wait to carry on where we left off. See you soon xxx.’ She wished the four of them had come here together as a family, although Bluebell was probably still too young. Next year, she thought with pleasure.
The final bell rang and the lights started to dim; Celandine squeaked with excitement, fidgeting in her seat. Just then someone started to push down the row. The only empty seat was the one next to Sylvie and she took their coats off it and held them on her lap, waiting for the person to squeeze past her. There were whispered apologies and a ‘ssh’ from behind as he plumped down into the vacant seat. Sylvie glanced at Celandine as the red velvet curtains with their gold tassels glided slowly open, smiling to see her open-mouthed rapture at the scene on the stage. The music exploded into such a great noise that the little girl jolted with fright, never having heard a full orchestra before. She gaped at the brightness of the costumes and the leaping feet of the dancers as they began the colourful opening scene of The Nutcracker.
But Sylvie jerked violently when without warning, pushing under the coats that still lay on her lap, she felt a hand on her knee. She swung around in the darkness and in that heartbeat second realised that Yul must have engineered this and carefully planned such a surprise. She began to smile, amazed at his ingenuity, but when she saw the face next to hers her heart leapt in her chest with horror. She couldn’t see him clearly in the semidarkness but the heavy jaw was the same as was the well-cut blond hair. He smiled at her shock and squeezed her knee.
‘We meet again!’ he whispered.
Sylvie was speechless, her mouth dry. Her heart pounded like a piston and then she realised what he was doing and tried to push his hand away under the coats. He gripped her tightly.
‘Don’t make a silly fuss, Sylvie,’ he whispered.
‘Get your hand off me!’ she spat, and was shushed by several people in front and behind. She glanced desperately at Celandine, who fortunately was totally engrossed in the vivid scene on stage. Sylvie tried again to push him off, wriggling her leg and shoving at his arm.
‘Don’t jig about, Sylvie, or you’ll get me worked up. Just sit still like a good girl and watch the ballet. I’m not doing you any harm and I won’t go any further – unless you want me to, of course.’
She sat in numbed misery throughout the first act. True to his word, Buzz kept his hand on her knee, his fingers like branding irons on the thin nylon of her stockings. Several times Sylvie thought she should just get up and whisk Celandine away, but every time she glanced at her daughter and saw her breathless joy she didn’t have the heart to ruin such a perfect experience. She battled with herself over what to do for the best – cause a huge upset and disturbance or keep quiet until the first interval – and the longer she allowed the situation to continue, the more difficult it became to stop it. She felt Buzz turn to watch her on several occasions but she looked resolutely ahead, her cheeks burning and throat dry, determined to ignore him. She decided they’d leave during the first interval, not wanting to engage in any kind of skirmish with him.
As Tchaikovsky’s wonderful music filled her head, Sylvie remembered her terrible recurring dream where Buzz assaulted her in the hospital bed as she lay strapped down and helpless. She felt ashamed to have dreamt such an awful thing and couldn’t stop thinking about it with the man himself so close to her. She was acutely aware of everything about him – his bulk, for he was a big man, the smell of his expensive aftershave, the brush of the soft material of his suit against her arm. Her flesh crawled at his proximity and the feel of his hand on her leg, lying there so intimately but casually while her daughter sat beside her, innocent and unaware of what was going on.
The curtains swished across the stage and the lights went up.
‘Celandine, we have—’
‘Oh Mummy, it’s the best, best thing I’ve ever seen! I love it so much! Thank you, thank you!’
‘I know, darling, but—’
The hand clenched hard on her knee under the coats and Buzz leant across, forcing her to sit back in her seat.