Summer Flings and Dancing Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

news reader Natasha Kaplinsky was whirled onto the floor by dancer Brendan Cole. It was like an electric shock, the movements, the music, and the old world elegance dragging me back into a childhood spent watching impossible, magical steps my eyes could barely keep up with. Without Dad our whole world of dancing disappeared and here on my sofa thirty years later I was rediscovering it all. It was like yesterday had grabbed me by the throat and hauled me back to a world of taffeta, tulle and tight bodices. A world where no one hurt me, or let me down or left me – and whatever happened I was safe in the knowledge that when it was all over I’d be kissed and carried to the car in a warm blanket.
    That first night watching Strictly Come Dancing I’d sat on the sofa alone, surrounded by the ghosts of people dancing, with tears running down my face. It was, for me pure nostalgia, a crystallised moment in time when life was innocent and safe – before our hearts were broken and the stars went out.

2
    Salsa, Sparkle and Sequin-covered Secrets
    P ulling up outside my old family home on the Sunday morning, my heart did a little lurch. I’d last visited almost three months ago, but Mum had still been here then, so this was a difficult visit and opening the little front gate on the terraced row I felt guilt and the past weigh heavily on me. I was still looking for my dad as I walked through the empty house, and I swear I heard laughter, voices, the clicking of dad’s shoes on the wooden floor. I stood in the hallway breathing in the heady aroma of lavender and bergamot – the ghost of Mum’s perfume ‘Blue Grass’. I was comforted by that smell as I walked into the dining room, the big fake mahogany dining table stood waiting, as always, never really used. Dad said it was rather baronial for the three of us and he and Mum should have had more kids to fill it. Mum would disagree, and the look on her face told me the very thought of another child horrified her. Even as a child I wanted to make Dad happy and asked Santa for a little sister, but I’d received a Tiny Tears doll instead.
    Dad could never sit still and on the rare occasions we did sit at the table he would be up and down, his legs constantly moving, toes tapping. I could hear Mum chastising him, ‘Sit down and eat your tea, Ken,’ she’d snap from behind a piece of celery and an ounce of cottage cheese. He’d suddenly leap up – ‘Margaret, quick,’ he’d say, opening his arms to dance. ‘Oh Ken, you silly bugger, I’m having my salad,’ but her feigned grumpiness dissipated into thin air as soon as he put the music on. Delightedly she’d leap up from the table and join him in a waltz or a tango, dancing around the room, she’d smile indulgently over his shoulder to me and I’d giggle happily. He was our hero – he was like an excited little boy, but at the same time the best husband and father.
    I smiled to myself as I wandered through the rooms of my past. Without us here it was as empty and alien to me as visiting a stately home.
    This was the first time I’d been back to the house alone, and it felt like I was seeing it for the first time, through someone else’s eyes. Looking at the photos, the shabby furniture, the peeling wallpaper – it seemed time had stopped somewhere around 1980. In some ways, for us it had.
    I wandered into the kitchen and turned off a dripping tap, the place smelt damp, unlived in, and soon it would be up for sale and all the memories sold with it. But just being here, breathing in the past was enough to evoke a million yesterdays. I remembered Mum standing on the kitchen table, stomping flamenco style as Dad clapped along. I’d joined in the clapping and when I tried to climb up to take part, Dad had lifted me onto the table where Mum and I stomped so hard we’d left marks in the wood. As I ran my hand along the table, I could feel the indentations from our dancing, an imprint of how we once were, a happy yesterday