The Liberation of Alice Love - Abby McDonald [51]
“Tonight?” Alice paused. “No, but I’ll…catch up later.” She flashed another smile, already backing away. “Thanks so much for your help!”
Tripping down the front steps, Alice clutched the membership listing triumphantly. Cooking classes, modern jazz—it felt like the more she discovered, the more of a mystery Ella revealed herself to be.
Chapter Twelve
Although Alice didn’t venture into a class that evening, she returned two days later, packing her exercise outfit in her bag along with contracts and detouring to the gym after work. The membership record showed that Ella had paid up front for six months, so the perky, ponytailed girl on the front desk was more than happy to replace Alice’s “lost” membership card and provide their latest schedule.
“It’s down the hall, Studio B.”
“Great, I’ll just…” Alice gestured awkwardly to the changing rooms, still half expecting the fearsome Mandy to come storming out of aerobics class and catch her in the lie. But the gym was busy with after-work crowds, and despite her fluttering nerves, nobody gave Alice a second glance. She swiped in with her shiny new card, laced up her slim trainers, and took her place, unnoticed, at the back of the dance class that Ella had been attending for months.
“And one, and two, and kick, hands, lunge!”
She was terrible, of course. The rest of the class seemed to have arrived straight from their day jobs as professional West End dancers and picked up the routine in an instant, effortlessly moving from step-swivel-bounce to glide-glide-leap while Alice stumbled over simple steps and flailed her arms around in confusion, sweating at the pace. But for some reason, she persevered, and by the end of the hour, she could perform those last eight beats of the routine in perfect time with the others—an achievement that filled her with an unexpected elation that more than made up for the ache in her thighs.
Alice hadn’t danced since she was a child, leaping and twirling around the village hall, under the expert tutelage of Miss Dee, the ample-bosomed ballet instructor. As Alice leaned over the mirror in the changing room after class, unpinning her damp hair, she was struck with a sudden memory of her mother, brushing out the stiff residue of hairspray after one of Alice’s end-of-term shows. Natasha had loved dressing Alice up in those outfits. Not that regulation leotard and pale pink wrap-around cardigan—no, these were elaborate costumes the mothers of the group would slave for weeks over. Or, in Natasha’s case, commission from Betty O’Neill, the seamstress up the road: King Midas’s urchin helper in glittering gold sequins, the Sugar Plum Fairy’s assistant, with lilac tulle. She would pin Alice’s hair up in elaborate plaits, carefully painting her pale face with a slash of liquid liner and a cherub’s-bow smile while Alice sat patiently, running over her steps in her head for fear she would trip and disappoint everyone.
“Could I just use that plug?”
Alice slipped back into the warm changing room, filled with chatter and the whir of styling appliances. “Oh, sorry.” She moved aside, making room for a dark-haired woman wielding a blow-dryer.
“You were in the jazz class just now, right?” The woman expertly divided her fringe into sections and began winding one around her circular brush. “Damon’s brutal, but you pick it up.”
Brutal, that was about right. Alice’s limbs ached, but there was a lightness there too, unfamiliar after so many years of sitting up at her attic desk. Alice smiled, pulling her bag from the small locker. “I don’t know…I was just trying it out.”
“Stick with it,” the woman insisted, over the roar of her blow-dryer. She had thin, wire-rimmed glasses and a smattering of freckles over her nose. “I swear, a month ago, I couldn’t even touch my toes. I’m Nadia, by the way.”
Alice paused. “Ella.” Her reply was a beat too late, but Nadia didn’t seem to notice the hesitation. “Ella Nicholls,” she said again, with more confidence.
Nadia smiled back, starting on another section of hair. “See you next time, Ella!”
“Maybe.”
Alice slowly made