Margery's Ballade Étude I
The beer coaster tore, leaving a shred of cardboard stuck to the Formica. Margery picked at it with a cracked thumbnail. The diner’s back door swung open, and North stepped inside, trailing the cold salt air of the harbour.
For three years, North had returned from the city smelling of the same three things: licorice tobacco, the metallic sigh of the train, and the cheap, floral detergent from the laundrette below their old flat. This time, a new scent cut through the familiar ones—a sharp, citrus perfume, expensive and foreign. It clung to the collar of North’s new wool coat.
“You’re back early,” Margery said, not looking up. She scrubbed at a ring of coffee stains.
“Caught the red-eye.” North dropped her bag. Her fingers went to her neck, brushing at a faint, pearlescent smudge on her skin that wasn’t her own foundation. Margery’s rag stilled on the counter.
A fine, powdery dust—rosin—clung to a silk camisole in North’s suitcase. A crumpled ticket stub for *Giselle* at the Royal Ballet fell from a book. And then, on North’s pillow, a single, long, golden-blonde hair. Margery held it to the light. It was not hers. It was not North’s. It belonged to a ghost she named Helena.
Margery began her transformation in the diner after hours. She swapped her worn sneakers for a pair of thin leather ballet flats. She watched videos on her phone, her body twisting in clumsy imitation of the dancers on screen. She pulled her own dark, unruly curls into a tight, severe bun that tugged at her scalp.
One evening, North found her there, spinning slowly in the dim light between the booths. The floor was still gritty with salt. “What are you doing, Mags?” North asked, her voice flat.
“Nothing,” Margery said, striking a stiff arabesque, her hand resting on the sticky vinyl of a booth for balance. North just stared, her head tilted, as if looking at a stranger. She didn’t say another word, just turned and left the way she came.
The final confrontation happened in their bedroom. Margery was wearing a soft, cashmere sweater she’d saved two months to buy, a colour the ghost-Helena would wear. North stood in the doorway, her eyes travelling from the new sweater to the ballet flats lined up neatly by the bed.
“What is this, Margery?” North’s voice was low. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” Margery’s voice was a careful imitation of calm. She picked up a small, crumpled piece of paper from the dresser—the ballet ticket. “Did you enjoy the show?”
North’s face shifted from confusion to a dawning, weary understanding. She let out a short, hollow laugh. “There is no Helena, Mags.”
“The perfume isn’t yours. The ticket isn’t mine. The hair…” Margery’s voice trembled for the first time.
“The hair is from a model on a shoot. The perfume was a gift from the art director. The ticket was for me.” North’s words were quiet, final. “I went alone. I go to the ballet alone now. I bought new clothes for myself. I’m just… not the same person you thought I was, the person who left this town three years ago.”
The truth, stark and simple, settled in the room. There was no affair. No rival. Only North, growing and changing, and Margery, who had tried to build a cage out of her own fear.
Margery turned towards the full-length mirror. The woman staring back was a strange composite—her own tired eyes, North’s old leather bracelet on her wrist, and the elegant, ill-fitting costume of a phantom. She wasn’t looking at a rival. She was looking at the architect of the distance between them.
Later, she stood by the harbour, the new sweater damp with sea mist. In her hand, she held the single golden hair, the ballet ticket, and a scrap of the silk camisole. She opened her fist, and the wind took them, carrying the ghost of Helena out over the dark, shifting water.
