I stayed crouching by the soggy carpet a couple of moments longer, as if just being there might somehow help clear up my mess. Terrified of the damage my enormous, still-damp coat could do in the pristine bedroom I was staying in, I took it off and laid it over the edge of the bath. By the time I reached the bedroom I was shuffling, afraid of each and every clean white surface in there, and convinced that any sudden movement would bring the silver-framed photographs crashing down. Having run a hand across the back of my dress to check for hideous black marks, I plonked myself down on the edge of the downy duvet and let out a mighty sigh.
It wasn’t that my fishcakes had been rejected, and anyway I loved Natalie’s bolognese. And it wasn’t that she had been terse with me about sullying her immaculate home – I’d deserved it. It was that I felt I would never be able to repay Natalie and her husband, Lloyd, for their kindness. I was only a couple of years younger than Natalie but it felt as if she had somehow unlocked a Life Code that meant she was several levels ahead of me in the game called Being a Proper Grown-Up. Well, that and the fact that I owed it to her that I had the job at Strictly at all.
Since graduating from university my life had lurched from crisis to sulk and back to crisis while I slowly drove my entire family mad. I’d struggled this first year: many of my friends were still studying and many were working abroad. I’d felt lost without them, not to mention lonely, and the adult world of work had started to feel entirely out of my grasp. Torn between squandering my savings in London trying to get experience working in TV, and staying at home among the hedges of Surrey with my parents – safe in the short term but pointless in the long term – I had failed to make any proper decisions about anything for the upcoming year.
For a week I would be filled with righteous fury that I had to wait on tables at Sergio’s, the local Italian restaurant on the high street. Then I would spend a week agonising over whether to bin the job and take up an offer of some unpaid work experience in a weird, forgotten TV studio in Zone 6. A week later I would fill in a bunch of applications and find myself secretly hoping that I didn’t get any of the jobs. After all, that was the only fail-safe method I could think of to stop me from ever finding out if I was really good enough for the competitive world of live TV. And shortly after that the seemingly inevitable job rejections would start to flow in and I would shift from silent terror to full-blown adolescent sulk.
I spent a summer at Sergio’s trying – and failing – not to splash bolognese on my white waitressing shirt even before the customers had started to arrive. When I could take it no more, I switched to temping in various local businesses. I hadn’t accounted for the fact that temps are the only workplace life form given less respect than waitresses. Plus my enthusiasm for trying to work out how to use a different photocopier every week was also waning. After six months my parents were beginning to drop increasingly obvious hints that I needed to move out, and I knew deep down that if I really wanted to work in TV, I was going to have to swallow my fears and make a decision one way or the other.
As the longest and most dreary summer of my life was drawing to a longed-for close, everything changed. I was lying on the sofa as usual, devoting a little time to my now favourite pastime: convincing myself that the nearest I would ever get to a TV studio would be as a novelty act on Britain’s Got Talent (‘Ladies and Gentlemen! The Incredible Sulk!’). Then I heard the phone ringing in the kitchen. Mum, who was expecting a call from her friend Jen, leapt to pick it up. Moments later I heard her call me.
‘Amanda! Your sister wants a word!’
What fresh hell is this? I thought to myself. Surely she hasn’t found a new way to boss me around already? I only saw her on Sunday …
I took the phone from my mum and held it to my ear.
‘Tata dada, tata daaaaa,’ Natalie was singing down the line.
‘What’s up?’ I replied, wondering why she was so happy. She’s normally a Grade A jobsworth, only interested in her feisty law career and in trying to mould me into someone as ambitious and successful as she is.
‘Strictly! Strictly!’ she shrieked down the phone, giggling. For someone usually so po-faced, she sounded positively delirious.
‘Seriously, what are you talking about?’
‘There’s a job going at Strictly Come Dancing, and Lloyd says he can help you with the application!’
I picked at the fabric on the edge of the sofa’s arm. A tiny bit of fluff came away in my hand.
‘Jobs don’t just come up at Strictly,’ I replied. ‘They must be impossible to get.’
‘Well, this one is being advertised and everything. We’re going to come down at the weekend and take a look at your application. It’s made for you! No one loves dancing like you do, and now’s your chance to be a part of it.’
She was right. I did love dancing, and this did seem like a big opportunity. But did I dare go for it? After the bleak summer I had had, my confidence was at an all-time low, and all I could think was that I didn’t really feel like humiliating myself in front of a room full of hot-shot BBC executives. What if I applied and didn’t get the job? I wasn’t sure I could take any more bad news. And I wasn’t sure my parents could take any more of my misery-guts attitude. I was one rejected application away from regressing into a full-blown emo teen. And that was not going to be pretty.
‘But I …’
‘I won’t take it any more. I can’t. You have to keep going, Amanda. You know you want to do this. I will not be a witness to you wriggling out of it. See you Sunday. And make brownies.’ Natalie was right. This was more than just a chance at a dream job in telly, it was a chance to get closer to my actual dream – dancing. Pretty much as soon as I could walk I wanted to dance, but it had somehow always stayed in the realms of fantasy to me.
A few days later Natalie and Lloyd had arrived in a flurry of glamorous autumn-wear and all-consuming capability. I had felt strangely nervous when I heard her Audi pulling up outside the house, then faintly amused as I watched her piling poor Lloyd’s open arms with a ridiculously huge bunch of flowers, two pairs of walking boots and swathes of cashmere scarves. A moment later …
‘Hiyyyaaaaa! We’re here!’
Mum squealed and ran to the back door to let them in. Dad pottered up from the garden to greet them. I remained where I was in my bedroom, wishing I had thought to put on something a little more attractive than my usual track-suit bottoms and cardigan. I didn’t want Lloyd to think that he was helping a total layabout. I quickly applied a bit of make-up and tried to zhoosh my hair up slightly, then sauntered downstairs.
Sunday lunch passed in the usual blur of misheard conversations and ludicrous anecdotes.
‘… so he asked me for legal advice while he was cutting my hair and I ended up with this ridiculous fringe that I never even asked for!’
‘… yes, I’ve painted all of the window sills at the back and then next weekend I’m hoping to make a start on the front of the house …’
‘… so I asked the butcher and he said that it’s Mrs Dawson who eats most of the bacon, not her husband!’
‘… oh the traffic was mostly fine, and Natalie’s new clutch made all the difference when we hit a little congestion coming out of London …’
I realised I wasn’t going to get a word in edgeways and so concentrated on loading my plate with as much egg mayonnaise as I thought I could manage. Oh life, how full of challenge and romance you are …
‘… so what do you think, Amanda?’
I looked up suddenly, a little sad to leave behind my eggy daydream. I had zoned out of the conversation to the point that I hadn’t even realised Natalie was now talking to me.
‘Hmm?’
‘About staying?’ Natalie was looking at me expectantly. As, I realised, were my mum, dad and Lloyd.
‘I’m