The Return by Victoria Hislop Page A

fire-place of her childhood home. Sonia was more interested in the others, which were of her parents at various dance events. One showed the pair of them, her father looking not unlike he did today though with more of his pale hair, and her mother, erect, elegant, her black hair slicked tightly into a firm bun. They were holding a trophy and on the reverse of the picture, in pencil, was written:‘1953:Tango, 1st.’There were several others, most of them taken at competitions.
     
    Sonia held a picture in each hand. ‘Is this really Mum?’
     
    In her memory, she was frail, semi-bedridden and silver-haired. Here she was vibrant, strong and, most arrestingly for Sonia, upright. It was hard to revise the image of her mother that she had had for so long.
     
    ‘We all danced properly in those days,’ Jack assured his daughter. ‘We were taught the right steps and we danced together, not like people do nowadays.’
     
    These photos evoked such strong emotions for Jack and, as he gazed silently at this image of himself, memories of how he and Mary had not always performed according to the rule book returned to him. The rule of dancing is that the man leads, but for them this wasn’t always the case. Within the subtlety of their movements, whether it was tango, rumba or paso doble, Jack had known where Mary wanted to be led and from the slightest pressure she exerted on his arm, they had developed a way of communicating this. She was totally in control of their movement. Having danced almost as soon as she could walk, until the moment when her legs began to lose the power to carry her, it could not have been any other way.
     
    Jack found another envelope stuffed with photographs. Each one featured himself and his wife in a stiff pose and on the back, the date and the dance for which they had won a prize.
     
    ‘What happened to all those beautiful gowns?’ Sonia could not resist asking.
     
    ‘I’m afraid they all went to a charity shop when she stopped dancing,’ Jack answered. ‘She couldn’t bear to have them in the wardrobe.’
     
    Though Sonia was amazed to have uncovered such a significant part of her father’s life, and one that she had never been aware of, she knew without asking why they had really stopped dancing and why they had never talked about it. Her mother had developed multiple sclerosis during her pregnancy with Sonia, and within a short time was confined to a wheelchair.
     
    Sonia would have liked to spend the rest of the day asking her father more, but could sense she might already have asked one question too many. He had already put the other photographs back in the envelope.
     
    There was one stray picture that still lay face down on his coffee table and she turned it over before handing it back. It showed a group of children in hand-knitted cardigans. Two of them were sitting on top of a barrel and two others were leaning against it. They had stiff smiles. A group of tables in the background suggested it was taken outside a café and the cobbles suggested somewhere continental.
     
    ‘Who are these children?’ she asked.
     
    ‘Some of your mother’s family,’ he answered, not volunteering any further information.
     
    It was time for Sonia to go. She and her father embraced.
     
    ‘’Bye, sweetheart, it’s been lovely to see you,’ he said, smiling. ‘Enjoy your dancing.’
     
    As she had made her way home that afternoon, Sonia’s imagination had been filled with images of her parents gliding around the dance floor. Perhaps the discovery of their interest shed light on why she already could not imagine life without her dance lessons.
     
     
    Sonia had been silent for a few minutes, chewing her way through lunch in the Granada café, tomato paste and crumbs spraying onto the table around her. When she looked up, her eye was caught by a series of cheaply produced oil paintings of women in long, extravagantly ruffled dresses. They were the clichéd image of Spain but every