On tiptoe

Chapter 1

I hate birthdays.

From my bedroom window, I can see the sun peeping through the clouds. London certainly isn't a city noted for its climate, but I think, sooner or later, you get used to it, and live with the weather. For most of the year, everyone and everything seems to be tucked up cosily in grey cotton wool, but Dickens said that fog is a characteristic of London, didn't he? This climate could go hand in hand with my dismal humour. I'm fickle, tied to a life that doesn't exist any more: true love, perfect life, good friends. Everything is so damned difficult for me! Like a never-ending dance where the choreographer is never satisfied!

The school psychologist says that it's just something typical of age, and it's worse for me 'cause I don't get on much with my mum. She says it'll probably pass, but I think it's shacked up somewhere in my body, 'sort of' become an extra organ, and it's sucking blood and oxygen and slowing me down. So I'm 'sort of' uptight, and try and keep any type of emotion that makes me wobble, at a distance.

And so, when my birthday gets close, I become uptight, unpredictable, short-tempered. Try and imagine yourself naked, not knowing how to swim, but you have to swim across the Thames in winter! Well that's how I feel! And each year I feel I've forgotten something or should have done something. This type of dissatisfaction sticks to me like gooey slime and stops me from enjoying my birthday like any other person.

I look at my reflection in the window-pane and ask myself why I'm so complicated. And I think for a bit, but I can never find a plausible answer. I'm constantly on the lookout to find my place in the world. Maybe everything depends simply on the fact that I'm so changeable and volatile, and would like someone else to do the dirty work for me. Unfortunately I know, that this is just a stupid excuse for someone that's scared, maybe, to deal with life.

I hear my father coming in.

"Anna, I'm home!"

"Yeah, dad, I'm coming."

My dog, Click, is behind the bedroom door, and wagging his tail.

"Hi Click." He's all messed up!

Then I go downstairs and give my dad, Gabriel, a big hug. Even if he's over forty, he's still good-looking. A lean figure, tall, green eyes and his hair is starting to go grey. The Italian part of him is definitely alluring, and he gives me a feeling of reassurance.

"How was school today?"

"Usual rubbish" I answer, as I set the table for supper.

The three of us, my dad, Click and me, get on well together. In this room, five years ago, my mother who is an idiot, said to us: "I'm leaving. I've been offered a job in Edinburgh, as a dancing teacher, and you know I can't go without dancing."

The hell with dancing! It always counted more than us. Dad tried to make her reason, and they argued all night, and what happened? She left with her luggage: "I'll visit every week-end." Just that these weekends have since become fewer and fewer.

My mother is slender and smooth. I can't describe her in any other way. Each step she takes is like a light dance step. Her chin is always turned upwards, and her arms are wispy and white, and they look like two icicles. She has always treated me like one of her pupils, even at home, when I was doing my homework, at lunch, at dinner, on the couch. Back straight, little mouthfuls, short steps, chin up... sweetest words she's ever said to me. And after school, my friends all hugged their mums, I had to go home alone on the bus. I saw kids laughing, pushing each other, and playing, and when we were thirteen, I'd laugh when their mums tried to adjust the collars of their uniforms, 'cause they all felt embarrassed, and even when their mums did up their jackets I mean we were all mature!

So I looked around, and covered up the city noises with my iPod and waited for life to get better.

All in all, I'm a 'screwed up' city girl.

I pass my days at school, at dance classes and at Emily's house. I don't care about the rest.

Emily is my best friend, probably 'cause she's opposite to me. She's got a good figure, especially where it counts! And as she says -always up-to-date on fashion! She wears make-up, and she's in love with a different guy every day. Well... she falls in love easily. Even if a boy just glances at her, she falls for him: they're going to be together forever! She's the only one who thinks that I'm not a snob, and she's the only one who laughs at me 'cause I'm awkward, and she's my friend even when I'm moody. But I don't think I've always been like this. I remember when I was a plain little girl with long plaits and freckles on my nose, always happy and smiling.

I don't know when I started to change, maybe when my mother stopped coming to see us... thank God!

My teacher told my dad that I had "changed", and so he sent me to my mother's: "Go and see her, you're probably missing her."

What on earth had I done wrong?

I stopped getting good marks at school and only aimed at doing what was necessary - why stress yourself? I would have got the same things in the end. I lost the urge to be perfect, waiting for that magical smile to appear on my mother's face.

I remember when I was six, she showed me what it meant to be an independent adult, preparing everything perfect for the next day. The evening ritual of deciding what clothes I had to wear the next day, preparing them perfectly folded on the chair in my room, my desk tidy, and my book perfectly piled according to size!

My shoes properly paired under the chair reminded me of being chained up in a tight alley with no escape. Yet, I was did my duty every evening, hoping to receive a sign of her affection.

I had to obey. I put my things in a suitcase and left.

The trip was a slow way of hurting myself. Just the thought of being away from home, from my habits, from my father, hurt me. But, I didn't know how to say no to him. It was his wish and I would have done anything for him.

A light feeling of nausea overtook me as I looked out of the train window, but it was less than what was in store for me when the train stopped, and I knew I had arrived.

At the train station, in Edinburgh, my mum Lise and her friend Amanda, were there to meet me. Even Amanda had gone to Edinburgh to teach dancing at the same academy.

I do dancing too and, according to everyone, I'm good, except for my mother!

During the eight months I spent in Edinburgh, the worst eight months of my life, I went to the Soul Dance Academy. Then one day as I was leaving to get my bike, and go and see Marcy who hadn't come to lesson because of a fever, something grabbed my attention in the corridor.

I was stunned. My heart went into overdrive and my legs turned to jelly. I could see what was happening from the corner of my right eye. I was shaking. Amanda was kissing my mother, my mother was kissing Amanda. Now it was all clear. Anything but dancing!

My sweet adorable mother had left home to follow her love. How revolting!

I opened the door and looked at them while they continued on, until Amanda saw my reflection in the changing-room mirror. She let go of my mother. "I can explain" she said. But what did she have to explain to me? That my mother was a lesbian?

Who cares!

The bike race back to my mother's place was the quickest in my life. I collected my things and went to the station to go back home.

The journey back was so strange, that I can't describe it. I laughed and cried the whole time. My mother hadn't left us because we weren't up to her expectations, but because she loved someone else: a woman! The thought both comforted and deluded me. I wouldn't have been able to stay another minute in that house. I felt like a little bird in the wrong nest.

I disappeared from her life and now I'm happy to have done it. I hate people who haven't got the courage to tell the truth. My dad tried to ask me why I had done it and wanted me to meet her, but thank goodness, he's a reasonable man. "Lise, she'll speak to you, when she wants" he said to her every time she phoned. I've never understood if my dad knew the truth or not, but when I think of the fact that his days always went by smoothly, it made me realize that only Click and I weren't up to date about it.