Dancing into Danger

Bisma Aldane

Description

Sarah Manning's job interview leads to more than just a new job. Love, adventure, danger, new friendships and the maturing of her love of dancing all follow, and lead her into directions she didn't think possible. Dancing into Danger is the story of six women whose lives become interwoven and changed forever by a single cold wintry night in London. For some, enduring friendship from loss and sadness, for one the cost of love, another the cost of courage, for one the cost of failure and another the start of redemption from despair. The stories of these women takes place against a backdrop of global corporate greed, espionage and terrorism, and yet love prevails. For them all, destiny would determine what music and dance their lives would ultimately perform to snippets from the soundtrack of life. A supplementary book for fans entitled The Music of Dancing into Danger (ISBN 9781838593650) contains the arrangements for the original music and lyrics described in the various scenes within the book.

Sujets

• City (Londres)
• Isla de Wight
• Contemporary romance
• Isle of Wight
• City of London
• Cité de Londres
• Île de Wight

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 16 avril 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838595852
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Bisma Aldane
The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Scripture quotations taken from
The Holy Bible, New International Version (anglicised edition)
Copyright ©1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica (formerly International Bible Society)
Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton publishers, an Hachette UK company
All rights reserved
‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of Biblica
UK trademark number 1448790

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Matador
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire. LE8 0RX
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks

ISBN 99781838595852

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

This book was inspired by, and is dedicated to,
Luke and Carol without whom it
would not have been written.

Special thanks go to Frank for the music
in the supplementary book.
Contents
Foreword

1. Trysts and trysts again
2. A voice from the dead
3. A reluctant spy
4. Mind games
5. Caught in the web, worldwide or otherwise
6. The jailor becomes jailed
7. Battles without – at Blackfriars Bridge
8. Battles within – the search for Sarah
9. Out of the frying pan
10. The ebb and flow of life

Epilogue
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Notes
Foreword
A book with a difference that can be read three ways:

1. A straight read.

2. A slower reading journey, dwelling on the moods from the included verse and lyrics. Snippets of some of the music (albeit of poor quality but enough to give a gist) will be available on YouTube to help the imagination. All the associated music is printed in the supplementary book, The Music of Dancing Into Danger . If you wish, you can create your own musical by selecting a personal choice from the lyrics and published music.

3. Create your own choreography to your chosen music either to express the mood or tell the story.
1
Trysts and trysts again
The sensuous touch of his hand on her face as he gently stroked her cheek and slowly drew her to him made her want even more to surrender to her deep, stirring inner desires. He caressed her cascading hair. Together they sank to their knees. He then placed his forefinger on her lips to signal the continuance of this silent special moment. They gazed into each other’s eyes longingly. This was their moment. Then with unbridled passion they…
The train lurched and the readjusted bodies made it impossible for Sarah to see over the shoulder of the seated lady whose book she had surreptitiously been attempting to read. This was despite craning her neck to the fullest, letting her long hair flow fully down in the process. She tried standing on tiptoe for a moment in the squashed central aisle that ran along the middle of the coach but to no avail. It was an old type of rolling stock which had been substituted for a vandalised modern one. Long, continuous seats stretched across its whole width at either end of the coach. The springs on these seats, like the carriage in general, had seen long service and better days and over every large bump the six passengers at either end bounced together in an exaggerated fashion by virtue of their combined weight. This sight struck Sarah as funny and she felt the beginnings of a titter. The more they bounced the sillier it looked and the harder the giggle became to stifle.
Though quite shy, some might say timid or at least reserved in nature, Sarah had always had a tendency to laugh when nervous, and she was nervous, very nervous about the job interview she was going to. She looked around the carriage, anywhere to avoid the scene of the synchronised bobbing passengers. She could only see bits of misted-up window over a man’s shoulder, so she decided to close her eyes and listen to a conversation going on in the next group of seats along. Several girls were talking about a previous night out, their Estuary English becoming more pronounced with their repetitive speech patterns and vocabulary. Sarah unconsciously started to count the number of times one particular girl said the word ‘like’ but shook herself out of it once she realised what she was doing.
‘Anyway, I goes to him, I goes, no thanks I’ve just been up dancing. Anyway, I got my friend waiting for me.’ The speaker then gesticulated. ‘He was like, and I was like. He didn’t like it, you know.’
‘Was he the one with the black, straight hair?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. He was like, and I was like.’
Sarah thought, if only she’d brought something to read. Then the vision of the bouncing passengers popped into her mind again. She could even visualise them moving to music and a grin forced its way onto her face. Oh no, no, stop it , she thought. Someone at the distant end of the carriage, hidden from view, was talking loudly on their mobile and seemed to have a case of verbal diarrhoea, much to everyone else’s annoyance. Thankfully Sarah could not discern what they were saying. Quick, think of something else, anything else , she thought. At last! Fenchurch Street station. She wished that she had stayed in her flat in Tooting at the weekend to save on this awful journey but she had so wanted to attend the weekend course on dance, which she had greatly enjoyed.
Having allowed plenty of time for possible train delays and cancellations she was way too early for her appointment. So, before catching the tube at Tower Hill she thought to wander around the war memorial in Trinity Square to calm herself before the imagined impending grilling. It was the Monday after Remembrance Sunday and there were many flowers, little crosses and notes of love for the lost. She felt a tinge of sadness for those remaining, living but still grieving, losing but still loving. Some of the notes were so heartfelt. Perhaps one day there would be nobody left to mourn, no one left to sense the pain of loss, she mused. Sarah then stopped at the memorial for those killed at the scaffold on Tower Hill and wondered how many less influential men were killed there but with no memorial.
A bright shaft of sunlight briefly broke through the cloud cover from a wintry red sun, giving gold and red hues in the reflections of the tall glass-dressed office blocks, making some of them look as if they were actually on fire. These sobering thoughts now made her feel quite calm, which was just as well as she still wanted to arrive with a little time to spare, and so she walked past the old Roman wall and fountain. Eventually she found the tube station and caught a relatively empty westward train. Unfortunately, she had just witnessed the scene of two commuters turning the same corner travelling in opposite directions colliding, as both were texting on their mobile phones whilst walking. A nervous smile inched a little onto her face.
Sarah sat reading the advertisements displayed throughout the carriage. When the doors opened at Mansion House station, a pigeon hopped on and waited by the doors until the tube stopped at Blackfriars, at which point it hopped off as the doors opened. Sarah could not believe this. She started to giggle, but with a little self-control she managed to quiet herself again.
The train was stationary for quite a while and just as the doors were closing a man dashed into the carriage. He sat down heavily, on what was had he noticed, a vandalised seat. This slid off its mounting and he landed with an almighty crash in an embarrassed heap sprawled on the floor with part of the seat still under him. This was just too much for Sarah. She burst out laughing. He went very red and got up quickly, placed the seat back on its mounting, sat down on a different seat and hid behind a newspaper, trying to blend in as if nothing had happened. Apart from Sarah’s response, there were a few brief isolated smiles before people resorted to the normal commuter malaise of nondescript blank expressions, texting, listening to music in their earphones or reading, but above all, carefully avoiding of any sort of eye contact.
When it came for the man to alight, having been clearly preoccupied in an article, he quickly placed the newspaper in his briefcase, shut it and got up to leave. Unfortunately for him, he had not closed his briefcase properly and as he got up its contents spilled out onto the floor. Sarah just shrieked with unconstrained laughter at this. He hurriedly scooped up the papers, inserted them into his case and dashed off the carriage. However, Sarah noticed an envelope still on the floor, which he had missed. She quickly picked it up and ran after the man, calling to him to get his attention. She caught up with him at the foot of the stairs.
‘You dropped this.’ He turned around and for the first time fully looked at her and noticed straight away her attractive eyes. He glanced down and saw her clasping the brown envelope