The Proposal

It was her turn to feel piqued, remembering a particularly uncomfortable afternoon at the polo, in the middle of summer, when she had first met Vivienne and Stephen Lyons. Amy still wasn’t sure what had upset her more. That Daniel had only introduced Amy to them as his ‘friend’, or the fact that Mr and Mrs Lyons hadn’t thought she was sufficiently important to say more than two words to her for the rest of the day.

‘How was your day?’

‘Good. I had an audition.’

‘Sweetheart, I’d forgotten. How did it go?’

‘Well, I think. It’s being choreographed by Eduardo Drummond, who is the hot new thing in modern dance, and I think it’s going to go big and I got the feeling he really liked me . . .’

‘Well, it certainly is a night for celebration, isn’t it?’ He smiled, waving across the room to a friend who had caught his attention.

Amy’s heart gave a little skip.

‘Celebration? I haven’t got the job yet . . .’

They were interrupted by a group of thirty-something men who Daniel appeared to know well, judging by all the back-slapping. It happened a lot whenever she was out with him. He seemed to know everybody. There were friends from school, from Cambridge, work friends, football friends, female friends – she liked those sort the least . . . He introduced them to her but they all carried on talking about people in common, deals they’d made, and what they were up to over the holidays, which seemed to involve shooting and skiing and going to parties. Although she and Daniel were from two very different worlds, they never ran out of things to say when they were alone together. But she was never very comfortable in social situations like this one; she never felt funny enough or smart enough to speak up. After all, it was better to say nothing than say something stupid.

She accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter and sipped it gratefully until they were herded into the ballroom for dinner.

They threaded between the circular tables, all formally laid with crisp linens and polished silver, huge floral displays at the centre – and there on table fifteen, already standing by their seats, were Daniel’s parents.

‘Daniel. Amy.’ They smiled tightly as their son approached. As Vivienne Lyons gave Amy a swift air kiss, she inhaled the older woman’s expensive pomade and perfume, which she hoped overpowered her own eau de roast potatoes.

‘How are you both? Amy, you’re between Stephen and Nigel Carpenter.’

Within seconds, she found herself wedged between Daniel’s father and a giant of a man dressed in full military regalia. As she sat down, the hemline of her dress shot up so that it barely covered the top of her thighs. Nigel Carpenter, ‘an old friend of the family’, looked down as Amy threw a napkin over her lap in case he saw her panties.

‘Good evening, Amy,’ said Stephen formally, touching her shoulder. ‘I trust you are well?’

‘Very well, thank you,’ said Amy, wishing she was back at the Forge.

Everyone else on the table – three sixty-something couples and Nigel’s wife Daphne – seemed to know each other.

‘So what do you do, Amy?’ asked Daphne. She was a sharp-featured lady with a sleek grey bob and was around half the size of her husband.

‘I’m a dancer,’ she said quickly.

‘Anything I might have seen you in?’ she replied with interest.

‘Depends on where you go to the theatre,’ said Amy lightly.

‘We’re patrons of the Royal Opera House. That’s how we know Vivienne.’ She smiled.

‘I do more modern dance. Smaller theatres.’

‘The Rambert?’

‘No,’ smiled Amy, fairly certain that the woman hadn’t seen any of her body of work. Certainly not her most high-profile gig – an MTV video for Harlem rapper K Double Swagg.

‘So what productions have you been in recently?’

‘Amy’s been injured most of the year,’ explained Daniel, looking rather uncomfortable. To his friends, and the sort of twenty- and thirty-something revellers they had met in the foyer, he usually explained with a sense of pride that Amy was a dancer. She was not naïve – she knew that when his friends smiled and looked impressed, it was because the word ‘dancer’ was some sort of code for being good in bed, and as irritating as that was, at least Daniel always supported her ambitions.

‘Oh dear.’

‘But she had an audition today that went well, didn’t you, Amy?’ said Daniel, looking increasingly jumpy.

‘And what was that for?’ asked Vivienne Lyons.