Cindy came downstairs after unpacking and phoning her mother, father and uncle to reassure them she was OK, that she was safe and the house was not a complete dump. In fact it was a really nice house in Chelsea no less. Her room was small but at least she did not have to share with anyone else. The ground floor was open plan, a large kitchen/diner to the rear with a small patio/yard beyond. The front room was like an American den, Two large sofas and a decent TV with home cinema.

A dark haired stranger introduced himself "Hi, its Cindy right? I'm Serge, Like the TV, Alex bought that after doing some god awful video shoot. Its his pride and joy. That and the sound system upstairs in the studio. All the art was his uncle's."

"Alex, do you mean Sasha?" asked the perplexed girl.

"One and the same, Sasha's the dancer. The moody arsehole, who owns this house, who drinks and can't sleep, thats Alex. He's OK, right? Not been drinking. I've been worried."

"No, no drinking. He called his friends Si on the way here, though." Cindy explained, thinking it was relevant to Serge's query.

"Crap. I'm just going to check that he's OK. Help yourself to tea or coffee, the kitchen's over there." Serge paused at the bottom of the stairs, "Mines a milky brew, no sugar. Alex like his coffee black."

Alex then interrupted from the stairs "Like my heart." The two men hugged when Alex entered the living room, before he went to make the drinks. "Everyone in tonight?"

"They sure are, to welcome you home. Denny even made a cake."

"I'm surprised the house is not a smoldering wreck."

"Packet mix, even he could not fuck that up" Serge laughed.

Alex had a hard strange look on his face remembering a housekeeper, who had burnt his birthday cake in 1995, so badly their neighbour in Berlin had called the fire brigade when the burnt offering had been thrown outside by an hysterical Jack. She had set the oven to grill not bake, causing the complete disaster. All birthday cakes had been bought from then on.

"You OK, Al?" said the worried roommate.

"Fine. Just remembering something from my god awful childhood." Alex then brought in the beverages. "So Cin, just so you know we both danced for Manfred and we share similar pasts. Both orphans, both went off the rails as teenagers and we both had a very unorthodox path to become dancers. We're like psycho twins."

"Speak for yourself. We both changed our names. I was Desmond O'Malley," said with a straight Dublin accent and then changed to esturine London " now I'm Serge St. Clair and so much more up market. Al went from London wide boy to mysterious Russian-American, adopted by a Prima Ballerina no less."

"Missed quite a bit out there, Serge" Alex stated with a smile.

"Don't want to scare the pretty lady away, now do we?"

"She has to learn sometime, there are no fairytale endings" said Alex, completely believing that. "Happiness is fleeting, grab it while you can".

"So, Bethany was following your life philosophy running off with that sugar daddy of hers"

"Bethany used to be the lead female dancer in our mismatched band of performers. She's moved on to better things." Alex could not blame the girl, she had been promised the moon and stars by Manfred and it all came to nothing. "I want to get my feet again, train, go to auditions to test the water but I think we should try and get the company back on the road, still with the original line up and repertoire. Working so hard for the big picture, a full company drove Manfred to his grave. I... I want to finish what we were working on. Even if its only a few venue dates. It will be closure before we all go our separate ways. Just to warn you, Vladimir was really pushing for me to move back to New York. I'm not sure I want to. I don't know. Its just wrong without him."

Serge then reached around to hug Alex, "Its OK, Al. He was a horrible, loud, sarcastic tyrant but we still loved him. We all did. You were special though, you were his little Sasha, his muse, his zephyr, his beautiful lost boy."

The front door bell rang and Alex jumped up as he knew it was their supper, a banquet of delecacies ordered from the local Bengali restaurant. As Alex put the main dishes into the oven to keep warm and to plate up the poppadoms, pickles and starters, he looked at Cindy. "I hope you like your food hot and spicy. We all do. No vindaloos though, we are not chavs. Can you but the lassi into glasses?"

"What's lassi?"

"Oh, indian yogurt drink, either salty or sweet. I ordered a mixture. I love both. I went to India, I think I was 8, for only a few days."

"Did you travel around a lot?" asked Cindy as she dried the drink, it was bit like a milkshake.

"Yeah, Serge called me a Londoner but I have lived all over. Only been to Russia once though."

"With your adoptive mother?"

"No, no. I don't really want to talk about it." Alex said. Well, not with anyone here. The nagging doubt in his head was that he already had closure over Manfred, putting personal happiness in the past, but his teenage misadventures were bleeding into his present and he needed to close the door on those difficult days. He had to speak to the Bank regarding clearance and an approved therapist.

Alex went to hit a small gong in the hall to signal all that it was time to eat, chat and concentrate on the here and now and everyone's plans for the future.

Cindy had found the whole evening to be odd, she had been welcomed into the shattered remains of a dance company. Five of them already had other work lined up. Serge had work modeling, rather than dancing. She would train, dance and find a job. It left little time for a personal life. Maybe thats why all here had made time for the communal meal, a short respite, a piece of something like family for those whose art outweighed anything else.

In the master bedroom, the dark haired young man, with green eyes and heart-melting good looks, was already laid in the queen sized bed, feeling an interloper into Alex's space, but beggars could not be choosers and Alex had generously allowed his friends all to share his home at a knock down rent. "Are you really OK, Al? You were pretty quiet tonight." Serge said to the back of the tall blond who was brushing his teeth in the small en-suite.

"Yes and no. Two steps forward, three steps back. A least its busy tomorrow, Class first thing, a couple of hours getting Cindy to unlearn half of what the fascists at Covent Garden told her. I have a meeting in the afternoon and I think I'm going to see some old friends. I have decided to try therapy for a bit."

"Really, I never really got all the psychology shit I had to put up with between the social workers, the foster homes and the constantly changing schools. God, I was so lucky with my last placement. I think I should go see those old queens tomorrow, just to remind them what a fantastic job they did of straighten me out."

Al got into bed and turned out his light straight away to stare at the ceiling. "I still think its so funny we both found dance as fifteen year olds on opposite sides of the world. You in Camden and me in San Francisco."

"Shit Al, Misha was a fucking bastard to you."

"Yeah, but he got me from A to B. From nutcase to finding a home and happiness. I could not have done it without him. Bastard or not, he was part of my journey." Alex had tried to find his old partner, but he had disappeared, retired whatever, and did not want to be found.