The Way Home

by Simpson, Stefanie

  She called Ryan when she was changing later with her hands still shaking. She missed his call a couple of times that day and was desperate to speak to him.

  “Hey,” she beamed as his face focused on the screen.

  “Hey.”

  “I’m sorry, today has been crazy. Things should be a little easier now.”

  “Good.”

  “Are you angry with me?”

  He sighed. “No, sorry, I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, hey, why don’t you come down, bring everyone, we’ll give you guys the VIP treatment.”

  “Um, yeah, sounds good.”

  She swallowed her unease at his tone. “Okay then, well it’s late. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  She just stared at the tablet screen for a moment and closed her eyes. Men in the lives of the BB Ladies rarely lasted for one of two reasons, jealousy, or they liked the girls’ lives too much. She took a deep breath, and trusted in him, he was just adjusting, but it wasn’t forever. They would be okay.

  Em invited people from an online magazine to come along on Friday night. The sweet and bright reporter received some lessons, a photo shoot, interviews with the dancers, and she stayed for the show and the party afterwards. That night was the first night that Em went out and partied like she used to. A lot of men approach her, some she knew previously, but it all felt so torrid, and she politely rebuffed each man, leaving her unhassled. Yet she did what she was obliged to do, posing for photos, dozens of them until she couldn’t see properly from the flash.

  It was three when she got home, and she had to get up at six-thirty to sort out the boys. Angie was coming home the next day, and she had to get things ready for her. She didn’t even ring Ryan, and he hadn’t rung her.

  She pushed back that fear, even as it ate at her, and suddenly, she needed to go home.

  Seventeen. Dance, bitch

  A few days later, Em was in the theatre, half-asleep, and she sighed as Clara approached with caffeine. Clara always dressed ready for anything, she bore an ageless grace and red hair, but that morning she wore sunglasses and still had her coat on as she sat next to Em, and passed her a coffee where she sat at the front of the empty theatre.

  “How’s Angie?”

  “Rough as fuck. Clara, I’m not sure I can keep this up.” Em rubbed her face, and she looked like hell.

  “Let me help. I’ve been thinking. Let Benny direct full time, I’ll compère and manage, we can take it on, and I’ll ask you for help if I need it. You concentrate on just your routines and Angie.”

  Em’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you.”

  Clara put her arm around Em, and she leant her head on Clara’s shoulder. “Have you spoken to your man?”

  “Briefly, I should go and phone him; he’ll be on lunch.” Em gave a weak smile and went to the office.

  “Ryan.” She smiled in relief at seeing his face. She had been in London for nearly a month, and they barely spoke in the last week. “Are you all right?”

  He fidgeted. He wore his Capta House polo shirt, and she loved him in it. “No Em, I’m not. I haven’t spoken to you in four days. Jess showed me some things online, and to be honest, I’ve avoided all that stuff because of what you said you went through online, but all I saw were photos of you and other men. You’re virtually naked in a lot of them, and the places you are? Fuck, I want to know what’s going on. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  “What do you mean ‘tell you’?” her voice was frigid.

  He sighed and sat back, folding his arms. The horrible sinking fear she had since being in London made her skin prickle as it became fully realised.

  She took a breath. “They’re publicity, we pose with people, and it’s a thing we have to do. Do you think I’m fucking about?”

  He sighed, but she caught that shuttered face, the one that gave her nothing.

  “You do.” That silence cut her in two, and she shut down, speaking mechanically. “I would rather cut my own throat than have someone else’s dick near me. I only want you. Don’t you trust me?”

  “It’s just that you’re there, and I see all these pictures of you, and you’re partying, having a ball by the look at it, and you don’t answer my calls, what am I supposed to think.”

  She leant back in her chair.

  “I get up at six-thirty, and I look after two young teenagers because their father is a bawbag. I look after Angie, who’s just had a hysterectomy because she has cancer. Then I manage this show, which means dealing with all the bullshit of running a company, by myself, and then I perform six nights a week. I go out, because, I’m the headline, and we have to draw people in, we are a brand. But I don’t post on social media; I haven’t seen it, someone else does that. I stand there, bored shitless, desperate to go home, to sleep, thinking about going over the accounts in the morning or having the new lighting rig put up. Missing you and Cap. That’s what you are supposed to fucking think. But I guess my past is part of who I am, right? Once a slut always a slut.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Yes, it is, and you know I was a party girl, so I must be again, right? Men have come on to me, a lot, every time I have to pose for a picture, they try it on, and I’m revolted, and I have to pretend and laugh, and politely decline, and I hate it.”

  “Put yourself in my position, you’re draped all over these guys, in clubs, backstage, it looks pretty real, and everyone has seen them.”

  “Must be true then. In your position, I’d trust you, because I know what was between us. I guess that’s not enough for you. I guess it never will be.”

  “Em, look, I’ll call you in a few days.” Em sat numb as his grim face froze and disappeared.

  She couldn’t believe, she rang him back immediately, but he didn’t answer. She kept breathing and made through the next minute, and the next, and when she was sure she wasn’t going to keel over, she went back to work.

  She handed everything over to Clara over the next few days, and Clara took off with it, loving the responsibility.

  She waited for Ryan to call, keeping her phone with her. Em was lying on Angie’s bed, checking her phone every minute a few days later with Angie settled in, and they watched crap telly.

  “Em, sweetie.”

  “What do you need?”

  “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  “I could stay as the headline. Like you said, I can write from anywhere.”

  “What about your bloke?”

  “Not my bloke anymore. Thinks I’m fucking around because you know, I’m a slut.”

  “You love him, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re going to give him up?”

  “He’s given me up. Can’t make him want me.”

  “I thought you loved Chadford.”

  Em’s lips trembled. “I do.”

  “Clara is a good fit. It’s going to be okay. You’ve done so much for me Em, and I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you, but you should go home. What about your dog?”

  Em sobbed into Angie’s pillow, and they lay on her bed, eating chocolate and watching TV.

  Em rang Jess a few times, and she was distant with her. Her friends seemed to have made assumptions about her, accepting the play for truth. She felt utterly betrayed but numb. She was still in shock, and the only way she got through each day was by not feeling anything. Her Chadford life was slipping away; the progress she made was out of reach.

  The only glimmer of support she had was from her dancing class, who all made the journey down, all sitting in the second row, and she gave them a wave at the closing group walk through. At least some people were there for her.

  The dancers and her class met up and went to the pub afterwards, and sitting with Lily; Em found the courage to ask her what she had posted online. She showed Em, and she was horrified. No wonder Ryan thought she was fucking about.r />
  Candid shots of Em half-dressed, dozens of photos with men, but Em was unattainable, that was the point, and it showed. Ryan should have trusted in her, but he didn’t. Christmas had been perfect. It was February, and all that was gone, and she was alone again.

  Ryan couldn’t sleep. He just stared at the ceiling, his phone sat right there in his periphery, burning into his vision. He picked it up and checked online again. There were no more photos of Em, and the comments on the page were people, men, clamouring for her, angry there was no response. Some of the comments made him feel sick.

  He had fucked up, and let her down. He should have just gone to see her. It had been three weeks, and he wasn’t sure he could carry on. He functioned every day, but everything was flat. He missed her so much, and he had destroyed their relationship out of petty fear.

  He thumped his pillow and turned over. He huffed. All he had to do was call her, put it right, yet a call wasn’t enough, it just wasn’t.

  She had told him once that love wasn’t a grand gesture, she was right, he hadn’t been constant, and yet the doubt niggled him. Her face when he had asked her, the flash of pain, and then the nothing in her eyes, the mask she used when she was in pain, or angry.

  He had done that.

  He went to her house and just lay in her bed. He should hand the keys over to Jess, but she wouldn’t talk to him. He had to put it right, again. They made an agreement, to forgive each other, and maybe she would, maybe if he begged she would forgive him.

  Carl sighed at Ryan as he joined everyone in the pub the next evening, and Jess didn’t speak to him.

  “I need your help to put this right.”

  Jess shot him a look. “Ryan, I accept my responsibility in what happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I should never have shown you what was online. I didn’t think you’d think she was fucking around. I can’t even bring myself to speak to her.” Jess’s voice cracked, and she blinked back her tears.

  “It’s not your fault, it’s mine, I overreacted.”

  “Ryan, it’s been three fucking weeks, she’s been gone nearly two months, not once did you go and see her, not once have you tried to apologise, I mean what the hell? Why now?” Carl shook his head.

  Ryan turned to his friend. “You know perfectly well that sometimes it takes me a while to process.”

  Carl exhaled. “I know, sorry. Jess is cut up, and you can’t seem to pull your head out of your arse. I don’t know if she’ll forgive you, maybe if you had apologised straight away, but three weeks.”

  “I have to try.” Ryan didn’t stay; he wandered the town and found his way to her house because he was unable to stay away.

  “Mark, I don’t mean to hassle you, but seriously you need to take responsibility.” The man huffed on the other end of the line. “Stop being such a whingy man baby. For fuck’s sake, anyone would think this is happening to you, it’s not, petal, this is happening to the mother of your children, and your children, so stop being a delicate little bawbag, and grow yourself a vagina and deal with it. You need to take those children, you need to help Angie, or so help me God, I will come to your house in the middle of the night, and I’ll castrate you. I know where you live, I can do it.”

  “You fucking bitch.”

  “Yes, damn straight, I am an A-rated bitch, I feel no pity or compassion for you, and you are a weak little dick, who cannot provide minimum care for your fucking children. I’m not asking for you to go to space. I mean it, I. Will. Fuck. You. Up.”

  “Fine, I’ll pick them up in the morning.”

  “Thank you. See, not so hard. Oh, and if you don’t turn up, I’ll slash your tires.” Em hung up. The changing room was quiet, and everyone was stared at her.

  “You all right?”

  “No, but fuck it.” Clara flitted through and called everyone out for introductions. Em slipped on her heels, her peach patent six-inch heels that matched her peach latex pencil skirt and bralet.

  Her hair was in a severe bun, her eye makeup dark and heavy.

  She strutted out last onto the stage as Clara introduced them. Em was dead-eyed but smiled. She paused at the front of the stage, posed, and went back to the line.

  Clara made a few jokes, got the audience riled up, and Em did what she did every night; she disassociated, she saw herself from a distance, unfeeling and unthinking, it was the only way she could get through it until she danced.

  Em had time before she was on. She danced two routines every night, with eight in rotation. She danced before the interval, and she danced last.

  She took her latex outfit off and hung it up on her rail. She changed her hair and makeup. She was covered in glitter again; she forgot how much she hated it, and ended up pissing out it every morning. She slipped on her sapphire blue leotard with her bare feet and hair loose. She wrapped up in a robe to keep warm while she changed her makeup.

  She didn’t think or feel as she sat there, she still couldn’t think of Ryan without being rent in two. She hadn’t written anything since she had been in London either. She missed it; she missed her life so much.

  She took some deep breaths as she waited to go on. The bustle at the edge of the stage, the frantic things the audience didn’t see went over her head, and she didn’t pay it any attention. She knew people were worried about her, Angie was. She was tired and quiet, and they couldn’t force her to go out after work anymore.

  She made her way onto the dark empty stage. The cellist looked up at her from his spot. She nodded once, and he drew a long deep note.

  Her body moved as if it were that note. Each precise movement was a song, a call to grief. Her sadness, the melancholy of it kept the raucous audience rapt in silence. A sheath of white fabric hung down, and as the violin joined the cello, she took the cloth in her hand and dancing with it, she curled and wrapped it around her, pulling down on it, spinning into it until she was a ghost inside the sheer material, dancing inside it. She spun out to the edge of the stage, pulling on it, trying to escape it, and then to clung to it. The dance became furious, angry, she wound the length around her arms, and vaulted up into it, slowly sliding down its length, as the last strain of the violin faded, and she fell to the floor.

  The applause didn’t move her; there was only her heart beating, and the hard breaths she made.

  She languidly changed outfits for the second dance as the girls milled around her in the interval. Em couldn’t do it anymore, enough, it was enough, and she had to go home. Even without Ryan, she had to go home. She hated this. Angie was getting stronger, and her sister was finally coming down for a while, it would take the strain off Em.

  Ryan didn’t clap or even breathe. She was beautiful to watch, but his heart broke, he felt her pain projected out to him, and he knew it was his doing. He watched the contortionist contort into clear boxes, wearing virtually nothing. The hula-hoop dancer stripped while spinning hoops over her body. There was a singer, magician, a fire breather, a classic strip tease, but all he wanted to see was Em.

  He didn’t move during the interval, his whole body tense. Then when the compère introduced Em as the last act of the night, his heart was in his mouth.

  She came out wearing a heavy brocaded dress that trailed behind her, and a long pointed collar went up to her cheeks. She danced with the dress and slowly peeled away each layer. It was a sensual dance, one of sex. He remembered the feel of her in his arms, how perfect she was, how lovely.

  He could have cried.

  By the end, she only wore a maroon velvet corset, stockings, and matching velvet knickers. She moved as if she was seducing just him, and he realised that was what all the men thought. He understood then. That was her draw. She was a fantasy that brought men to her like moths, but it wasn’t who she was. He had glimpsed that of her, but it was all persona. She had tried to explain it once; she wasn’t a sexual creature, but she was made into that.

  It was what people wanted to see in
her.

  He was sure he saw tears in her eyes as she undid the corset, despite her little teasing smile. It fell away, and she held her arms in front of her. She wore a bandeau under it, to his relief. She bent over and unpeeled her stockings, and he saw the tear fall. He wanted to pick her up and carry her off, to comfort and protect her. He forced himself to be still. He couldn’t help her, not yet, but he would.

  The act ended, and he eased out of his seat, he didn’t want to see the walk out at the end, he didn’t need to see it. He went out to the foyer, and went to the bored usher, in her corset and frilly knickers. She smiled at him.

  “You know, no one ever gets to do this.”

  “There’s no other way to get close to her.”

  “Did she see you?”

  “No.”

  She nodded as she handed him over to a security guard. The applause from the theatre grew distant as he followed the man backstage.

  He had spoken at length to Clara after incessantly calling, and when he explained himself to her, she agreed, not that she was thrilled, but she was worried about Em. She wasn’t okay, and she wouldn’t open up to any of them.

  The corridor was filled with people, and the bouncer motioned for him to wait. Ryan leant against the wall opposite the door.

  The man disappeared, but Ryan heard the exchange.

  “Em, someone to see you.”

  “Tell whoever it is to fuck off.”

  “You’re going to want to see this guy.”

  “I’m not interested, so you can tell him if he comes near me, I’ll break his fucking neck.”

  “Your choice sweetheart.”

  “Since when are we letting pervs backstage? Is this Clara’s idea for more money? I’m not a sex worker, get rid of him.”

  She was angry.

  There was an urgent whisper, and all the chatter in the dressing room went quiet. The door opened, and she was standing there, ready to kick arse in a lacy bra and knickers. For a moment, he saw pain behind her eyes, but she shut it down.