The Return Read Online Free PDF Page B

knew the name of the father, perhaps not even Maggie herself - and eventually she supported herself by teaching pottery part time in a couple of colleges and at night classes. Her daughter, Candy, was now seventeen, and had just started at art school. In a good light, with their big hoop earrings and quasi-bohemian style of dress, they could easily be mistaken for sisters. In a harsher one, some would look at Maggie and wonder why a woman her age was still dressing in Topshop. Though her long dark curls were almost identical to her daughter’s, years of smoking had indented her sun-tanned face with lines that revealed her true age. They lived together on the borders of Clapham and Brixton, close to a row of pound shops and the best Indian vegetarian restaurants this side of Delhi.
     
    Sonia’s lifestyle, a career in PR, an expensively upholstered home, and James were all very alien to Maggie, who had never hidden her concerns about her friend marrying such a ‘stuffed shirt’.
     
    Their lives might have gone in very different directions, but geographically they had remained close, their south of the river homes being only a few miles apart. For nearly twenty years they had diligently remembered each other’s birthdays and nourished their friendship with lengthy evenings over a few bottles of wine, when they told each other every detail of their lives until it was closing time, and then parted, not to be in touch again for weeks or even months.
     
    For the first half of her introductory salsa class in Clapham, Maggie sat out and watched. All the time she was tapping out the beat with her foot and rocking gently on her hips, never for a moment taking her eyes off the instructors’ feet as they demonstrated that night’s steps. Juan Carlos had the music turned up loud that night, and the insistent beat seemed to make the floorboards themselves vibrate. After the five-minute break, when everyone sipped water from their bottles and Sonia introduced her old friend to the other dancers, Maggie was ready to try the steps. A few of the regulars were sceptical that someone who had not been to the class before could join halfway through a term and expect to catch up; they feared that their own progress would be delayed.
     
    The Cuban took Maggie’s hand and, in front of the mirror, led her through the dance. The rest of the class watched, several of them hoping that she would flounder. Her brow might have been furrowed with concentration but Maggie remembered every move and half-turn that they had been working on that night and was step-perfect.There was a ripple of applause as the dance finished.
     
    Sonia was impressed. It had taken her weeks to get as far as Maggie had in half an hour.
     
    ‘How did you manage that?’ she asked Maggie over a glass of Rioja in the wine bar afterwards.
     
    She admitted that some years ago she had done some salsa on a trip to Spain and had not forgotten the basic technique. ‘It’s like riding a bike,’ she said nonchalantly,‘once learned, never forgotten.’
     
    Within a few sessions, her enthusiasm surpassed even Sonia’s and, with few other commitments in her life, Maggie began going to a salsa club, dancing in the darkness with hundreds of others until five in the morning.
     
     
    In a few weeks it was to be Maggie’s thirty-fifth birthday.
     
    ‘We’re going dancing in Spain,’ she announced.
     
    ‘That sounds fun,’ said Sonia. ‘With Candy?’
     
    ‘No, with you. I’ve got the tickets. Forty pounds return to Granada. It’s done. And I’ve booked us some dance classes while we’re there.’
     
    Sonia could imagine exactly how badly this would go down with James, but there was no question of refusing Maggie. She knew for sure that her friend would have little sympathy for any kind of vacillation. Maggie was a free spirit and never understood how anyone could give up their liberty to come and go as they pleased. But most importantly for Sonia, she did not want