Madame had trained me harder than she ever had before. She was never cruel, but she did push me to my very limit and then some more until I collapsed with exhaustion. I felt angry because I wasn’t as prepared as I had been when I’d been in London. I wanted to prove to her I could do this, prove it to Thorn as well. But most of all, I needed to do this for myself. And despite my achy limbs, the strain I’d put myself under was nothing compared to what I would achieve once this training was over. I would give the performance of a lifetime, I would show everyone and anyone who’d ever doubted me just what I was made of. But most of all, I would show Thorn that I danced not just for myself, but for him. I wanted him to know every move, every twirl, every jump, was there to impress him. I didn’t care whether other people watched. From the moment he’d taken me, I danced for him and him only.
Madame joined me as I sat on the balcony overlooking the beach beneath. She didn’t say a word, just sat on one of the chairs next to me and stared at the view with me.
There were questions racing through my mind, so many things I wanted to ask about her, about Thorn. But they were all things I was too nervous to make sense of them, to say them out loud. She seemed to sense it though, and without me prying, she opened up to me herself.
“I used to live here,” she said softly. “When I was a little girl. It was a very different place back then.”
I turned to face her, but she kept staring at the sea as she went on.
“My father was a gardener,” she went on. “Our mother died when she had Thorn. He never knew her. We didn’t have much. I think it’s what drove my brother to… be the man he is today.”
I waited for her to go on. I was hungry for more information, for more of her words and stories. I needed to know so much more, yet a part of me felt guilty for listening when it wasn’t Thorn talking.
“He was obsessed with this house,” she went on. “Even years after, when he’d made his money… He wanted to own it. I guess he wanted to show the world that he could do it.”
“What happened to you?” I finally asked. “What did you do? How did you separate?”
I didn’t want to pester her for more answers, but I was desperate to know. I never knew much about Madame. I saw her as a lonely, almost tragic figure in the past, a woman who had very obviously been through a personal tragedy though none of us at the studio knew exactly what it was. And none of us dared ask.
She still wouldn’t face me, but as she stared at the sea, her features hardened. Looking at her, I noticed for the first time she was a beautiful woman. She must’ve been about forty then, older than Thorn but still young and with a future ahead of her. But the feeling I got with Madame was that she’d signed off her own life, spending her hours training dancers when she couldn’t dance herself. I didn’t understand why, but now I was more curious than I’d ever been.
“I fell in love,” she finally said simply. “I moved away… Paris, London. I lost it all.”
She turned to face me and her eyes spoke of the pain she’d been through. Anguish I didn’t understand. The pain was something I could equate with losing my mother, but not quite like it. Knowing now that she’d gone through the same thing I had opened my eyes. She knew what it was like to lose a parent. She understood. Perhaps it was the reason I was her favorite back in London.
I wanted to know so much more, but I somehow sensed the moment had passed when she sighed and stood up from the chair.
“A story for another day, perhaps,” she said, and I smiled weakly as she motioned for us to walk back in the studio.
We walked back inside to the sound of the music slowly fading. My muscles felt tired and pained and I needed a rest, but for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to walk away from her. I’d missed her, I realized. Missed our times in London, the long hours of training, even her vicious remark that had made me cry plenty of times before. This was the first time I saw the woman under the facade of harshness, the first time I saw Madame’s vulnerability. And it made me love her more.
We stood in front of the studio’s door, both seemingly reluctant to say goodbye.