Читать книгу A Step In Time: A feel-good read, perfect for fans of Strictly Come Dancing! - Kerry Barrett - Страница 24

Chapter Thirteen

It was safe to say that Strictly Stars Dancing was a nightmare. An absolute, complete bloody nightmare. We were two weeks into the month of training we had before the live shows began and I was hating every single moment.

After that first day when we did the photo shoots, the sparkly costumes were put away and the hard graft began. Patrick and I trained in a gym in a basement in Shoreditch. Which is a surprisingly long way from Clapham. After three days of tutting, whingeing cab drivers, I admitted defeat. No one was going to recognise me in my training gear anyway, so I did the whole hair-tucked-into-a-baseball-cap, sunglasses, jogging-bottoms thing and got the tube in every day.

Each morning I’d get off the tube and go into the little Italian cafe next to the gym where I’d buy two coffees – one for me, one for Patrick – and some pastries.

Patrick never drank his coffee and he never ate the pastries. He never thanked me for either In fact, he barely spoke to me at all unless it was to say things like: ‘No, the other foot.’ Or: ‘Left, left, LEFT.’

Because, as I suspected, I was a terrible dancer. I mean, really, really terrible. If I was meant to be going left, I’d go right. If Patrick said quicker, I went slower. If he said up, I went down. I was awful. Phil had been right when he said I loved dancing in clubs and at weddings – I did. But I found that without the comforting support of a lot of alcohol I couldn’t let myself go enough to be able to do it.

I got the impression Patrick thought I wasn’t trying. But I was. Mostly. It was just really annoying not to get it straightaway and sometimes I thought it was easier to be a bit silly rather than try – and fail – again. Sometimes I complained that I didn’t want to mess my hair up, or get too sweaty. I didn’t mean it but I said it anyway. It was like now I knew Patrick thought I was shallow, fake and only concerned with my looks, that was how I had become.

And to be brutally honest, I felt like he wasn’t trying either. He kept me at arm’s length – literally – like he didn’t want to touch me too often, too closely, or for too long. Despite our night together it was obvious that we just didn’t click.

I’d had that sort of thing before, on Turpin Road. Sometimes you’d start a scene with someone new and every line would feel laboured and unnatural. I’d had it the opposite way round, too, where things just fell into place. On Turpin Road, though, I had Tim watching and listening and swooping in to swap scenes round or change storylines that weren’t working. On Strictly Stars Dancing I had to struggle on regardless.

The other dark cloud over my head was the fact that I’d not heard anything more from Matty. He’d clearly deleted my number from his phone, just like he’d deleted my clothes from his flat, and me from his life. It was hard not to feel hurt and humiliated. I’d heard he wasn’t seeing Kayleigh, the reality TV star, any more, but still he didn’t call.