Page 28 of Lights, Camera, Love

With painstaking care, I drag a stripe of black liner along my eyelid, attempting to perfect a cat’s-eye flick.

Mum shouts something indecipherable from the living room and I flinch, smudging the makeup.

I wince at my reflection, my look now transformed from sultry feline into something resembling Cleopatra after too many tequila shots. Shit, I’m so crap at this.

‘You right, Mum?’ I call out while dabbing my eye with a wet wipe.

She doesn’t reply, but over the Dua Lipa album I have playing from my portable speaker, I can hear her speaking to someone in a harsh, terse voice. I’m close to being late for the DanceLab showcase, but I hasten down the hallway and peek into the living room to make sure everything’s okay.

Mum sits perched on the edge of the couch with her phone pressed to her ear, her skin ghostly white. Her eyes skip to mine. ‘Stop talking!’ she hisses into the speaker and covers it with her palm. ‘What is it, Evie?’

‘What’s wrong?’ I say, stepping closer. ‘Who’s on the phone?’

‘No one.’ Her shaky voice trips over the words.

‘What do you mean “no one”—who is it?’ I tread over to Mum, but she lurches away from me like the world might implode if I get my hands on her phone.

What the hell?

I snatch the phone from her fingers and bring it to my ear, my heart thumping. ‘Hello? Who is this?’

I hear a sharp intake of breath. Then, silence.

‘Hello?’ I press.

Mum’s face twists as she jumps up to grab the phone, but I turn away from her and stride into the kitchen. She follows me, huffing.

‘ Hello? ’ I repeat forcefully to whoever’s breathing on the other end of the line.

‘Is that … is that Evie?’ grunts a male voice, its deep, nasal resonance faintly familiar.

‘It is.’

Mum rounds on me, then freezes on the spot, her eyes like dinner plates.

‘Who is this?’ I say, unease slicing into my gut.

The person on the other end takes several shaky breaths, and I don’t know how I know, but I just do. My stomach pitches.

‘Is this … is this Gabriel?’ I breathe.

He swallows audibly. ‘Yes, Evie, it … it is.’

My jaw hangs agape.

Before he can say another word, Mum seizes the phone from my fingers and brings the speaker to her lips. ‘Do not call here again,’ she bites out, then ends the call.

I can’t seem to find any air to breathe. My hands clutch my head to stop it from spinning. I turn to Mum, still slack-jawed. ‘That was him ?’

She takes my quivering hand and guides me over to the couch to sit beside her.

‘ Was … that … him? ’ I push on in a broken voice—a stupid question because I already know the answer. What I’m having trouble with is believing it.

‘Yes.’ Mum’s head bows; her white-knuckled fingers squeeze mine. ‘It was your father.’

Oh my god.

For a minute, we sit trapped inside a cage of stony, shell-shocked silence.

‘What did he want?’ I breathe, finally finding my voice.

She lets go of my hand and brings her gel nail extensions up to her blow-dried hair.

‘ Mum ,’ I say sharply when she takes too long to reply.

She sighs. ‘He sent me an email a few days ago, totally out of the blue, asking if we could talk. I don’t know how he got my email address, but if he’s anything like he used to be, it wouldn’t have taken much.

He’s got a contact for everything.’ Her voice strains as she goes on, like she’s reluctant to give him this much airtime.

‘I replied, telling him that he’s three decades too late and to piss the hell off, but then he rang me.

He must have seen my number on my email signature.

God, I’m an idiot.’ Her face drops as the lines on her brow gather into a frown.

‘He’s here in town. Something about investing in an Aussie film and doing a small part in it, but it’s not the one you’re working on. ’

‘I know. I read it in the news,’ I stumble. ‘And … and I saw him the other day. At Village Pictures.’

Her round eyes snap to mine. ‘You did? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t want to upset you. It was when I went in for that meeting after the article came out about me and Austin. I … I don’t know what Gabriel was doing there, but I saw him in the lobby and’—the venomous words sting my throat—‘he walked right past me.’

‘Did he see you?’

I nod. ‘He saw me, he looked right at me, and then he kept going. That was it.’ I shrug, my lips turning down.

Shockwaves of anger rocket through Mum’s eyes. ‘What an absolute fucking asshole.’

I blink away from her. Despite everything that’s happened and how much my father has hurt me, hearing my mum speak like that about him only makes me feel more miserable about it all.

‘He rang me to ask if he could see you,’ Mum admits quietly.

My brows fly up. ‘ What? ’

She nods slowly, fidgeting with the silver tennis bracelet around her wrist. ‘I’m as surprised as you are.’

Her words rattle around my brain, trying to fall into place so I can make sense of them. Gabriel Dean voluntarily reached out to me? He wants to see me? I guess he didn’t recognise me in the Village Pictures lobby then.

‘Before you snatched the phone off me,’ Mum adds pointedly, ‘I was about to tell him where to go. And that there’s no way you’d ever want to see him.’

I glance down at the silky, flared skirt of my plum-coloured salsa dress. Why is my instinct not to instantly agree with that statement?

‘I should go,’ I mumble, glancing at the wall clock. ‘ Shit , I’m so late.’

‘Try to enjoy yourself,’ Mum encourages as I drag myself to my feet. She’s making her tone as upbeat as she can, but her expression is still stricken. The painted arches of her brows make her face look even more startled. ‘Just give this no more thought, Evie, okay? He means nothing to us. Right?’

A burning feeling irritates my sternum. I’m too astonished to process how I feel about any of this. In the end I just bend to give her a hug. ‘Right,’ I repeat.

Thank the stars, my car was finally fixed earlier this week, and I turn up the volume on some nineties Ice Cube for my drive to Barfly, the venue Rafa has booked for the showcase, attempting to drown out the noisy thoughts screeching through my brain.

It took me until I was fourteen—when that email to Gabriel’s agent about the family tree went unanswered—to accept that my father was never going to contact me or attempt to be a part of my life. Having that certainty blown apart today, without warning, has left me in pieces.

Why now? Does it have something to do with the baby he’s expecting with his partner? Has she pushed him into this? Has he discovered a serious hereditary condition that his doctor says I ought to know about?

Maybe he’s here to tell me that he loves me and has never stopped thinking about me.

God, what a ridiculous thought. Frustrated with myself for even having it, I shove it out of my mind.

The car behind me blasts its horn when I fail to notice the traffic light has switched to green, and I shake my head straight.

It takes fifteen minutes of scouring the city’s backstreets until I find a parking spot.

I race into Barfly so fast that I nearly roll my ankle in my glittery heels.

The showcase is already in full swing when I walk through the doors.

Damn, I wanted to watch Rafael do his opening number—a fast-paced mambo with his dance partner, Gina.

The first celebrity of the night—a weekend news anchor—is up on stage, doing a lovely job of a simple bachata with Sebastian. Fortunately, he has no need to wear steel-capped boots with her. No time to stand and watch, though—my hip-hop crew is scheduled to hit the stage right after this track.

Barfly is a hugely popular performance nightclub, which I’ve danced at many times before and know inside out.

I slip past the huddle of media videographers, through the painted black door beside the stage and into the ‘green room’—really just a storage space crammed with an old leather sofa and a stockpile of alcohol cartons.

‘She’s here!’ cries Avalanche.

Bliss, Usher, Mayday and Snuggles let out a collective breath.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, beaming at their matching white singlets, red sweatpants and black baseball caps. They look adorable. ‘How are you guys feeling?’

‘Like I’m going to be sick,’ chokes Mayday. Snuggles slips an arm around him.

‘I’m pumped ,’ says Bliss, rocking from foot to foot.

‘I forget which beat we start on,’ moans Avalanche.

‘It’s one round of eight, and then go on the one ,’ Usher explains, and I nod in confirmation.

‘Just follow the others,’ I add, giving Avalanche a reassuring grin. I count out the beats to familiarise him with the song’s intro until the Latin dance track that’s been thumping through the stage wall comes to an end. My dancers share wild-eyed glances—even Bliss and Usher look nervous now.

‘Everyone hold hands and take a deep breath,’ I say, quickly guiding them into a circle.

I eyeball each dancer, passing them a relaxed smile.

‘Team Evie: you’ve got this . You have all worked so hard—now it’s time to go out there and shine bright!

’ As I speak, the boulder in my stomach begins to shift and loosen.

If there’s anything that can take my mind off Gabriel Dean, it’s this crew and this music.

After we raise our arms in a group cheer, I help the dancers line up in the wings. On stage, I see Austin standing within the glow of the spotlight, clutching a microphone and talking about the human rights charity our showcase is supporting.

Austin then introduces my awesome squad, and the opening bars of the ‘Not Like Us’ radio edit burst through the speakers. One by one, my panicked dancers groove onto the stage, nice and low, like I taught them.

From the first knee spin, Usher nails the routine, and even though I can’t make out the spectators’ faces through the blazing stage lights, I’m willing to bet they can’t take their eyes off him.