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FIVE
April
London

Fraser stands outside Top Shop on Oxford Street, occasionally craning his neck to see if he can make out Karen coming towards him, out of the crowds. They’ve been seeing one another for five weeks now, although Fraser doesn’t quite know how this happened. One minute, Karen was just a friendly, regular face behind the bar, someone who listened patiently as he got more drunk and morose; the next, she was his girlfriend, all seemingly without him having experienced any cognitive processes whatsoever.

As he stands there, April blossom scurrying around his feet, Fraser suspects it’s happened simply because he couldn’t come up with a good enough, fast enough reason why it shouldn’t.

Karen called him the night after he got back from Lancaster, asking him if he fancied going for a curry as she had a two-for-one voucher at the Taj Mahal. Fraser said yes, mainly because he had no food in the house and somehow the voucher thing made it seem more innocuous, and that was that. They went for a slap-up Mexican the week after that, then ‘a beer’ one Monday night that somehow ended up in Karen’s bed, her giving him a back massage to the strains of Enya and, before he knew it, he had himself a girlfriend – as well as, he feared, the onset of heart disease. Karen isn’t really one to pick at lettuce leaves, put it like that, but then he’s always liked that in a girl.

And it’s nice to have someone to go out for curries with. He likes having another body in the house, someone who calls him at work, who comes round and cooks for him – finally, someone who knows what to do with lemon grass. It’s comforting and grounding.

However, she started, about a fortnight in, to buy him random ‘love gifts’, as she calls them, which makes Fraser feel special and anxious in equal measure: a four-pack of Ambrosia Devon custard, for example, after he said this was his favourite childhood dessert (this is the sort of question Karen likes to ask, often after sex: What was your favourite food as a child? If you were an animal, what animal would you be?), and a photo frame in the shape of a guitar, which was disgusting, truly foul, but which he felt pressurized to fill with a picture of him and Norm. He just hoped to God he remembered to hide it if Norm ever came round.

Fraser knows Karen is a ridiculously kind, thoughtful and giving woman, and he lives in hope that one day, preferably this week, he might wake up to find he has fallen in love with her, even if he cannot shake the feeling when he is with her that all his dreams are going up in smoke.

Not that he really believes his dreams will come true any more, but they are still there, lurking at the back of his mind like forgotten treasure on a sea bed: the one about him writing that one incredible song that will get the Fans signed. They’d started one before Liv died – called ‘Hope and Glory’ – about youth – all their songs seemed to be about youth, and living forever, back then – and never finished it. But Norm doesn’t even live in the same city any more, so band practice is out of the question. These dreams feel idiotic and delusional when he is with Karen, and he doesn’t know if this is just because he’s growing up or because she is wrong for him, but it suits him fine at the moment because feeling the way he does, so depleted and traumatized, his dreams feel too scary to contemplate, like gigantic, terrifying foreign lands that he has neither the strength nor motivation to conquer.

He looks down at his filthy running trainers and wonders if he’s wearing the right footwear for a salsa class – what do people wear at a dance class anyway? God forbid it’s bare feet. Fraser felt, in his bones, he would be against any physical activity that warranted bare feet.

He moves away from the doorway of Top Shop so he’s standing in the middle of the pavement and he can see her now, grinning, her dark head bobbing down the road, weaving her way through the evening crowds with her arms above her head, carrying several shopping bags.

Karen is an enthusiastic shopper – and enthusiastic, thinks Fraser, is the word. He’s always presumed all girls were born shoppers, like boys were born knowing how to put up shelves, but Karen seems to be the exception to this rule, bringing home something new to wear, or getting a delivery from eBay on an almost daily basis but then promptly sending it back.

Evenings at Karen’s largely consist of Fraser sitting alone on her sofa, the TV drowned out by the sound of masking tape being pulled then torn with teeth, like she’s performing some sort of medieval operation next door.

Fraser waves slowly at her and she gives him a big smile back since she can’t wave due to the number of bags hanging off her arm. He walks towards her; she holds his face in her hands and kisses him when they meet.

‘Hello, Fred …’

She has a sheen of sweat on her top lip from the effort of rushing but is also flushed and bright-eyed, which Fraser is encouraged to note makes her look pretty and fecund in a milkmaid kind of way.

‘Fred …?’ says Fraser, lost.

‘Astaire, innit.’ She laughs, looking up at him with that look again – he really wishes she wouldn’t do that – and, despite his best efforts not to (it’s a daily battle), Fraser cringes.

Karen has taken to putting ‘innit’ on the end of sentences but, like other little nuances of hers, she is slightly slow on the uptake – wasn’t Ali G famous in about 2005? Immediately he has this thought, Fraser chastises himself for it. This is the other thing he is finding about Karen. She brings out the petty in him; small, inane things make his toes curl and he hates himself for it. Who are you anyway, he thinks, the Cool Police?

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.’