LITMIR.BIZ

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      Now it felt as if she had removed herself from her source.

      How she wept for him and loathed that he had let her go back to the hotel without a fight.

      He had.

      Unlike Anya, Roman was patient.

      He set about the renovations.

      His dream was not a gym in memory of his brother. Instead mirrors were put in and a barre ran the length of the wall. The floors were polished.

      He avoided walking near the hotel or the theatre as he did not want to upset her.

      He knew, though, when the dance company had moved there, because there was a small piece on the news.

      Mika and Anya were being interviewed and, of course, he watched.

      ‘Are you excited to be back in Paris?’

      ‘I am thrilled,’ Anya answered through a translator. ‘I have such fond memories of the last time I was here.’

      And she smiled, and so too did Roman, for he could taste the vinegar in her smile from here and knew that it was aimed at him.

      ‘How are rehearsals going?’

      It was Mika who answered, again through a translator. ‘We have a full dress rehearsal tomorrow.’

      ‘The chemistry when you two perform—’ the interviewer started, but Roman flicked off the television.

      He did not want to know.

      And yet they had to face these things so he turned the television back on and got the end of Mika’s response to the question.

      ‘To dance,’ Mika said, ‘is to love. Without love you cannot dance.’

      Mika was right, it would seem, for without love Anya could not dance.

      She hated that she could not speak of Celeste and she loathed her own jealousy.

      She felt flushed in the face with the hurt of it all and cross, most of all, with herself.

      She loved him so much.

      She was teary and fragile as they prepared for full dress rehearsal on the day before opening night. Anya raised her arm as her costume was done up and she remembered Roman carefully pulling the zip down.

      It would not do up by a fraction.

      But that fraction had the costume manager tutting. Really she had only put on a couple of pounds but it meant that her costume would have to be let out.

      She was scolded for the weight gain. She sat in the dressing-room on the edge of tears and took out her phone and again resisted calling him.

      Instead she looked up a song.

      A song from the French foreign legion named ‘Monica’, or ‘La Monique’, and as it played she read the translation.

      The lyrics were so beautiful that tears spilled from her eyes as she found out that Roman had thought of her all along.

      She needed him, more than she ever had, and the temptation was too much. With the phone in her hand and those words on the screen, she called him. As he answered, just hearing his voice pulled her back to the vortex of them and Anya let out a sob, hung up and turned off her phone.

      She needed to focus for her performance tomorrow and whenever they were together they argued.

      The costume manager came in with the spare costume as it was a little larger to allow for seams being taken in or let out. It didn’t add to her confidence as she dressed.

      She stood at the edge of the stage and waited to go on, but this afternoon she felt wooden.

      For this rehearsal they would not dance properly. It was too exhausting and that energy would be saved for the audience. They would walk through all the steps and do some jetés, though not at peak, and Mika would perform some lifts on her.

      The whole rehearsal from start to finish went terribly.

      It was the worst final rehearsal that Anya had ever had. She did not feel light in Mika’s arms and it would seem the trust in each other was gone.

      Once she leapt and Mika mistimed things but as he caught her he could not correct and, embarrassed by his own clumsy performance, he put her down.

      ‘Christmas must be coming early,’ Mika said nastily, and she could hear a few sniggers as he continued. ‘Because Firebird is getting fat.’

      The rest of the rehearsal was just as hellish, and when it ended, the choreographer did not offer the platitude of it all coming together for opening night.

      Instead she was in a huddle with the director and Anya felt sick, for she knew she wasn’t the only one with doubts about her suitability for tomorrow night.

      She could feel the panic starting to build. Tomorrow was opening night and not one single rehearsal had gone well.

      She went to try on her altered costume before heading back to the hotel, but as she stepped in she saw Lula, her understudy, trying the firebird costume on.

      She was, Anya was sure, about to be cut.

      She fled to her dressing-room and usually she would shower and change but instead she just wiped off her make-up and dressed.

      And then, as she left, she picked up all her useless, stupid trinkets and stuffed them into her bag.

      They weren’t working.

      Nothing worked without Roman.

      She didn’t know what to do. She held it in and left without saying goodbye as she often did, but as Anya pushed open the exit door she could hold it in no more and she started to sob.

      But there, waiting for her, was Roman and she fell into his arms and wept into his chest as he told her that it would all be okay.

      Roman, having answered her call and heard her small sob, had rung straight back but Anya, being Anya, had turned off her phone.

      He did not want to disrupt the rehearsal and so he had waited outside.

      ‘I’m going to lose the part...’

      ‘You’re not.’

      ‘I am.’

      ‘Anya, you’re not.’

      ‘You don’t know that. I can’t dance, I’ve been rehearsing over and over and I can’t do it and I’ve just seen Lula, my understudy, trying on Firebird—’

      ‘Today was dress rehearsal?’ Roman checked, and Anya nodded into his chest. ‘Doesn’t everyone try on their costumes today?’

      ‘Yes, but Mika and I are fighting. He said...’ She closed her eyes. She was too humiliated to repeat what Mika had said.

      Roman closed his eyes too. Of course she and Mika were fighting. He could hardly stand to hear about their rows, or Mika’s reaction to Roman’s arrival.

      He would listen, though, if it made things easier for her.

      ‘What did he say?’ Roman asked.

      ‘I don’t want to tell you.’

      ‘Come home,’ he offered.

      ‘No, I’m going to go to the dance studio and go through it alone.’

      ‘How many times have you done that?’

      So many times, Anya thought.

      ‘Whatever you’re doing isn’t working,’ Roman pointed out.

      ‘No.’

      ‘So why not try something different?’

      They walked and they could go the long way and avoid the square where she had seen them kiss, but she had avoided so much and it was getting them nowhere so they walked through it.

      And

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