at the kitchen table while her mum stirred pasta sauce at the stove. The air filled with the delicious smell of tomatoes and oregano. As Billie stretched up she looked at the dream-board on the wall. This was where she and her mum stuck pictures of their hopes and dreams, for inspiration. Billie’s pictures were all dance-related – a black and white print of a pair of ballet shoes, a photo of an airy, sunlit dance studio and, of course, a picture of WEDA that she’d cut from the brochure. Billie looked at the imposing red brick building, with its huge windows like sets of eyes gazing out over the rolling grounds. It reminded her a bit of Hogwarts, but the bit she loved best was the glass-panelled walkway that jutted from the side of the building, leading to the ultra-modern Murphy Wing.
The Murphy Wing was named after Miss Murphy – former world-famous ballerina, now Head of Dance and Wellness at WEDA and Billie’s dance hero. Like she’d done a thousand times before, Billie stared at the glass walkway and pictured herself walking along it on the way to a class. Then she glanced at her mum’s side of the dream-board and her eyes came to rest on the picture of a quaint little cottage surrounded by wild flowers. It was her mum’s biggest dream to own a home of her own. She’d worked so hard to keep a roof over their heads since Billie’s dad had died – working two jobs to cover the rent on their council flat and pay for Billie’s dance lessons. Billie felt a flicker of determination deep inside of her. If she got into WEDA and made it as a professional ballerina, she’d one day be able to buy her mum her dream home and take care of her, the way she’d taken care of Billie. She looked at the picture next to the cottage – an old photo of her dad holding two-year-old Billie tightly. His mop of curly hair and his thick-rimmed glasses gave him the look of an earnest college professor. He was staring off to the side of the shot, like he’d just seen something worrying. This photo summed her dad up. He’d devoted his life to finding causes and people to worry about.
The sound of a motorbike growling to a standstill outside snapped Billie from her thoughts. ‘Uncle Charlie!’
Billie flung the door open just as Charlie was pulling his helmet from his head.
‘Billerina!’ he cried, scooping her up into his strong arms. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘Great!’ Billie replied, breathing in the familiar smell of leather from his jacket. ‘It’s so good to see you! How was Vietnam?’
‘So cool.’ Charlie let go of Billie and grinned at her. He looked tanned and healthy – the way he always did when he just got back from travelling. ‘The people are so friendly. You’d have loved it. Ah, something smells good.’ Charlie followed Billie up the narrow hallway and into the kitchen. ‘Hello, Sis. Did you miss me?’
‘Charlie!’ Billie’s mum put down her spoon and grabbed him in a hug.
‘I can’t believe you’re back already,’ Billie said, sitting down at the table.
‘Yeah well, a little bird told me it was your big day tomorrow, so I had to be here to wish you luck.’ Charlie sat down opposite Billie. ‘How are you feeling? How are the nerves holding up?’
‘OK, I guess.’
‘Yeah?’ Charlie looked at Billie.
Billie nodded. ‘It’s just that I’ve wanted to get into WEDA so badly for so long. I don’t know what I’ll do if it all goes wrong . . .’
‘I get it, but you know what, it can’t go wrong, not really, not if you give it your best shot.’ Charlie took off his jacket. He had leather bands and colourful, woven friendship bracelets all the way up both of his wrists. Every time he went away he got more.
‘But what if –’
‘At least you’ll have tried,’ Charlie interrupted. ‘There are two types of people in this world, Bill, the dreamers and the doers. Us three – and your dad,’ Charlie glanced at the photo on the board, ‘we’re doers, right? When we have a dream, we go after it.’
Billie nodded.
‘So that’s something to be proud of – whatever the outcome. Anyway, I’ve got you something.’ Charlie reached inside his jacket pocket.
‘From Vietnam?’
‘Kind of. I wrote it to you when I was in Vietnam.’ He pulled out a crumpled envelope and handed it to her. ‘Don’t open it now. Open it later, when you’re on your own. When you get another attack of the what-ifs.’
Billie tucked the envelope into her hoodie pocket.
‘Thank you, Uncle Charlie.’
‘No problem, Billerina. Now come on, Sis, where’s our dinner?’
Later that night, when Billie was getting ready for bed, she took her jewellery box from her dressing table and opened the lid. She turned the gold key on the back of the box and the little ballerina inside began slowly pirouetting. Billie’s dancing dream had begun with this box. It had originally belonged to her mum, who’d had it since she was a child. But when she was little, Billie had become so obsessed with it that her mum let her have it. And when Billie’s dad died when she was six, her mum had enrolled Billie in a local dance class, hoping it might help her cope. ‘You can be just like the ballerina in the box!’ she’d told Billie. And it had worked. In those first years after her dad’s death, dancing was the only place where Billie didn’t feel as if she was drowning in sadness. In her ballet class there was no time for tears, as she focused on the steps and poses and lost herself in the routines. And, over the seven years since, dancing had gone from being an escape to being a passion.
Billie heard the low murmur of Uncle Charlie’s voice from the living room and the light tinkle of her mum’s laugh. It was so good hearing her talking to someone, let alone laughing. Her mum spent so many nights alone, worn out from work, slumped in front of her laptop watching Netflix. Billie wished she would meet someone, but her heart still belonged to Billie’s dad.
Billie opened the little drawer inside the jewellery box and pulled out a string of wooden beads with a B-shaped pendant. Her dad had given it to her on her sixth birthday, just a few months before he’d died. He’d got it from Africa, where he’d been working in a refugee camp. Billie sighed. He’d been ill when he’d given it to her but no one had known. He’d been so devoted to his work that he didn’t bother going to the doctor when he started getting pains in his stomach. He hadn’t wanted to let anyone down – and he’d ended up dying. Billie tucked the beads back into the box. She couldn’t afford to feel sad tonight – she needed to feel positive for her audition.
She took out a folded magazine cutting. It was about her hero, Miss Murphy. The article charted her incredible rise, from poverty in New York to becoming a scholarship student at WEDA and then one of the most famous and successful dancers in the world. Billie had read the article so many times she practically knew it by heart. As she skim-read it again, her heart began to pound. What if Miss Murphy was at the auditions tomorrow? What if Billie had to dance in front of her? What if she messed up in front of her? Her mouth went dry. Then she remembered the envelope Uncle Charlie had given her and fumbled in her pocket for it. She snuggled closer to her bedside lamp and started to read.
If you could take an hour and put it in a glass,
To wait and use it later, when all other time has passed,
If you could take that precious hour and use it for right now,
What would you use it on, knowing time never lasts?
If you could fill that hour with sixty minutes of hope,
If you could know that hour could really come to pass.
Then now is the time to take that hour,
Now is the time to break that glass.
Billie tucked the poem under her pillow, switched off her lamp and closed her eyes. Now is the time to break that glass, she repeated over and over in her head until finally she fell asleep.