‘Almost,’ she said.
That was ‘almost’ as in ‘not at all’. She hadn’t got back until eight o’clock the previous evening – the whole day lost to eating, drinking and vegging out with her family. Throw in the Christmas Eve visit to Fenies, after which she had finally got home at 2 a.m. and still had the remnants of the resulting tequila hangover, and she was fit for nothing, let alone packing.
‘Well, we leave the hotel at noon,’ said Georgia, summoning the waiter.
‘Ungh,’ said Amy.
The waiter bent his head and listened as the old woman whispered something, then nodded and moved away.
‘What did you say to him?’
‘That my friend needed a little pick-me-up,’ smiled Georgia. ‘A bloody Mary with a couple of my secret ingredients might make the packing a little easier to bear. And then some fresh air. How about a brisk walk before we check out? Well, not too brisk.’
The hotel was just a few blocks from Central Park. They entered at the East 65th gate and walked past the zoo, hearing the occasional screech and squawk, then down towards the picturesque Gapstow Bridge, where the skyline reared up ahead of them once more. Amy had always loved the park for that very reason – one minute you could feel as though you were in the great outdoors, the next you were very much in the centre of a huge, beating metropolis.
There was a vendor in the park selling coffee, and Amy put her hand in her pocket for a five-dollar bill to buy one.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked Georgia, confident that the old woman would refuse.
‘A black coffee would be marvellous.’
‘What would Madame Didiot say?’ grinned Amy.
‘Sometimes you have to shake things up a little.’
They walked a stretch in silence, soaking up the view and the gentle buzz of the park – the joggers, and the hum of noise from the Wollman rink – then stopped off at the Dairy Visitor Center, where Amy bought Annie a Central Park charm bracelet she knew she’d love.
‘So a new year is around the corner. What do you h
ope it holds for you?’ asked Georgia as she sipped her coffee.
‘Hopefully a little less rejection,’ Amy said quietly.
‘That sounds a bit defeatist. Seems to me like you need to shake things up a bit. Remember sometimes that that involves changing course.’
‘Like what? Give up dance for good?’
‘My mother was an artist. Not a very successful one, unfortunately. But she had the courage to give up the oils and fine art and become an illustrator. Quite a famous one, in fact. I was involved in publishing some of her work. You might have heard of the Shellies.’
‘I used to love those books,’ cried Amy, remembering the adventures of a dancing tortoise.
‘Use your skills to their best advantage,’ said Georgia sagely.
‘You know, I did have one idea.’ It was something she had thought about during the subway journey back to the city – an idea that she couldn’t shake out of her mind once it had popped into it.
Georgia tilted her head with interest, and it encouraged Amy to talk.
‘It was something my niece said. About ballet being boring. I mean, it is sometimes. Too long, too serious. Sometimes I just think it was created for art snobs and dinner party bores who can pay hundreds of pounds for tickets. But why shouldn’t it be aimed more at the people who can see the most wonder in it – kids. Can you imagine junior versions of Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella full of pink and glitter and fun music? It would be a sell-out. Especially at Christmas.’
‘It’s a good idea,’ said Georgia, giving it some thought. ‘I’ve been to the Royal Opera House dozens of times, and there are always little girls there in their sparkly tutus, dying to see the ballerinas, but by the first interval they’re tugging at their mothers’ hands and asking to go. So you’d be the producer and choreographer? Start your own dance company? There’s certainly no shortage of talent going to waste in London that would love to get involved.’
Amy nodded to herself, feeling both reassured by Georgia’s words and quite overwhelmed at the idea of tackling something so big, so expensive, so overambitiously ridiculous as starting her own dance company. She remembered Nathan telling her that he’d had to pull his one-man show from its mooted run at the Edinburgh Fringe when he discovered it would cost £5,000 – and that was only for two nights. How on earth could she afford anything close to the proposition she was suggesting?
‘I think you Brits would describe my idea as pie in the sky.’ She smiled sadly.
‘Why would that be?’
‘Money. Lack of it.’