Ralph and the Pixie

Chapter 14

Pas de Deux

‘The world of Ballroom Dance is one of

formalised, gender-specific rôles carried out

by dominant male and subordinate female

partners. It is not a democracy.’

‘Something is going to happen . . . it had to happen . . . it was meant to happen . . .’ As she lay in a sickening delirium, those words ran through Deborah’s mind like a litany, one part of her mind pedantic and certain, the other indecisive, possessing the inertia of unbelief.

Such things didn’t worry her. Like her nightmares they only seemed bad at the time, in a detached sort of way.

But another assertion entirely chilled her to the marrow of her being.

‘Your life is no longer static . . . it has been riven from its moorings . . . left to drift . . .

. . .and you are changing . . .’

These words terrified her, because they were true. The fragile truce she had made within herself to get by from day to day was being eroded, swept away by invisible, unknowable forces. At home in her own world, she coped with such destructive inner pressures either by staying up for days until she was utterly exhausted, or else she would go out and get drunk, leaving herself not focused enough for such forces to take hold. In either case, these forces, too, would become insensate for a time; but only for a time. They would, gradually, inevitably, gather strength and focus once more, even as she did, and once again she would be driven to harm herself in order to cause their hold on her to loosen, as though her fragility of being were her best and only defence.