Page 10 of Slow Burn

On the way home, I’d run through everything in my mind and had come to absolutely no conclusion.

What the hell was I going to do about the studio?

! The business had started small, with just private lessons and a couple of kids classes on a Saturday.

Now it had grown bigger and more profitable than we could ever have dreamed of, and I ran it all pretty much single-handedly.

Both of my sisters were successful dancers and off doing their own thing – they rarely, if ever, stepped foot inside James Jive, and when they did, it was like they couldn’t wait to leave again.

And my parents only swept in on special nights, if we were doing a showcase for our members, perhaps, or if somebody important was hiring out the studio and they wanted to show their faces.

Considering our family home was less than a ten-minute walk from the studio, it used to bother me that they didn’t come by more.

But I’d got used it over the years and quite enjoyed having the freedom to do whatever I liked.

Except that secretly I’d started wanting more from my life – and here it was being handed to me on a plate.

The problem was, I hadn’t shared my dreams of getting back to dancing with anyone – I hadn’t even come to terms with it myself, to be honest. And if I just announced it now, they’d hit the roof, wouldn’t they?

I had responsibilities – as the eldest daughter, I’d signed up for this, I could hardly leave them in the lurch now.

I put my key in the lock and let myself in. Mum was walking down the hallway holding a casserole dish of stew, heading from the kitchen to the dining room.

‘You’re late, Lerato,’ she said over her shoulder, calling me by my full name, a sure sign I was in trouble. ‘Your sister is here – I’m glad we can all have dinner together after all.’

‘Sedi’s here?’

‘She is. Now, come eat.’

I dumped my bag in the hall and walked through to the dining room.

Our large-ish new-build house was decorated in a unique combination of Mum’s South African heritage, from the art on the walls to the colourful rugs dotted around the place, and Dad’s love of useless objects, stuff he’d picked up from his travels around the world.

He’d been an entertainment director on a cruise ship for many years, it was how my parents had met, and apparently he’d bought something – be it a vase, a candle, or a random ornament – from every single port he’d ever docked at.

Now every inch of shelf space in our home was filled with things that nobody knew what to do with, but that my dad liked to look at, perhaps reminding himself of the exciting life he once had.

Sedi jumped up the second I walked into the dining room, throwing herself at me and clutching me tightly to her. I laughed and hugged her back.

‘To what do we owe the pleasure? Not bored with Shoreditch already, are you?’ I asked, teasing her about choosing one of London’s trendiest – and most expensive – areas to live in.

‘Hardly!’ she said. ‘But can’t I come and visit my lovely parents and sister now and again?’

‘Of course you can,’ I said, taking a step back to admire her. ‘You look great, as always.’

At twenty-nine, Sedi was a super-successful commercial dancer and always looked like she’d come straight off the set of one of the big-budget music videos she regularly appeared in.

She certainly wasn’t shy when it came to expressing herself through her clothes – today she was in trainers, designer tracksuit bottoms, a fluorescent yellow crop top and her trademark cap topped off with big gold hoops in her ears.

Her hairstyles changed like the wind, but today she wore it in long braids hanging down her back.

If I was the ying part of the James family, Sedi – or Lesedi, as Mum would call her when she was annoyed with her – was the yan g.

When Sedi walked into a room, everybody noticed her.

And if for some reason you didn’t see her immediately, you’d almost certainly hear her.

Her voice was loud and she had no qualms telling people exactly what she thought of them – or what she wanted them to do for her. I wished I had half of her confidence.

‘Have you lost weight?’ asked Sedi, peering at me.

I shook my head. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘That personal training is really paying off,’ said Sedi, giving me a long, slow whistle of appreciation.

Of course she had no idea what my personal training sessions actually consisted of, and I fully intended to keep it that way.

My sisters were both lovely, but they could never keep anything to themselves, and this thing with Jack, whatever it was, didn’t feel like something I wanted to advertise to my entire family.

I walked around the table to give Dad a hug.

‘Good day?’ he asked.

‘It was, actually,’ I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask why I was in full dancewear.

I usually wore a variation of it to work at the studio, anyway, but there was no way I’d choose something this tight and revealing.

I was painfully aware that I was going to have to come clean about where I’d been this afternoon at some point, but this wasn’t the right time to broach the subject.

I still thought Carlos was going to realize he’d made a huge mistake in casting me, and if that happened, the less people who knew about it the better.

I would be dancing at a whole other level, night after night, with one of the most famous Latin dancers in Italy.

There was a lot of scope for things to go wrong.

I took a seat at the table as Mum brought through an enormous bowl of rice to go with the stew, and Dad immediately began to help himself to a mound of it.

I poured everyone a glass of water while Sedi told us about her latest adventures.

She regularly travelled across the world working on concerts and shows – one week she’d be supporting a world-famous pop star at Madison Square Garden, and the next she’d be shooting a video for a new rap artist in Barbados.

Her life was full of excitement and glamour, plus she got to do what she loved – dance!

– almost every day. On which note, I desperately needed her to help me out the following afternoon.

‘Hey, DJ,’ I said, as casually as I could, using the nickname I called her when I wanted to butter her up. ‘Are you sticking around tomorrow?’

‘I was planning to – I’ve got a few days off.’

I bit my lip, deciding I was just going to have to go for it and lie.

‘Reckon you could cover at the studio in the afternoon? I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.’

‘What’s this?’ asked Mum, her ears pricking up.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ I said, ‘just some headaches I’ve been getting.’

This was more of an embellishment than a lie – I had been getting the odd headache, but I suspected it was more about dehydration than anything else, as I was often so busy at the studio I didn’t stop to eat or drink.

I felt less bad about exaggerating the truth than I would have done about making something up altogether.

Sedi groaned. ‘Do I have to?’

‘It would be great if you could?’ I said, smiling sweetly at her.

Did she really begrudge me an hour or two off?

I’d run that studio six days a week for more than a decade, and had rarely taken a holiday.

Everyone made such a huge deal of it when I did that it put a dampener on the whole idea of taking a break in the first place.

And it was one afternoon; surely she could manage that?

And then I’d have to work out what I was going to do for the rest of the rehearsal time and tour, because clearly I couldn’t rely on my family to help out.

‘It’s not often I come home – I’d planned to spend the day in front of the TV with my feet up,’ moaned Sedi.

I stifled the urge to snap back at her. She was so entitled sometimes, and was never willing to put herself out for anyone else, probably because she’d never actually had to.

‘Surely you can do this for me, just this once?’ I said. ‘You’ve literally taken about two lessons so far this year.’

‘To be fair, that isn’t her job, Lira,’ said Mum, sticking up for Sedi as usual.

‘Sure, but we can help each other out, can’t we? Isn’t that what families do? I need to be able to take time off occasionally – all I’m asking is for a couple of hours off to go to the doctor.’

‘Fine, but you can’t be gone long,’ said Sedi, looking pissed off. ‘And you’ll have to tell me exactly what to do because I just want it to be as easy and stress-free as possible.’

Of course she did. That summed up Sedi – swan in, do the minimum amount of work needed, and swan out again. And sure, dancing was hard, she didn’t get every job she wanted – but it felt like everything else simply fell into place for her.

I tried not to let it bother me, and the last thing I wanted was to get into an argument.

It was just that, without even realizing it, Sedi had hit a nerve.

My sisters had left home the second they could – Sedi moved away to dance college up north and my youngest sister, Nolo, went to New York to dance at sixteen.

Meaning it had just been me, Mum and Dad at home for years now, with me spending most days at the dance studio and Mum and my sisters helping out only when I practically forced them to.

Dad oversaw the financial side of things, but he wasn’t a dancer, which, fair enough, meant he couldn’t help out with lessons, but he rarely even came to the studio these days, and I did the reconciling of takings at the end of each day myself anyway, and all the budgeting and ordering in of stock.

They probably had no idea that, although they’d ’strongly advised’ me to stop dancing when I was nineteen, I’d felt actually, properly bereft for ages afterwards.

It might have felt like the right thing to do at the time – I’d won the World Championships, had fulfilled most of the goals I’d ever had, and it had made sense to walk away while I was at the top of my game. But what if I’d given it up too soon?

‘Come to the studio at one on Wednesday,’ I said to Sedi. ‘I’ll need to leave at quarter past, so that’ll give me time to talk you through what’s happening and who to expect.’

Sedi tutted, just as her phone pinged with a message. She slid it out of her pocket and read it, the trace of a smile crossing her lips.

‘Good news?’ I said.

She shoved her phone away. ‘Not really.’

I waited for her to elaborate. She didn’t.

And then I mentally ran through a list of every single dance teacher I’d employed over the years, hoping one of them would be able to cover my lessons while I went off on tour.

Because the way this evening had gone down, it was clear that nobody around this table would be willing to step up.