How We Met

He says, ‘Oh, right! Yeah. Got yer. Fred Astaire, mmm …’ He raises an eyebrow, as if to say, I don’t think so somehow. ‘Well, I think I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.’

But Fraser knows he’ll never be ready for this. Ever. In his life. In fact, right now, standing in the street on a warm Tuesday evening in April, every molecule in his body is telling him he’d rather be doing anything – undergoing a life-threatening operation, for example – than going to a salsa class.

But ‘Learn to do SOME sort of dance’ is one of the four tasks he’s been allocated from Liv’s List to complete and he is determined to do this for her.

After he and Mia hatched their plan that awful day after Liv’s birthday, they got everyone over to Mia’s, where they tried, for a fruitless hour, to give free rein and let everyone choose four things each from the List.

But this resulted in nothing but shouting and Melody and Norm almost filing for divorce when it was decided, as the only couple, that they should do the homemade porn movie one and Melody burst out laughing: ‘Chance would be a fine thing. We haven’t had sex since October!’ Norm was not amused.

They’d gone round in circles, until finally, Mia had the ingenious idea that they should write down all the tasks on bits of paper, put them in a hat and let fate decide.

So this was the outcome:

Fraser: Learn to dance; sleep with an exotic foreigner: do this without becoming completely neurotic about what it’s supposed to ‘mean’ (Fraser felt – at a push – he could probably manage this); use up all seven Scrabble letters in one turn; make a Roman blind.

Norm: Learn how to make the perfect Victoria sponge; Vegas, baby!; get a six-pack; climb Great Wall of China.

Mia: Go to Venice, properly this time, and have a bellini at Harry’s Bar; swim naked in the sea at dawn; learn a foreign language; learn how to pluck eyebrows.

Anna: Read all works by William Wordsworth, learn how to meditate, to ‘live in the moment’; live in Paris for a while; learn how to use chopsticks.

Melody: French kiss in Central Park; make a homemade porn film; have a party for all my wonderful friends.

Number nineteen, they planned to do as the very last one, together as a group:

Go to airport, close eyes and pick a destination at random, then GO! Even if it’s to Stuttgart or Birmingham.

Of course, Fraser hasn’t told Karen about the List, which he does feel guilty about, since if there were no List – if there were no Liv, essentially – there’d be no way he would voluntarily sign up for a salsa class. Today, against his better judgement and only to liven up the most boring day at work this year (eight hours spent holding a microphone to someone’s head as they made a party political broadcast about obesity outside McDonald’s), he’d told the boys at work – John and Declan – and they’d ribbed him mercilessly, said they didn’t know anyone less likely to be going to a ‘gay’ salsa class …

But Karen doesn’t know this and what she doesn’t know, he’s reasoned, can’t hurt her. Besides, she was ecstatic when he asked her.

‘Really? You’re not jesting me?’ (‘Jesting’ is one of Karen’s favourite ’90s expressions, along with ‘mint’ and ‘yes way’.) ‘You actually want to go to dance lessons – with me?’ She looked dumbfounded, as though he’d just asked her to marry him, and squealed before hugging him so tight she almost suffocated him with her enormous, no, really enormous, amazing and wondrous breasts. It doesn’t matter how many times she says ‘innit’, Fraser doubts he will ever get irritated by those.

So, he felt absolved of his guilt, but now, what with Karen’s obsession with Strictly Come Dancing and calling him Fred Astaire, he is starting to worry she might think he can actually dance. After all, who suggests starting a hobby they don’t already have some aptitude for?

Fraser clings to the hope that salsa might just be his big, untapped talent, but realistically, chances are slim. Small children have been known to laugh at him at wedding receptions.

‘Been shopping again?’ says Fraser, cheerfully.

They’re walking side by side up Oxford Street now, towards the class, which is somewhere tucked behind Little Portland Street.

‘Ohmigod, have I been shopping.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘You’ve really been and done the shopping thing this time?’

She squeezes his arm. ‘Just you wait and see.’

They are prone to little exchanges of inane conversation like this, where Fraser feels as if he’s in that programme, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, but just can’t think of any good lines.

He lights a cigarette for want of something better to do.

‘So … do you wanna see then?’ says Karen, after Fraser clearly hasn’t taken the hint.

‘Yeah, why not, go on then.’

She moves to the side of the street and opens up one of the plastic bags, which is pink and has the word FREED written on it. Fraser’s hands go clammy, his throat goes suddenly dry. It’s a shoebox and inside the box is a pair of leather dance shoes with a strap across and a square heel. The leather looks soft – he can smell it – and, even with his untrained eye, he can tell they cost a fortune.

Karen holds them up proudly, like a cat making an offering: ‘I just thought, do you know what? Bugger it. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it properly. I’m telling you, this dance thing is like a whole new world of retail opportunity!’

Thank you, Lord, they’re not for me.

‘Do you like them? The lady in the shop said they were the same as professionals wear.’

Fraser isn’t really au fait with dance shoes or what there is to like about them, so says the first thing that comes into his head: ‘They’ve got a very nice heel.’

Her face lights up.

‘Really? Do you think so?’

‘God, yeah, totally, a really, really good heel. Really good heel.’ Jesus. I hope you can see me, Olivia Jenkins, he thinks, and I hope you’re happy.

Fraser has seen adverts on Sky TV for salsa classes – in fact, he’s done a broadcast for one before; something about multicultural London – and they are always held in a dimly lit, buzzy bar, throbbing with Latino beats and unfeasibly attractive people: taut-bottomed men wearing cumberbunds and raven-haired beauties, that sort of thing. Not this one. This one is held in a mirrored studio, four flights of stairs above a shop selling bridal wear, and is complete with sprung floor and ballet barres around the edges – so bright, it makes you squint when you come in from the outside. Fraser may as well be naked, he feels so exposed, and wishes he’d done a bit more research than googling Salsa Classes in London and booking the first that came up.

To make matters worse, they’re early, so have to hang around whilst everyone arrives.

‘Gosh, this is very proper, isn’t it?’ whispers Karen excitedly as she takes off her trainers and gets changed into her new, professional shoes. ‘Takes me right back to dancing classes when I was little.’

Fraser feels a bit sick.

‘You didn’t tell me you’d done dance classes.’

‘Didn’t I? Oh, yeah. Distinction in Advanced Modern, me. Intermediate Ballet, gold medal three years running at the Hull Festival, I’ll have you know. I was going to audition for ballet school at one point before these buggers grew …’ She turns around and pushes her boobs together and Fraser has a flash of hope, once more, that maybe he is already a little bit in love with Karen after all.

It seems to take forever for everyone to arrive. Karen goes straight to the front where she starts chatting to a tall man in small, round glasses, whilst Fraser loiters at the back, feeling like a twelve-year-old at an adults’ party. He dares to look at himself in the mirror and regrets it. He looks ridiculous, like a youth offender brought in for ‘dance therapy’. He had no clue what to wear, so went for general fitness attire and is wearing shiny tracksuit bottoms, his running trainers and a FILA T-shirt bought in about 1991 which is too big for him and smells of his bedroom floor.

Everyone else is wearing normal, fashionable clothing, or professional dancewear. In particular, there’s a woman next to him who looks as if she’s pirouetted straight in from the set of Fame.

He smooths down his hair in a vague attempt to make himself look more presentable and sees Karen smile warmly then wink at him through the mirror. She seems to be getting on famously with the tall man in glasses. This is something Fraser greatly admires in Karen: her ability to be sociable and chirpy at all times – it’s why she makes such a good barmaid. Fraser has always found that hard, even more so these days. They are quite high up here and for some reason, as he looks out of the window, over the treetops thick with blossom, the evening spring sunshine glinting through the branches, he has a brief rush of something he remembers as happiness. Or hope. Is it hope? He closes his eyes, feels the warmth of the sun on his eyelids. He can do this. He can. He will do it for Liv.

‘OK, if you’re ready, shout, “SALSAAA!”’

Fraser nearly jumps out of his skin. Suddenly there is really loud music and a man at the front wearing a headset and wiggling his hips in a way that looks unnatural, not to mention painful.

‘SALSA!’ everyone shouts back, including Karen. How the hell does she know when to shout salsa?

‘Are we HAPPY?’ yells the man again – obviously the teacher or coach or instructor – what did they call them in the World of Dance? Fraser has no idea. The man’s gyrating his hips and shouting into the no-hands microphone that comes around the front of his face and reminds Fraser of the head-brace Norm used to have to wear at night when they were kids because his front teeth stuck out.

There’s a weak, affirmative dribble from the group.

‘Not GOOD ENOUGH!!!’ he tries again. ‘I said are you HAPPYYYYYY!!!?’

‘YES!’ everyone shouts, much louder this time.

Fraser remembers something Mia always tells him: ‘Fake it till you make it.’

Still, he can’t quite bring himself to shout ‘Yes’ back.

The instructor’s name is Calvin. He has a glorious Afro like a lion’s mane, a disgustingly toned body, which he is showing off to full effect in a tight, white vest, and buttocks that – as Liv would say – ‘you could crack a nut with’. Fraser could well hate his guts, were he not also in possession of the sunniest, most disarming smile he’s ever seen.

Calvin’s beauty, decides Fraser, is the sort that transcends a lifetime’s sexual orientation and he wonders if he might actually fancy him, just a tiny bit.

‘OK, hands up people if this is your first time today.’

His accent is hard to place – transatlantic mixed with something Latino: Brazilian perhaps, or Columbian. Whatever it is, it’s very, very cool.

Fraser puts his hand up, along with Karen, and is relieved to see at least ten other people out of the class of twenty or so doing the same.

‘Cosmic. Awesome. Right then, guys, well, we’re not going to worry, yeah?’ says Calvin, and Fraser can’t help but nod and smile. This man is like the sermon-giver of salsa. ‘We’re not going to cry, or let aaaanything get us down. We are going to salsa ourselves happy, OK?’ He flashes another amazing smile and lets out a laugh that sounds like pure sunshine. Again, Fraser feels the sides of his lips turn up – amazingly beyond his control.

‘I said, OK?’ He cups his ear, still shaking his hips, and this time Fraser manages at least to say the word ‘OK’.

‘Good. Awesome, my friends. THIS is what I like to hear.’

Five minutes in, any hopes Fraser had of possessing some untapped talent for salsa are dashed when it becomes clear he has no natural ability whatsoever. He is an appalling dancer – so appalling, it’s even a surprise to him. He’s musical; he can play the guitar and sing in tune, so how come this does not translate to his limbs, which are making erratic and alarming jerking movements, as if he’s desperate for the toilet or suffering from a neurological disorder. He catches sight of himself in the mirror again, blinks in disgust and looks the other way, only to be greeted by his red-faced reflection once more, his mouth hanging open in concentration. This is like a grim exercise in public humiliation.

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 can’t help but think she doth protest too much, but a little part of him still dies inside because he wishes he were jealous: that’s the problem.

The second half of the class is a definite improvement on the first, with Fraser at least managing the basic salsa without injuring himself or a third party.

By the time it ends, he’s almost enjoying himself, and he and Karen decide to go for a drink to celebrate. Drinking, Fraser is finding, is the key to his relationship at the moment. As long as there is booze, he can just about manage to put any doubts to the back of his mind. It’s only at 3 p.m. on a rainy Sunday, the two of them stuck for conversation, that he really starts to panic.

They go to Las Iguanas on Dean Street, have three – Fraser has four – Coronas, so that by the time they emerge out into the cool evening and make towards Oxford Street for their bus, he’s feeling much better, much more carpe diem and que será and other foreign phrases he often vows, when he’s drunk, to live his life by.

He takes her hand in his. Soho is quiet, almost deserted at this time on a Tuesday evening, and he knows it’s probably because he’s a bit pissed, but he feels a bloom of affection for Karen. This is OK, he thinks, this is enough. It’s not Liv, it’ll never be Liv, but I’ve got someone.

He thinks of arriving at Karen’s, getting into bed with her and nestling his head into her pillow-soft breasts. Then he thinks of the alternative: going home alone, opening the door to that God-awful silence, broken only by the beep of the smoke alarm that needs its battery replacing, and he thinks, Thank fuck, basically. Thank fuck.

She squeezes his hand. ‘I’ve had such a good time tonight,’ she says.

‘Me too,’ says Fraser, and he means it, he really does.

They walk to the end of Dean Street and around Soho Square, where two wasted homeless people are having a row.

They continue along Oxford Street in a tired silence to the bus stop, and have only been there a few minutes, huddled on the red plastic bench, when a drunken figure seems to loom out of nowhere.

‘Karen?’ The man is staggering he’s so gone. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

He’s got a hard face with a lazy eye – a face Fraser knows instinctively he would do well not to get on the wrong side of.

‘Darren.’ Karen lets go of Fraser’s hand and, even in that small gesture, Fraser knows this situation has the potential for disaster and bloodshed. That doesn’t stop him giggling, however. Fraser has a tendency to laugh at inopportune moments and this is one of them. The ‘Darren–Karen’ thing has tickled him for some reason, and there’s not much he can do about it.

‘Is he laughing at me? Why is he laughing at me?’

The smirk is wiped clean off his face, however, when Darren starts jabbing a finger in his direction.

‘Sorry, Darren, this is Fraser, Fraser this is Darren,’ says Karen.

It doesn’t really answer the question and Fraser suspects he and Darren aren’t ever going to be on first-name terms, but he holds his hand out anyway. But Darren rejects it so he is left with it sticking out, feeling absurd. He eventually scratches his head for something to do.

‘Is this your new boyfriend then?’

Karen sighs and looks the other way.

‘Darren, pack it in.’

‘What? All I asked was if this was your new boyfriend. Nice trainers anyway, mate,’ he says to Fraser. ‘I see you really made an effort for a night out in town.’

‘Actually we’ve been to a dance class,’ says Fraser, flatly. He’s getting a little weary of this pissed, shaggy-haired imbecile intimidating him at a bus stop.

Darren laughs out loud. ‘A dance class, eh?’

‘Yes,’ says Karen, ‘a dance class, OK? Fraser and I go to salsa lessons. Now will you leave us alone.’

There it goes again, that shiver of anxiety. It’s the way she says, ‘Fraser and I …’ Like she’s boasting. It makes him feel pressurized.

‘Go on then,’ says Darren. ‘Show us yer moves.’

Karen sighs again. ‘Sorry about him,’ and she gets hold of Fraser’s arm. ‘Let’s move along.’

But Darren’s not having any of it.

‘Where you going, you wanker?’ he shouts after them. ‘Where are you going with my fucking girlfriend?’