Starlight on the Palace Pier: The very best kind of romance for the Christmas season in 2018. Tracy Corbett

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      Jodi dumped her bag on the floor and went over to the desk. ‘You seem dejected, Aunty.’

      ‘Oh, ignore me, love. My back’s playing up. It always makes me crabby. Anyway, how are you? Busy night at the restaurant?’

      ‘Hectic.’ She perched on the desk, noticing a discarded travel brochure in the waste paper bin. ‘Have you been to see your GP?’

      Her aunty pushed her hands into her lower back, stretching out the muscles. ‘It’s nothing a hot bath and a decent rest won’t solve.’ She stopped. ‘And losing a few pounds.’ She visibly sucked in her tummy.

      Jodi smiled. ‘You look fine, but you could do with a holiday.’

      ‘If only.’ Her aunty rolled her eyes. ‘I think the five-a.m. starts are taking their toll. If I’m not in bed by nine p.m. these days, my body objects.’ She let out a sigh. ‘Mind you, my body seems to object whatever I do, so I’m not sure why I bother.’

      Jodi rescued the brochure from the bin and flattened out the pages. The front cover depicted a white boat cutting through deep blue water, advertising a cruise around the Mediterranean. ‘What you need is a change of routine. A wise person once told me, if you carry on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll only ever be what you’ve always been.’

      Aunty Ruby laughed. ‘Very profound… Ghandi?’

      ‘You, actually.’

      ‘I said that? Goodness.’

      ‘It was good advice.’ Jodi gestured to the brochure. ‘Yours?’

      Aunty Ruby looked away. ‘When would I get the chance for a holiday?’ Her cheeks had coloured, so Jodi knew the brochure was hers.

      Her aunty resumed spinning on the chair. ‘But perhaps I do need a change. When I opened up this morning I caught the reflection of a middle-aged woman staring back at me in the glass. It took me a moment to realise the woman was me. I’m sure the last time I looked my hair was still brown. Now look at it?’ She pointed to her wavy bob. ‘I look like Miss Marple.’

      Jodi laughed. ‘You do not. But if you don’t like it, why don’t you colour it?’

      ‘I’d look like mutton dressed as lamb.’

      ‘No, you wouldn’t. The colours you can buy these days look really natural. And besides, only the other day you were telling me how much you admired Helen Mirren. And I’m sure she dyes her hair.’ Jodi placed the travel brochure on the desk, hoping the enticement of a holiday might prove tempting.

      Her aunty looked thoughtful. ‘Helen Mirren, eh?’ And then the chair stopped spinning. It had unwound in height. She peered over the top of the desk, making Jodi laugh with her miffed expression.

      Maude interrupted them, sauntering into the room carrying something mangled between her teeth. She dropped the carcass by Jodi’s feet and looked up, radiating an air of arrogance as she turned tail and sauntered out again.

      ‘That’s right, leave me to clear it up,’ her aunty called after her, struggling to get out of the unwound chair.

      Jodi went over to help, steering her aunty towards the door. ‘I’ll deal with this. Pour yourself a glass of wine, have a warm bath and then go to bed. In the morning, I’ll sort out the accounts.’

      ‘Oh, you don’t have to do that.’

      Jodi looked at her. ‘Actually, I do. In fact, I don’t know why I haven’t offered before. What’s the point of studying for a business degree, if you don’t use it to help your family? You’ve helped me enough over the years; it’s time I repaid the favour.’

      Jodi might be struggling to persuade an employer she was trustworthy and loyal, or convince a guy she wasn’t trouble waiting to happen, but she could prove to her family that their belief in her was justified. Because without them, she’d be lying in a gutter under a blanket somewhere…like that homeless guy, wondering what the hell had gone wrong with her life.

       Chapter Three

       Saturday 9th September

      Becca was suffering with her second hangover in the space of forty-eight hours. She’d met up with a couple of old school friends last night and had ended up at Patterns. Why had she drunk so much? Her head hurt, her eyes hurt, even her hair hurt. But most of all her knee hurt. Too many gin cocktails coupled with dancing in high heels until the early hours had aggravated her injury…again. If she carried on like this she might never make a full recovery. But it was hard to remain focused on her rehabilitation when she knew her dancing career was over.

      Still, she didn’t want to walk with a permanent limp, so she needed to dial down the abuse and let her knee heal, which was why she was sitting in the kitchen with an ice pack balancing on her knee. Two paracetamols and two ibuprofens had dulled the pounding in her head, but she still felt battered.

      It wasn’t the best preparation for an interview. But then, she wasn’t even sure she wanted the job. Teaching was certainly an avenue lots of dancers chose after retiring, but they were usually the ones who’d had successful careers and had taken teacher training courses. She hadn’t done any of that. She’d never considered herself the teaching type. On the other hand, she needed a job. And Jodi was desperate for an ally, so Becca had contacted Carolyn Elliot-Wentworth and applied for the position.

      She drank another glass of water and forced down a slice of toast, but she knew fresh air would be the only real antidote. A walk up to Preston Park would do her good, plus it would help strengthen her thigh muscles, something the consultant said was necessary to protect her knee from future injury.

      Yesterday’s clouds had blown away leaving a lovely September day. It was warm enough that she didn’t need a coat, so she headed away from the marina up towards Victoria Fountain, reacquainting herself with her home town. Once a place filled with cheap housing, hippies and squatters struggling to make a living, Brighton had been transformed into a thriving town full of artists and celebrities.

      She upped her pace, fighting the urge to limp. It took a while for the stiffness in her knee to ease, but gradually the pain subsided enough that she could almost ignore it.

      Late-night partying wasn’t a new phenomenon. As a dancer, most of her gigs had been in the evening and it would be gone eleven by the time she left the venue. With the buzz of adrenaline flowing, sleep was impossible. So she’d often joined the other dancers and headed off to a club, staggering home in the early hours before collapsing into bed. There wouldn’t even be the luxury of a lie-in the next morning. She’d be up early for class, putting her body through its paces, running through the necessary drills, jumps and turns, always trying to perfect her technique.

      She’d learnt early on that you had to love dancing to stick to it. It gave you nothing back in return, no painting to display on a wall, no poem to be printed or sold, nothing other than that single fleeting moment when you felt alive. Dancers endured constant pain, rejection and injury. Not to mention years of intense training, poor salaries and cruelly short careers. And yet she’d never met a dancer who didn’t think they had the best job in the world. That rush of exhilaration, moving your body to express yourself, СКАЧАТЬ