gave Louis such a fright that he toppled forward and swung round with a terrified gasp. A small figure had appeared at the edge of the grass and was crouching down, her pink nightdress pulled tight over her knees.

  ‘Millie, it’s the middle of the night! Go back to bed!’ Louis whispered loudly.

  ‘You’re not in bed,’ she replied.

  ‘Dad will have a fit!’

  ‘I can’t get back to sleep.’ She looked at him, the
whites of her eyes bright in the moonlight. ‘Do that again.’

  He hesitated, then, realizing Millie wasn’t about to go back inside, lifted up into arabesque again, working hard at getting the line just right.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Millie murmured.

  He brought his extended leg round to the side, then pulled his foot in sharply, turning a double pirouette to finish. Millie gasped in delight.

  He did another port de bras, then brought his leg up into attitude, turning slowly on his supporting leg. ‘Why can’t you sleep?’ he asked Millie.

  She looked up at him. Her bob was growing out, her curls almost reaching her shoulders, and her face looked angelic in the moonlight. ‘I had a dream,’ she whispered.

  ‘What dream?’ he asked her, taking a deep breath and arching his back to bring his foot and head closer together.

  ‘A dream about Maman.’

  Louis stopped, frozen in attitude, then slowly lowered his leg back to the ground. ‘A bad dream?’

  ‘I dreamed we were back living with her again.’

  Suddenly, Louis felt cold. He sat down on the grass, wrapping his arms around his knees. ‘D’you miss her?’

  Millie started to nod very slowly, and then her eyes were glistening.

  ‘Millie . . .’

  ‘D’you think she remembers us?’ She pressed her hand against her mouth and a muffled sob escaped her.

  ‘Yes, of course she does!’ Louis moved towards her on his knees and Millie instantly curled up against him.

  ‘I want to see Maman again!’ she sobbed quietly, her face wet against his T-shirt.

  ‘We will,’ Louis whispered. ‘We will, Millie. One day.’ And above him, the starlight blurred and fragmented into a kaleidoscope of unfallen tears.

  Thursday. A fine drizzle fell over the dales so no one felt like swimming. Max spent the morning at the kitchen table, trying to fix a glitch in the laptop while Millie lay sprawled out on a rug, watching cartoons on TV. Restless, Louis pushed the sofa back and practised doing handsprings and backflips while Max complained about the table shaking.

  When Dad came home from work, they had a late lunch, then drove to a sports shop in town to pick up a table-tennis bat for Max and some tracksuit bottoms for Louis; the shoes they had ordered online had still not arrived, so he would have to manage with the everyday ones he had. They arrived at the leisure centre early and so all four of them had a game. As the giant clock above the basketball net inched its way towards five, Louis began to feel nervous. He left the others to their game, dived into the toilets to change out of his jeans and then began the long walk down the corridor towards the dance studio. What if he was the only boy in the class? What if the class was already full? What if the teacher refused point blank to let him join in without proper shoes?

  The dance studio was already busy. Louis stepped through the open door and hovered on the threshold. Two girls were practising pirouettes by the barre. Four other girls sat on the floor by the wall, chatting and changing their shoes. A black boy and a red-head were practising spinning on their head, break-dance style. A woman with cornrows, wearing a leotard and tracksuit bottoms, got up off the floor and came over. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, um – I’ve come for the jazz class.’

  At that moment a voice behind him said, ‘Oh, excellent, you decided to come after all! Miss Kano, this is Liam, the boy I was telling you about.’

  ‘Oh!’ Miss Kano’s face broke into a slow smile and she held out her hand to Louis. ‘Nice to meet you. Tess seems to have taken it upon herself to recruit boys to join this class. You’ve had some dance training before, I gather?’

  ‘Yeah, mainly street, ballet and tap.’

  ‘Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Well, by all means join in and see how you get on. Have you got shoes?’

  Louis explained about the delayed mail order.

  ‘OK, well, fold your socks down below your heel so that you don’t slip. Tess, are you going to lead the warm-up for me?’

  ‘Give me some decent music then,’ Tess said. She flashed Louis a grin and he smiled back shyly. She was wearing a blue leotard today and baggy black jogging bottoms. Her hair was still loose and unkempt, giving her a slightly wild look.

  After a standard ten-minute warm-up to the beat of Lemar, led by Tess, Miss Kano took over. Louis kept to the back of the room, carefully watching the others in the huge mirror. The class was much smaller than the one he’d belonged to back in Paris, but the standard was high. Tess was by far the best – at once graceful and powerful, with beautifully elegant lines, technically faultless. He could see that Miss Kano valued her too – whenever they came to a particularly difficult move, she got Tess to demonstrate. Several of the other girls were very ‘ballet’, with turned-out feet and graceful arms. The short red-headed boy was like a powerball, whereas the black guy was tall and skinny and obviously a Michael Jackson fan. After practising turns from the corner and step leaps across the room, the class picked up a routine they had been learning and Miss Kano told Louis to take a break. He sat down on the floor at the front of the room against the mirrors, swigging from his water bottle and watching the dance carefully. When he’d seen it performed a couple of times, he got back to his feet and joined in.

  At the end of the class, Miss Kano beckoned him over to the front where she was kneeling, sorting through a collection of CDs. As the others jostled noisily for the door, Louis approached and sat down opposite the teacher, brushing the damp hair back from his forehead.

  ‘How did you find it?’ Miss Kano asked him.

  Louis smiled and nodded. ‘Great.’

  ‘Think you’ll come again?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You’re very good,’ Miss Kano said with a little smile. ‘I bet your old teacher was sorry to lose you.’

  Louis thought of Madame Dubois and the Rouen competition they had been working so hard for. He said nothing.

  ‘See, I told you!’ Tess crowed, sliding over on her knees. ‘He’s even better than Jimmy! A real-life Billy Elliot!’

  Miss Kano laughed. ‘I think I agree!’

  Louis said nothing, embarrassed suddenly. Billy Elliot was his favourite film in the world. He had begged Dad to take him to London to see the musical.

  ‘He’s the perfect partner for me!’

  ‘Hold on,’ Miss Kano said with a smile. ‘I haven’t even told him about the competition yet.’

  ‘So? I’m telling him now.’ Tess leaned forward on her hands, her green eyes shimmering with gold. Her face was so close, Louis could almost count the freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twelve and a half.’

  ‘You’re tall for your age. I’m fourteen. But look, we’re the same height. Will you be my dance partner in the Junior Pair Dance Competition? Please?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it all year, but last month my partner Jimmy suddenly announced he was giving up dancing to concentrate on fencing.’ She snorted in disgust.

  Louis stared back at her, momentarily mesmerized by those cat’s eyes. ‘OK,’ he said.

  Chapter Nine

  BY MID-JULY, LIFE had slid into some kind of routine. They had been in England for nearly a month now and were officially on their summer break. The village centre was crowded with holiday-makers in waterproofs and walking boots, and the dales and lakes were speckled with hikers and bird-watchers. Early each morning, while Louis, Max and Millie were still in bed, Dad left the house and went to work. The children surfaced later, took their time over breakfast and then, if it wasn’t raining, cycled over to one of the lakes for a swim. Afterwards they cycled home, bums soaked and hair dripping, stopping at the village for Cokes and magazines, returning home to read (Louis), draw (Millie) or play computer games (Max) until Dad arrived with food. After a late lunch they would drive out somewhere – either to the beach or to a neighbouring town, or to an amusement park. Evenings were spent watching films while Dad worked at the kitchen t
able. Initially, Mondays and Thursdays were dance nights for Louis and table-tennis nights for the rest of the family. Then Dad found a tennis club for Max in Windermere, and a judo class for Millie at the local school, so Louis started cycling to his classes.

  His dancing began to improve. Miss Kano was an exacting teacher, regularly keeping him and Tess behind after the rest of the class to work on a particular turn or difficult step sequence. By the time Louis emerged from the emptying leisure centre, he was sweaty and exhausted. He walked round to the car park with Tess, where her mum – a very large woman with a sixties-style hairdo and a cigarette permanently wedged between her lips – sat in her beat-up Fiat, its engine idling. Every time, she offered Louis a lift, and every time Louis declined, pointing towards his bike chained to the railings. Tess would say bye, giving Louis a quick kiss that always made his cheek feel even hotter, then slam into the passenger seat and start arguing with her mum before they had even pulled out of the car park. Finally, Louis would cycle the five miles home and arrive, cheeks blazing and calves throbbing, to wolf down a huge dinner and throw himself half dressed into bed, completely knackered.

  Millie made a friend at judo called Natasha, who lived in the village, and promptly invited her over to spend the night. Dad was worried at first – worried that there would be a slip-up with the new names, but after a million assurances from Millie, he relented, and a small red-head with pointy features turned up one evening and spent the entire time holed up with Millie in her bedroom. A week later, after a game of tennis, Max turned up unexpectedly with a spotty-faced beanpole called Ned – Max introduced Louis as ‘my little brother, the ballerina’ and the two of them hogged the computer and the living room all evening.

  The following night, at dinner, Dad said to Louis, ‘I think it’s your turn to invite someone over.’

  Louis shot him a look. ‘My friends all live in France.’