Page 2 of Slow Burn

Thirteen Years Later

I waved goodbye to one of my favourite couples, Chris and Jenny, closing the front door of the studio behind them with a satisfying click.

For the last forty-five minutes, I’d been teaching them a very simple Viennese waltz, involving minimal spinning and a whole lot of standing still while looking longingly into each other’s eyes.

Neither of them were natural dancers, but it was my job to make sure that, when they took to the dance floor on their wedding day, they had their guests gasping in delight.

With a few more lessons, I knew they were going to absolutely nail it.

My heels clattered on the sprung wooden floor as I walked across the studio, giving the bright, modern space a quick once-over.

We’d been booked out for an audition that afternoon, so I left the speakers switched on, but turned off the rotating glitter ball – I didn’t think the world-renowned Spanish choreographer Carlos Torres, who was apparently casting for a new West End show, would appreciate the multi-coloured beams of light swirling around the room.

Much to my family’s amusement, I liked to have it spinning above our heads throughout all of my lessons – I thought it brought a touch of the Blackpool Tower Ballroom magic to our humble little dance studio in Castlebury, and put my clients in just the right mood to shed their inhibitions and get caught up in their dancing.

It might all be in my head, but nobody had complained so far.

Determined to make the space look as perfect as possible for the casting, I had a quick tidy around.

Carlos’s assistant had sounded stressed when she’d called to make the last-minute booking, enquiring as to where exactly Castlebury was.

When I’d told her it was only seventeen minutes from Victoria on the fast train, she’d complained that nobody was going to show up for a casting ‘miles from London’.

I’d reminded her that you could spend four times as long getting from one side of the capital to the other on the tube, but she’d refused to accept that the studio was anywhere other than the back end of nowhere.

If we hadn’t needed the money, and the prestige of being a venue for world-class choreographers to utilize, I would have told her to stick her booking.

Besides, what did she expect, leaving it until the day before the audition to book a space?

Didn’t she know that Thursday afternoons were peak time for kids’ lessons?

As it happened, I’d had to cancel today’s toddlers tango, which wasn’t ideal, but with the costs of keeping the studio running at an all-time high, I hadn’t been able to turn the lucrative opportunity down.

Hiring out the space to Carlos and his team was making us three times as much as we’d earn from those classes.

Not for the first time, I wished I had someone to talk things through with when it came to the operational side of the business.

I’d long ago given up wishing Mum and Dad would step in and actually make a decision for once – I didn’t think it was unreasonable given it was actually their business.

Most of the time it was great that they left me to run the studio however I saw fit, but sometimes I wondered whether I was going to spend the rest of my life working for my parents, teaching the foxtrot to local pensioners and having a skeleton of a social life, let alone a romantic relationship.

Out in the reception area, I straightened up the cerise velvet chairs and gave the champagne bar a wipe over with a damp cloth.

Finally, I updated Chris and Jenny’s file with a couple of notes about what to focus on in our next session: Work on Chris’s arms!

Remind them to create intimacy with eye contact, even when not in hold!

I was still sitting at the desk half an hour later when the bell tinkled. I looked up and smiled as Carlos Torres and his assistant, Emily, glided through the door as though they were making a flamboyant entrance stage right.

Carlos was renowned in the industry for being ruthless and almost impossible to impress.

I vaguely remembered him from my competing days, and he’d been terrifying even then.

Seeing him again, after all this time, instantly took me back to the years I’d spent performing myself.

I could even remember how the rehearsal rooms had smelled back then: like dust and sweat and wooden floors.

Nothing like the light-filled space, with a delicate spritz of The White Company room spray, you could expect to find at our studio.

If Carlos liked it here – and I struggled to see why he wouldn’t – maybe he’d use us on a more regular basis.

I slipped out from behind the desk to greet them, trying not to appear starstruck by being in Carlos’s presence again – even if I was, just a little bit.

‘Welcome to the James Jive Dance Studio,’ I said, proffering my hand. ‘I’m Lira James, the studio manager.’

Carlos looked at my hand suspiciously, and for a split second I thought he was going to leave me hanging.

Then, with a sigh, as though he was doing me a huge favour, he shook my hand limply.

Was it worth telling him that I used to dance, too?

That he’d sat on a judging panel while I’d danced in front of him, many years ago?

That he’d one hundred percent remember my mother even if he didn’t remember me? I thought probably not.

‘You must be Emily,’ I said, shaking the hand of Carlos’s even less enthusiastic assistant. ‘We spoke on the phone.’

Slim, blonde and sporting a pair of the most magnificent cheekbones I’d ever seen, she looked at me with irritation, as though I’d already managed to annoy her. God knows how – it was probably the ‘horrendous’ journey out of London I’d forced her to endure.

‘How many auditionees are you expecting?’ I asked, grabbing a clipboard to scribble down some notes.

‘Fifty. If anyone works out where Castlebury is and actually turns up, that is…’ said Emily, shuddering.

I knew that my home town was hardly at the cutting edge of the dance industry, but it was quiet and leafy and there were enough affluent locals to make running a dance studio viable.

And it was a friendly, welcoming place, filled with couples just getting their foot on the property ladder, young families looking for somewhere quiet to raise their children, and the elderly who had lived here their whole lives.

We essentially had a captive audience – after all, there wasn’t that much else arts-related to do around here.

There was an Odeon a short drive away, and a theatre in the next town along, but if you wanted bright lights and excitement, Castlebury probably wasn’t the place for you.

Emily looked around at her surroundings, poking her head through the archway separating the bar area from the dance floor.

‘I’m sure the idea of auditioning for Carlos Torres will be a huge pull,’ I said, smiling at Carlos, remembering what an eye he’d had for detail; how he’d notice if you made even the tiniest mistake, and would then shout at you until you got it right.

Part of me envied the dancers about to audition for him, while another part felt relieved that my life was relatively stress-free now, compared to when I’d been competing at the highest level.

When things had gone brilliantly, there’d been no feeling like it, but, inevitably, there had also been the crashing disappointment when they didn’t go as well as I’d hoped; the rejection, the constant feeling that I wasn’t good enough.

In some ways, I missed those highs and lows now that my life was the same every single day.

At least back then I was feeling something.

‘They will need to bring their absolute best today,’ said Carlos, showily slipping a sequinned jacket off his shoulders to reveal a black velvet bodysuit tucked into skin-tight black leggings.

Stacked Cuban heels competed the look. He’d been world champion several times in his heyday – my mum had once shown me footage of him burning up the dance floor with his Argentine tango – and I bet he still had it in him to blow most professional dancers out of the water.

‘Are you casting for something specific today?’ I asked, genuinely interested.

‘We are looking for our leading lady,’ said Carlos, his expression darkening. ‘And it is proving more difficult than I thought to find her.’

‘How come?’ I asked, surprised.

London was teeming with brilliant dancers – how difficult could it be to find the perfect person for the role when you had a reputation like Carlos?

Surely everyone wanted the lead in his new show, which I’d read in The Stage was going to be called Slow Burn and had a sultry, Latin theme, and some dancer from the Italian equivalent of Strictly in the lead male role.

‘Not one dancer we’ve seen so far has had enough chemistry with our leading man,’ said Carlos, whistling through his teeth.

‘None of them are right. I need this pairing to look so hot for each other on stage that they leave the audience breathless and begging for more. So far, not one single dancer has had the intensity required to pull off the spectacular Argentine tango I want them to perform at the end of the show.’

‘Well, hopefully the dancer you’re looking for will be here today,’ I said, reassuringly. It would be a particularly good coup for the studio if he found his lead here – maybe then he’d consider James Jive Dance Studio for every difficult part he needed to fill.

‘Shall I get them to line up outside the studio? If they queue to the right, they shouldn’t block the entrance to the Waitrose Local. We want to avoid complaints if we can,’ I said, ignoring Emily’s withering look.