He looks over at Karen. She’s a natural, of course she is, her hips and the rest of her body working in harmonious, fluid movements, which make her look sexy and stylish. He’d be proud of her if he wasn’t so busy being bitter. Why didn’t she tell him she was some Darcey Bussell wannabe as a kid? That gives her a totally unfair advantage. Not that this is a competition or anything.
He looks up, just at the moment that she does, and she gives him a tight-lipped smile that kills Fraser because he knows it’s a sympathy smile, and there’s nothing worse than a sympathy smile, except perhaps a sympathy snog.
He wouldn’t mind, but they’re only trying to master the ‘basic salsa step’ on their own as yet. If he can’t do that, what hope does he have for proper dancing in a pair? Or of ever achieving his goal?
Fraser is not a gracious loser and has a tendency to become despondent quickly when he can’t do something, especially in a public situation like this where his dignity is on the line. He remembers – just as the mood descends – that he also tends to become sullen; get a ‘face on like a smacked arse’, as Liv used to say, and he doesn’t want Karen to see him like that. ‘Smacked arse’ is one thing in front of your long-term girlfriend, but quite another in front of your new squeeze. He tells himself to get a grip and imagines what Liv would say if she could see him now: ‘Wipe that look off your face, Fraser John Morgan. It’s deeply unattractive.’
It’s not helping that the woman next to him in a leotard – a fucking leotard, for crying out loud – is muttering something and giving him funny looks. Fraser’s sure she’s trying to get his attention, but he’s choosing to ignore her. If it’s just so she can tell him he’s cramping her style, she can bugger off. How rude. He perseveres, concentrating as much as possible on Calvin’s feet and encouraging smile, but then she jabs him in the side with her bony little elbow.
‘Ow!’ He turns round, annoyed. ‘What?’
She’s pointing at the floor, jabbering on about something in a foreign language, but he can’t tell which one because the music’s too loud.
He frowns at her, shrugs his shoulders, and tries to turn back the other way, but she starts pointing more angrily, throwing her hands in the air, and Fraser begins to think she must just be mad, until the next thing he knows, Calvin is beneath his feet with a dustpan and brush.
It’s only then that he looks down and sees that all over the floor are little clumps of dirt – like molehills or animal dung. All sorts of terrible, unspeakable things come to mind, until Fraser realizes it’s just mud, mud that his filthy trainers have been depositing for the last fifteen minutes; half of Hampstead Heath all over the pristine white floor.
By the time they have a break, halfway through the class, Fraser has fought the sullen mood all he can and is in the full grip of smacked arse.
After the humiliation of the muddy trainers scenario (Calvin said not to worry but Fraser still feels mortified), they did pair work, the girls moving round the circle so that they got a chance to dance with every bloke. Woman-in-a-leotard refused to look at him when it got to her turn because he stepped on her toe by mistake. She was lucky he didn’t stamp on both feet, silly cow. There was some light relief when it came round to Karen, who was sweet and encouraging, but all in all, he feels like a loser.
‘Buddy, don’t worry, it is much, much harder than it looks.’
Now he is having to go through the further humiliation of perfect strangers sympathizing with him. And calling him ‘buddy’.
Joshi – the tall man with the glasses that Karen seems to have struck up an immediate rapport with, has been coming for six months and is certainly proficient, but only in the way that anyone who’d done the same steps for six months would be. There wasn’t much in the way of natural flair.
It may just be his foul mood, but Fraser also finds Joshi really annoying. He’s wearing one of those cheesecloth ‘granddad’ shirts with mother-of-pearl buttons and a plaited, raffia bracelet – both of which tell of time spent in Third World countries, probably with Raleigh International building schools or wells. Not getting off his face at full-moon parties, that’s for sure. And also, what’s with ‘Joshi’? What’s wrong with Josh? Or Joshua? Why the name like an Indian guru healer?
He also has the most enormous Adam’s apple Fraser has ever seen, and which he can’t take his eyes off when he speaks, as it goes up and down like a giant walnut in a lift.
They’re sitting down now, sipping free Liebfraumilch in plastic cups and eating Twiglets like they’re at a sixth-form party.
‘Calvin’s phenomenal, isn’t he?’ says Joshi, rather unnecessarily. ‘He’s an awesome teacher, I think, especially good with the weaker students. If you watch, he doesn’t patronize, do you know what I mean?’
Karen agrees and looks at Fraser, as if urging him to say something, which he does, mainly to stop Joshi before he gives him any more patronizing words of encouragement.
‘So, er … Josh, how come you decided to come to salsa classes then?’
‘Well, it’s interesting you should ask, buddy, actually.’ Joshi swallows the Twiglet he’s eating and Fraser stares as his Adam’s apple goes up and down. ‘Because I’m going to Bolivia next month – three months on a volunteer project doing irrigation systems – and I wanted to learn salsa beforehand. I think it’s so important to embrace the culture. To have the authentic experience, do you know what I mean?’
‘Wow,’ says Karen, shaking her head in a wowed kind of a way. ‘An irrigation system? In Bolivia? That is amazing. Amazing, isn’t it, Fraser?’
Fraser downs his wine.
‘Wouldn’t it have been better to do a course in plumbing?’
It’s an innocent enough question, he thinks. OK, maybe a little facetious, but it’s funny, too, and he couldn’t resist it.
Joshi stares at him blankly, biting into a Twiglet. Karen lets out a nervous giggle.
‘I think what Fraser’s getting at is that maybe you won’t have time to go out salsa-ing if you’ve got so much other, more important stuff to be doing.’
That’s not what I was getting at all, thinks Fraser, but anyway, he’s lost interest now, so that when Joshi eventually says, ‘I think the irrigation systems in Bolivia are somewhat different to those in the UK,’ he’s busy filling up his cup with more wine.
Joshi goes to the toilet leaving him and Karen alone, and Fraser detects a rather awkward silence. She looks up at him over her cup, swinging her hips in a strange, coy sort of way.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she says, and Fraser fights the little frisson of anxiety he gets whenever she looks at him like that from under her heavily mascara-ed eyes.
‘Sure, go for it.’
‘Have you got a problem with …?’ She makes a strange jerking movement with her head.
‘With what?’
‘With a certain someone,’ she hisses, nodding towards the door.
‘What, Joshi? No. Why would I have a problem with him?’
‘Well, no, you wouldn’t.’ She blushes, as if she’s backtracking now. ‘I mean not that you have, obviously. It’s just if you think there’s anything going on, like you know, I fancy him or he’s flirting with me …’
Fraser frowns at her. ‘No, not at all …’
‘What I guess I’m saying is that, if you’re jealous, Fraser, you don’t need to be, all right, hun?’ She takes his hand and squeezes it. ‘Because I don’t fancy him. Like, what-so-ever.’
Fraser