‘Oh yeah, that’s right, you would have been. Well, anyway, we had to dance these sort of patterns in lines, being little birds flying or something daggy like that. But I haven’t got much sense of direction at the best of times. I blundered right off the stage and got stuck behind some curtains and couldn’t find the way out. I’ve always had a thing about the dark, it was scary, that, sort of smothery and pitch black, like being trapped in a coal mine…I didn’t go back next term. Different ball game with Lynne, though. She took to it like a duck to water, or maybe I should say a swan to a lake, right from her first lesson. And the way she’s going now, we’re all so proud of her! She’s always being trotted out to the front of the class to show how to do the hard steps, and she gets the jammy parts in concerts…’

‘Not always,’ Lynne said tersely. ‘I’m not all that good.’

‘Oh, yes you are! Only mind you, Seymour, she nearly didn’t make it past her first lesson and it was all my fault…’

‘Not that old Olga Kozzymunsky story again,’ said Lynne. ‘Angie, eat your lunch, for heaven’s sake!’

‘Hang on, Seymour hasn’t heard it yet. Well, Lynne was just about killing herself to start ballet when she was five. She used to be always dancing around the living room, even before she had her first lesson. Gee, she used to look cute! So Mum enrolled her, but I did a crummy thing. I was kind of jealous because I’d been so hopeless at ballet, so I used to get Lynne aside and I made up this name and told her that was the name of her new ballet teacher. I’d bung on this threatening accent and say, ‘Leedle gurl, I am Madama Olga Kozzymunsky and I am goink to turn you into a beeyootivull dancer! You vill practeese eight hours a day, no excuse, blood blisters vill pop up on your toes, ze cramps, ze womiting…ach, never mind, it is nuzzing. I, Madame Olga Tatiana Kozzymunsky, vill turn you into ze most beeyootivull dancer in ze whole vide vorld!’

‘Angie…’

‘And so when poor Lynne turned up for her first lesson after weeks of listening to that, she took one look at the teacher and burst into tears! And that teacher was a really sweet kind little lady, like a sultana bun.’

‘Where do you go to school?’ Lynne asked Seymour, obviously not wanting to talk about ballet any longer, but also just as clearly not interested in his answer. Seymour murmured something about his proposed new school, knowing that she was only pretending to listen behind her immaculate oval face. His voice stumbled awkwardly. Lynne made him feel all fingers and thumbs, sweatiness and tousled hair.