Cabin of Axes - Bea Paige Page 0,62
gently. Even now, those words still sting.
“Your body is tired, Rose. I’m afraid your blood tests show a high rheumatoid factor. I’d advise against continuing to dance because this condition isn’t going away. There are no drugs that can cure it, only ones that can help alleviate the pain and inflammation around your joints. You have an autoimmune disease. Even if you weren’t a ballet dancer, it would’ve happened anyway. As it is, the physical stress you’ve put your body under may well have contributed to it developing earlier. I’m sorry, if you ignore what I have to say you will be in a wheelchair with no hope of ever dancing again, even for pleasure.”
At the time I’d refused to believe it was true, returning to the company without giving them the full picture. The doctor had been right of course. Six months after my diagnosis I had been asked to leave the company for ‘my best interests’ after messing up on stage when my knee had given way beneath me. Another six months on, here I am living in my family home in a quaint village in Cornwall, burning a hole in my inheritance.
Home? This place isn’t my home. I feel sick waking up here most days. The memories embedded in the bricks and mortar haunting me daily. If I had a choice I would leave this place and never come back. The first thing I did was take down the photos of my parents and burn them when I returned. It was satisfying for all of ten minutes, but the memories I have, they can’t be disintegrated so easily.
Dad had passed when I was a teenager, and my Mum two years ago of a sudden illness. I can’t say I miss either of them very much, but right now that’s a wound I’d rather not pick.
I haul arse into the shower, wash myself as quickly as my aching joints will allow and get dressed. Less than twenty minutes later I’m as presentable as I can be in a knee length, black skirt and red silk shirt. Pulling on a pair of boots and thick woollen overcoat, I head out in the dank Cornish air and make my way, hopefully, to a future that is probably about as exciting as working in the local library. Not that I have anything against libraries, on the contrary. It’s just that the one in my village consists of a few dog-eared classics and a dozen or so Mills & Boon books for the racier villager. I’ve read all the books, three time over now. They really need to get a better collection.
“Morning, Rose. Going out somewhere nice?” Mrs Samson calls from the front step of her house. She’s smoking a pipe, a strip of her grey hair yellowed from the nicotine.
“That’s right,” I respond, not willing to give her, or the rest of the village, any more gossip. Since I’ve returned home, my name has been on everyone’s lips. The local girl turned star, turned cripple. The girl whose past still has the ability to ruin her future. All the whispered talk remains, even years after his death.
“Going somewhere nice?” she persists, interrupting my dark thoughts.
I stop at her gate, an ingrained politeness forcing me to respond.
“An interview, Mrs Samson.”
She looks at me, her beady eyes narrowing with interest. “Interview you say?”
“That’s right. I must be off, or I’ll be late,” I say quickly, pretending I don’t hear her next question as I rush off down the lane and towards my destination.
It takes me another forty minutes to reach the sprawling grounds of Browlace Manor.
The cold air has already settled in my joints, making my body stiffen further. I know my condition enough to know that if I don’t get into the warm soon then I will be in bed for a week straight. The ease and grace that I was once accustomed to is less and less apparent these days. I’m like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, in desperate need of lubrication to loosen my rigid muscles and ease my painful joints.
Frankly, if you’d told me at the start of my dancing career that by the age of thirty I’d be crippled and about to willingly spend the rest of my life as an assistant to some wealthy aristocrat, I would’ve laughed. As it is, I’m desperate for this job. Desperate enough to yank myself out of the depths of depression that has plagued me every day since