The Return by Victoria Hislop

so melodramatic, isn’t it? So egocentric. Such a performance .’
     
    ‘But isn’t all dancing a performance?’
     
    ‘No, I don’t think so. At least, not when you’re dancing with a partner. And if it is, then it’s just a performance for that one other person.’
     
    For the first time Sonia realised something about her friend: that for her, dancing had to be about another person. It was part of her search for the elusive perfect man. It was Maggie’s life’s quest.
     
    ‘Two minutes, everyone!’ shouted Corazón. ‘Two minutes.’ Sonia slipped out of the room to go to the cloakroom.Through the main glass doors, she could see two of the Norweigian girls and all of the taxi dancers clustered outside on the pavement, a cloud of cigarette smoke swirling around them. Her attention was then caught by a sound coming through a slightly open door on the other side of the entrance hall. Feeling like a spy, she peered through the crack.What she saw transfixed her.A group of perhaps a dozen people sat around the edge of the room listening to a guitarist. They were all scruffy, pale with tiredness, hair straggly and unkempt, mostly in jeans, and T-shirts with long-since faded motifs.The oldest-looking man, his wavy, tar-black hair in a pony-tail, was picking out a tune of such sweet soulfulness that Sonia felt a lump rising to her throat. It was this and the gentle clapping that accompanied him that had drawn her. No one made eye contact; their rhythms required the concentration that could only be sustained by staring into the void.
     
    One girl, willowy, hollow-eyed, in black Lycra dance trousers and scoop-necked top, stood up. In one hand she held a voluminous froth of dark green fabric and she now stepped into it, for a moment struggling with a broken zip. She seemed in no particular hurry.Then she fastened the buckles on her shoes.They were pale with dust. Finally, she removed the clip that held the hair away from her face and ringlets fell around her shoulders. She refastened it, ensuring that all the strands were now firmly caught. The guitarist continued and the clapped accompaniment went on. The pattern made by these sounds was like hand-made lace. It was hard to see how individual groups of stitches were going to fit in with the whole but after a while they formed the most astonishing and symmetrical pattern.
     
    The young woman was ready now. She began to join the clapping, as though tuning herself into the rhythm. Her hands held high, she moved seamlessly into a series of sensuous hand-movements, her hips swaying in counterpoint to the gestures of her arms. She danced in front of the guitarist, and he held her in an unerring gaze, reading every nuance of her dance, scrutinising every subtle flicker of her body and responding in rhythms and notes. One moment his fingers would caress the strings, another they would pluck them sharply to pick out a melody, anticipating rather than dictating. She leaned backwards, limbo-like, twisting her torso as she turned. It was a feat that was accomplished with gravity-defying balance. Sonia could not imagine how she had achieved this without falling to the ground, but the woman repeated the movement four, five, even six times to prove that it had been anything but a fluke, and each time her body curved itself into an even more impossible arc.
     
    Now upright again, she performed a series of deft pirouettes, flicking her body round at such speed that Sonia wondered if she had actually turned at all. One blink, and the spectator might have missed these breathtaking spins entirely. All the while, her feet were hammering out angry patterns on the floor. Every limb, every sinew of her body was engaged in this display, even her facial muscles, which at times contorted her beautiful features into a gargoyle-like grimace.
     
    Sonia was frozen to the spot. The energy of this woman and the flexibility of her body were impressive, but the sheer physical power locked inside that