spring onion, her thighs looked pappy. Suddenly she blurts, âOskar is holding me back! Heâs just not there on the lifts! Heâs dancing like a plank with rigor mortis!â
I am not about to skewer my baby friendship with a principal dancer by disagreeing. I present a consolation prize.
âPoor you,â I say, âbut guess what?â I cross my fingers. âIâve spoken to The Sun and they want to do a feature on you!â
Mel does a bunny hop of joy. âWhen?â she gasps, squeezing a lifetime of hope into one short word.
Even as I smile, my heart flips uneasily. But I ignore it. Thatâs what you get for selling your professional soul to the devil. Anyhow, itâs worth it to see the look of gratitude on Melâs face. In her world right now I am number one. I tell her it will be this Sunday, and itâs for their Health and Beauty section. âTheyâre going to compare your fitness with a rugby playerâs. So that should be a laugh, and theyâll take gorgeous pictures of you in a tutu, with the hunk, and thereâll be a shoot, with a hair stylist and a makeup artist, and The Sun has so many readers youâll be even more famous than you already are!â
Melâs toothy grin lights up her face. We sit in the café and she buys a Mars Bar and a Coke.
âThis is the first thing Iâve had to eat in two days,â she announces.
âOh!â I say. âHow do you feel?â
Mel smiles again. âHigh as a kite.â
I think of when a visiting nutritionist told a junior soloist to eat more or reap the whirlwind aged forty. âForty!â she scoffed. âWho cares about forty? Iâm not going to live that long!â
I smile tightly and try not to wonder if my Sun story is actually a good idea. I should have okayed it with the AD, but I havenât and I know that Matt assumes I have.
âYou know,â I say softly, âyou should eat.â
Mel frowns. âNatalie, my thighs are enormous. And my legs are short, and Iâve got no neckâI canât afford to eat like a horse!â
I didnât say, âeat like a horse,â I said âeat.â
âI want to see bone!â she adds, quoting a late revered choreographer who married four of his ballerinas. (In this industry thereâs a quick turnover.) I sigh. Melâs insecurity is exhaustive. Last year, one of the GL Ballet guest artists was a twenty-three-year-old Serb, a wonderful lyrical dancer, though a tad stocky compared to, say, a bamboo stick. Mel watched her dance Odilein Swan Lake in a black tutu and scoffed, âI bet she thinks black is slimming. You might as well ink in the white bits on a killer whale.â I know that makes her sound mean, but she isnâtâjust scared. Mel reminds me of a dog thatâs been ill-treatedâeveryone is a threat until they prove they can be trusted, and then she becomes sweetly, irrevocably fond. I see the café owner glance at us, and foolishly, I feel proud to be seen with her. When I was small I confused ballerinas with fairiesâbeautiful, mystical creatures in pink and white and able to flyâthe breathless sum of my little girl dreams. Iâve never outgrown that awe.
Mel grips my hand. Her mood has bounced from stormy to sunny. As we chat she darts from this to that like a tiny tropical fish, confiding that she is bored with Oskar and wants to have a fling with a civilian, that the new ballet mistress is a total bitch and once made a senior soloist dance with a broom tied to her back so sheâd stand up straight, and thatâdramatic pause here and hoarse whisper to maximize impactâwhile Anastasia seemed pleased with Julietta today, yesterday she was overheard saying, âThereâs nothing wrong with your dancing, have you tried not eating?â
âReally?â I gasp. Julietta has a Formula One metabolism. Her âproblemââif you