The Splendour Falls Read online

  ROSEMARY CLEMENT-MOORE

  the

  splendour

  falls

  CORGI BOOKS

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409096245

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  THE SPLENDOUR FALLS

  A CORGI BOOK 978 0 552 56135 8

  First published in the United States in 2009 by Delacorte Press,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of

  Random House, Inc., New York., as The Splendor Falls

  Published in Great Britain by Corgi Books,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  A Random House Group Company

  This edition published 2010

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Rosemary Clement-Moore, 2009

  The right of Rosemary Clement-Moore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The Random House Group Limited supports the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the leading international forest certification organization.All our titles that are printed on Greenpeace-approved FSC-certified paper carry the FSC logo. Our paper procurement policy can be found at www.rbooks.co.uk/environment.

  Set in Mrs Eaves Roman Book design by Angela Carlino

  Corgi Books are published by Random House Children’s Books,61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk www.rbooks.co.uk

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  THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD.

  To Mom.

  For a thousand and one reasons.

  Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.

  –DAME MARGOT FONTEYN, PRIMA BALLERINA

  Prologue

  For months, I relived the pas de deux in my dreams, in that multisensory Technicolor of a memory I’d much rather forget. Nothing ever changed: the backstage perfume of sweat and hair spray. The heat and glare of the lights. The delicious coil and spring of my muscles as I moved through the choreography as if it were a spontaneous outburst of the joy I felt when I danced. The glorious triumph over gravity as Pasha lifted me over his head, and I was untethered, not just from the stage, but from the earth.

  If I could have forced myself to wake up then, it would have been better. Like dying happy. But the dance played out in measured beats, as unchanging as a reel of film.

  Pasha set me down, soft as moonlight; the orchestra covered the hollow tap of my pointe shoe on the stage. I balanced on one leg, the other stretched up behind me, prolonging the illusion of flight.

  I could never say what went wrong in the next eight bars. The stage was clean, my pointe was solid. It wasn’t even a particularly difficult combination. Come down to fourth position, port de bras and changement to second position and a quick series of chaîné turns.

  Right foot, left foot, right . . then a strange crunching sound that seemed to come from inside my head. Without knowing how I got there, I was facedown on the stage, and the murmurs of the audience were escalating with worry. In my dream – my memory – I tried to get up, but Pasha held me down, lapsing into panicked Russian. I didn’t have to understand the language to know that something had gone very wrong.

  It’s funny how so much can hinge on one missed step.

  Not funny ha-ha. Funny that the moment that should have been the pinnacle of my seventeen years on this planet ends up making me famous for the en-tirely wrong reason.

  So I really don’t mean funny so much as ‘tragically ironic’.

  Dancers get injured doing the flashy things, jetés and échappés. I mean, who the hell breaks their leg on a turn they teach in the tiny-tots class?

  Me, I guess. The month before, I’d gotten a fullpage write-up in Ballet Magazine. The month after, I was a tragic item in a sidebar to an article on insuring your legs, Betty Grable style, against career-ending injuries.

  Sylvie Davis, the youngest-ever principal dancer for American Ballet, suffered a compound tibia and fibula fracture in front of hundreds of horrified audience members during her stunning debut at Lincoln Center.

  At least I knew how to make an exit.

  Chapter 1

  I wanted to hate Alabama, and nothing about my arrival disappointed me.

  To be fair, there aren’t many places that are easy to fall in love with in ninety-degree heat and eighty-five per cent humidity. The bumpy flight from my connection in Atlanta, on a minuscule plane with doll-sized seats, hadn’t helped. And that was before some snafu at the gate forced us to deplane on the tarmac and ride a bus to the terminal.

  I’d been out of my walking cast for two weeks.My leg throbbed like a sadistic metronome as I limped down the concourse, and the toes of my right foot were swollen like fat pink cocktail weenies. Gigi’s carrier bag hung from my shoulder, my fingers white-knuckled on the strap. It’s bad enough to dread something; it’s even worse when the pain of moving forward is more than metaphorical.

  I could rest a minute, sit down between the barbecue restaurant and the souvenir shop with the Confederate flag coffee mugs. For that matter, I was inside the security checkpoint. No one could come in and get me without buying a plane ticket. I could just live here until my mother and her new husband got back from their honeymoon and reported me missing.

  Granted, that wouldn’t really help convince them I no longer neede
d to see a psychiatrist.

  Settling for a brief rather than indefinite delay, I ducked into the bathroom. It was empty, so I put Gigi’s bag on the counter while I splashed water on my face and reapplied some lip gloss. Makeup has never been a priority with me – at least not offstage, which means all the time now. But whenever my mother was losing a fight, she always took a moment to freshen her lipstick. Eventually I figured out this was how she bought time to think up an irrefutable argument.

  I was merely stalling the rest of my life.

  Gigi gave a soft yip of discontent. I unzipped the top of her carrier so that she could stick her head out, then filled her travel bowl from the half-empty Evian bottle in my purse. The dog took a few indifferent laps, then blinked at me. Her subtext seemed pretty clear: What the hell is your problem?

  Was it wrong to have a problem with being shipped off like an unwanted parcel to stay with a relative I’d met only once? I vaguely remembered Cousin Paula from Dad’s funeral, pressing my mother’s hand in gentle sympathy, even though Mother and Dad had been divorced for three years. But as she’d said on the phone, in her Scarlett O’Hara accent, ‘Kin is kin,’ and she was happy to have me visit.

  Maybe I shouldn’t be dreading this. These were my father’s family. This was my chance to learn where he came from, because Dad had never spoken much about his background. Which raised the possibility that he might have left Alabama to get away from these people.

  A thin blonde wheeled her carry-on into the restroom. Gigi pricked her ears forward adorably, but the woman just shot the dog carrier a dirty look before disappearing with a sniff into the handicapped stall. It was as though thinking about my mother had invoked her eviler twin.

  I should correct that. My mother is not evil. She’s merely self-absorbed. I can be, too.

  For sixteen years, our self-interests coincided more often than not. I lived to dance, and she loved having a ballet prodigy for a daughter. So her lack of maternal instinct didn’t really affect me until The Accident (it was hard not to think of it in capital letters) ended my skyrocketing career right as it left the atmosphere.

  The Accident had also turned me into a child again. I’d been a professional dancer. I’d travelled to Europe and Asia with the company. Nine months of surgery, casts and titanium rods later, I was a seventeen-year-old‘unaccompanied minor’ – thanks a lot, Delta Air Lines– pawned off on distant relatives to be babysat.

  The infuriating thing was, Mother knew very well how self-sufficient I was, because she’d taken full advantage of it while dating her new husband. I think if it had been up to her, she would have left me on my own while she went off on her two-week honeymoon.

  But ‘Dr Steve’ hadn’t considered it an option. I was emotionally fragile, at a crossroads, major cognitive realignment, blah blah blah. God, I hated shrinks.

  He wasn’t even my shrink, just my new stepfather.

  So, I couldn’t be left alone for two weeks in our Upper West Side apartment with only Gigi, the security staff, the doorman and all the take-out food in Manhattan for company. It would do me good, he said, to get away from the City, the reminders of my old life, and have a change of scenery.

  The unspoken thread in this pronounced sentence was that the godforsaken wilderness of the Deep South was the perfect place for me to dry out. A drastic measure, just because I drank myself unconscious at their wedding. Imagine what he would have suggested if he knew about the hallucinations.

  If I hadn’t broken my leg, Mother wouldn’t have married Dr Steven Blakely. She’d known him casually through one of her arts organizations, and since he was a premier child psychologist, she’d called him after The Accident. Dr Steve had referred me to his colleague one floor down, and asked my mother out to dinner and a show.

  They were married while I was still in a walking cast, but Mother insisted that I process down the aisle with the wedding party. That wouldn’t have been a big deal if she had gotten married in an intimate little chapel like a normal divorcée of … let’s just say thirty-nine. But eighteen years ago, she and my dad had eloped; maybe she thought a big wedding would make marriage stick the second time around.

  The reception was in the Cotillion Room of the Pierre hotel. The Pierre, in May, with three months’ notice. Dr Steve had pull. There must be a lot of messed-up kids in Manhattan. No wonder my mother looked so happy.

  At least one of us was. After my third or fourth glass of champagne I wasn’t any more miserable than usual. Which was actually an improvement over the earlier part of the afternoon. Then my new stepbrother ruined it.

  He sauntered up, looking amused and friendly, and said, ‘Nice cast.’

  John Blakely was in college, a few years older than me. Despite being Dr Steve’s son, he seemed almost normal just then, his Ivy League haircut mussed up and the ends of his bow tie hanging loose around his open shirt collar.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Tactful,’ I said, giving him the eye.

  He shrugged. ‘I figured you wouldn’t have gotten that colour if you didn’t want people to notice it.’

  Yes and no. I hated the cast, and I hated that Mother had made me lurch up the aisle like Igor in a Vera Wang bridesmaid dress. So at my checkup, when I learned that I’d still be hobbling through the Big Day, I’d asked the guys in the cast room for Day-Glo orange. Later, my shrink would have a lot to say about that. My mother sure as hell did.

  I admired the way the cast clashed with the pinkish mauve of my silk dress. ‘It’s not like I can hide it.’

  For some reason, John took this as an invitation and pulled out a chair, fortunately not the one where I’d propped my throbbing leg, and sat down. ‘So you’re hiding yourself in the corner instead?’

  Prior to the Big Day, John and I had met twice. Once at the Four Seasons, where my mother and his father announced their intention to get married, as if the choice of restaurant weren’t a dead giveaway. And again at the rehearsal dinner. Our conversations so far had consisted of: wedding, wedding, weather, wedding.

  ‘Some people would take that as a hint,’ I said, because I wasn’t in the mood to broaden our established repertoire.

  John blatantly ignored the clues, spoken and not, that I was a pity party of one. ‘I just thought we should get to know each other, now that we’re related.’ He set down his drink – soda and something warm and amber. No one had carded me for the champagne, but I doubted I could ask for real liquor and get away with it. Unfortunately.

  ‘Dad told me you were a dancer.’

  My face went clammy, then hot again. You were a dancer. He said it so casually, so conversationally, and I wanted to scream, I was famous. Ballet Magazine. Youngest principal dancer ever.

  He kept talking, oblivious. ‘Dad says you’ll be going to college next year.’

  I swallowed my first gut reaction. Then the second. Eventually a civil answer presented itself. ‘Your dad thinks it’s a good idea.’

  From the way his brows drew down, I hadn’t hidden my feelings on the subject – of school, or of his father.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘You’ve got your GED, right? It might be too late to apply for this fall, but you could study for the SAT and try for midterm admission.’

  My cheeks began to burn. Pale skin hides none of my emotions, and no one had ever accused me of being beautiful when I was angry. ‘Did he tell you to talk to me?’

  John’s surprise seemed genuine. ‘No. Why would he do that?’

  ‘Why are you making like a guidance counsellor?’ I could hear the venom in my voice, but couldn’t seem to control it.

  His tan hid plenty, but my eye spotted a guilty flush on his neck. ‘I’m just making conversation.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ The realization hit me and I slithered down in my chair. ‘You’re a psychology major, aren’t you? I should have known.’

  He stared at me. ‘How did you … ? That’s not the point.’

  ‘You’re just like him.’ I expected a lack of sympathy or imagination from the stepsh
rink, but not from someone my age. ‘His idea of comfort was to tell me I was lucky this happened while I was still young and could do something else with my life.’

  John frowned, like he was searching for the right answer on a quiz. ‘Well, I would have said that no matter how old you are, it’s not too late to go in a new direction when something doesn’t work out.’

  His calm ratcheted my anger up another notch. ‘It must be easy,’ I said, clipping the ends of my words, ‘not to be so passionate about anything that you can’t change your plan without any trouble.’

  Not a flinch or a blink. ‘Well, you can’t sulk the rest of your life. You’ve got to find something to do.’

  I gaped, stupidly, unable to think of any answer other than ‘screw you’. Or bursting into tears, which was not going to happen. Shutting my mouth with an audible snap of my teeth, I manoeuvred my fibreglass-swathed limb to the floor and struggled out of my chair. I wanted to surge indignantly to my feet and storm away, but it’s hard to lumber off in a huff.

  John’s voice followed me, carrying something that sounded like regret. ‘Sylvie, wait.’

  The jazz combo was loud enough that I could pretend I didn’t hear him. Mother was dancing with Steve, and she looked so happy that guilt topped off my reservoir of misery. I grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, then realized I would have to run the gauntlet of theatre and dance people near the ballroom entrance, and I couldn’t face their hushed, funereal tones as they asked how I was doing.

  Rerouting, I ducked out the service entrance and paused in the hallway between ballrooms to dig in my tiny, spangled bag for the Vicodin I’d slipped into my aspirin bottle, just in case. My leg hurt, but my leg always hurt. At the moment I was only thinking about easing the ache in my heart.

  It was a low dose. Half of what I took on the worst days. I downed it with five big gulps of midgrade champagne, set the glass on the service tray and headed for the lobby.