Читать книгу: «How We Met», страница 5
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?’
Fraser sighs and looks skyward. He’s knackered; he’s used up all the concentration he possesses in the dance class, and now he’s a bit drunk and all he wants to do is to get on the bus and to get home and go to sleep, his head resting on those soft, pillowy boobs. But Darren has other ideas.
‘Oi. I said, where are you going, dickhead?’
Karen’s grip tightens on Fraser. ‘Just ignore him,’ she whispers, hurrying him along. ‘He just can’t handle it, he really, really can’t.
‘You just can’t handle it, Daz, can you?’ and she turns round and shouts at him. ‘I’m with Fraser now, OK? You thought I’d never get a boyfriend again, didn’t you? You thought you’d ruined me, scarred me for life, but you were wrong!’
I should be saying something now, thinks Fraser – what should I be saying? He becomes queasily, acutely aware he is saying nothing.
‘Whatever, you’re still fat!’ Darren shouts back. ‘You’re welcome to her, mate.’ And inwardly, Fraser winces, because now he knows he really should be saying something, that there’s no call at all for that sort of behaviour.
‘I don’t think there’s any call for that,’ he says, turning around. ‘You’re pissed, mate. Now go home.’
But it seems this is perfect ammunition for Darren, who is not pissed, no he fucking well is not, and he is certainly not going to be told to go home by some Northern wiener in crap trainers.
Fraser isn’t prepared for what happens next; all he knows is that he hears the sudden, quickening sound of shoes on the ground and then is wrenched – him letting out a sudden and involuntary sound like he’s being choked – by the hood of his top and pulled to the ground. Then he feels a dull ache in the head – no, actually a really, really sharp pain in the head, and can hear Karen screaming, ‘Darren get off him! Get off him now!’
Fraser has never been the fighting type – the odd scrap as a teenager but he could never be bothered and, anyway, deep down he knew he had a pathetically low pain threshold, and would he – this is the question – would he be able to stop his eyes watering if it really hurt? But this time, from somewhere deep inside of him, the adrenaline kicks in, the male instinct that he is supposed to make an effort here. He can’t shout: ‘Ah, you’re fucking hurting me and please don’t break my nose! It’s buggered enough as it is!’ So he at least has a go at pushing him off, tries to summon every manly, fearless cell in his body to dodge a punch, even throw a couple back, but he loses out and suddenly his back is against a wall and he hears something crack and feels a stab of pain that gets him right in the throat. There’s the familiar trickle at the back of his nose and then splosh, splosh. Fat splashes of vibrant red on the floor.
‘Oh, my God, Fraser! Oh, God. You fucking bastard, Daz!’
Then Karen has rushed over to him and is kneeling down beside him, a look of pure horror on her face, but Fraser is seeing stars, far too dazed to say anything, except eventually, ‘Ow. I don’t think there was any need for that.’
‘No, there was not. There was NOT, Darren. You total fuck-head!’
Karen screams at Darren who is walking off now, swaggering, coolly, not even breaking into a jog, thinks Fraser. That’s how menacing I am.
‘Fraser, baby, are you all right?’ Karen kneels right down beside him and the look on her face just kills him.
‘Are you OK, sweetie?’ She’s brushing the hair from his face.
‘Yeah, yeah, just a bit of blood,’ says Fraser, sitting up, feeling quite pleased with himself for the phrase ‘just a bit of blood’, when what he really wants to scream is, FUCK ME THAT FUCKING KILLED!! His top is already covered in the stuff.
‘OK, pinch your nose at the bridge and put your head back and I’ll clean you up a bit. I once did St John Ambulance, I know what I’m doing …’ Karen roots in her handbag and comes up with a packet of handy wet wipes. ‘Might sting a bit.’
‘Thanks, Karen, thanks. I’m sorry about this …’ says Fraser, practically gurgling on the blood that’s now running down his throat.
Karen takes his face in her hands and he tries not to say ‘Ow’ because his whole head kind of hurts right now. She dabs at him with her wet wipe. ‘Now you listen to me, Fraser Morgan, you have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing at all, OK? In fact …’ She stops.
Oh, God, here it comes again, that look.
‘I should be thanking you.’
She looks straight into his eyes
‘You know it really meant a lot to me what happened there, it really showed me something, you know?’
‘No,’ says Fraser. ‘No, I don’t know.’
‘Well, you took a punch for me back there, didn’t you? You nearly bloody broke your nose for me! Maybe you have actually broken your nose!’
Fraser smiles, weakly. Great, he thinks. What a hero. ‘And I appreciate it, hun, that’s all I’m saying. I was touched, Fraser, like, really touched.’ She pauses for a minute, for her words to sink in, then she says, ‘Right, let’s get you home.’ And yet another little part of Fraser dies, right there on the pavement, because he realizes he has just spent one of the most humiliating hours of his life (and that was just the dance class) and probably broken his nose, all for someone he really is not sure about. He didn’t bargain for this.
SIX
The next morning
Lancaster
Careful to hold in her post-baby belly, Mia rolls off Eduardo, reaches for the water on her bedside table, downs the glass and flops back down on the pillow.
‘Ow! Cramp!’ Then she sits bolt upright, clutching her right thigh, which has gone into involuntary spasm.
Eduardo laughs his low, maddening laugh.
‘You always do this, you always get the cramp,’ he says, yawning, as if it’s some sort of personality flaw, like always picking a fight when drunk.
‘That’s because I’ve been straddling you for the last ten minutes and in case you’d forgotten, I had a baby nine months ago,’ she says, trying desperately to keep an air of humour. ‘My hip flexors aren’t what they used to be, you know.’
He rubs her back, then places a lingering kiss on her shoulder. ‘I’m going for a smoke,’ he says, pulling back the covers, and Mia watches as his tiny, brown Brazilian bum – like a hazelnut she always thinks – disappears around the bedroom door, and she is left clutching her rounded, white one.
The pain eases and she lies back down, feeling that familiar dread wash over her: he will come back up, get dressed, perhaps stay for a polite cup of coffee and then leave, and it will be just her and Billy again, till bedtime. Oh, Lord, roll on bedtime.
It’s the second time she and Eduardo have had sex this week and the sixth since Billy was born. Mia knows this because she keeps tabs. It’s a bit like notches on the bedpost, although she’s painfully aware it doesn’t quite hold the same air of bragging arrogance as the teenage version.
This tab – at least at first – was more for herself. Somehow by writing down when they had sex, she could pretend it didn’t mean anything, that he was just ‘servicing’ her – and what woman living in 2008 shouldn’t be serviced, if she so desired? It kept things clinical, like a nurse keeping medical notes: frequency of urination, blood pressure, that sort of thing.
Lately, however, there’s been a shift. The tab she keeps is no longer so she can tell herself it means nothing, as it means something. Twice in one week – this is starting to become a habit – and part of her hopes it will become more than a habit for Eduardo, that he will find it in him to love her, properly, like she deserves to be loved. The other part of her, of course, wishes he’d fuck off and die, and it’s a constant source of fascination to Mia how the two can exist in unison.
He is at least starting to make an effort, she thinks. Historically, he would turn up drunk, at midnight, with no consideration for the fact she had to go to work, or now, get up with their son.
Since Liv’s birthday reunion, however, and leaving her in the lurch, he has actually turned up at the designated time to have Billy, and last night they had fun – proper, actual fun. They drank wine and talked about movies. She modelled her new Primark sundress for him, then they drank more wine and – when they ran out of that – some more, because woo-hoo! there was someone to go to the off-licence!
Then they snogged and danced to the Buena Vista Social Club in her kitchen, occasionally breaking to smoke out of the window, the view of Lancaster Castle high up on its hill, floodlit, like something out of a child’s dream.
Now, of course, hungover and with the prospect of looking after a baby all day, Mia regrets it. In fact she despises him for coming over here on a Tuesday night, taking her away from Holby City and a macaroni-cheese-for-one and corrupting her with his heady, Latino ways.
But she also needed it like a person needs air.
Last night, pressed close to him, dancing barefoot in her new summer dress, albeit one probably made in a sweatshop in Latin America, she felt alive; she felt primitive and sexual.
And she needs to feel primitive and sexual, she thinks, looking at their clothes strewn all over her laminated bedroom floor, otherwise she will go mad and life will feel like one big washing machine cycle. She needs to know she can do things with her body other than feeding a child, or hauling him up on her hip a thousand times a day, and if, right now, it is only the often flaky, unreliable father of her child that can give her that, then she is going to take it.
Also, sex with Eduardo is doubly exciting, because it is forbidden, after all. If any of her friends found out, they would go mad – wouldn’t they? Now she thinks about it, she wonders if they aren’t too wrapped up in their own lives to give a toss about who she’s sleeping with these days. Except Liv. Oh, Liv. It makes her suck air through her teeth just thinking about it. ‘He wears sunglasses inside, darling, he’ll bring you nothing but grief.’ And look at her now. Liv would have her guts for garters.
Then there’s Fraser … he already knows something’s afoot; if he knew the whole truth. God. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Fraser can’t stand Eduardo. He has tolerated him in the past – just, the effort etched on his face, but ever since he walked out when Mia was pregnant, she can’t mention his name without Fraser practically spitting on the floor, something she feels is slightly over the top. After all, it’s not his life, is it? And anyway, what does he care now since he’s seeing ‘Karen’? Mia has to try really, really hard not to make a face when she says the word ‘Karen’. It’s just, even the name has a desperate, over-the-hill air to it, and she suspects Fraser is using Karen as a crutch, that she’s not making him happy or vice versa. Which would be a terrible thing to do. Terrible.
She listens to Eduardo clattering around downstairs, probably making the polite coffee that he will drink whilst sitting on the side of the bed, before announcing he is leaving – stuff to do/mates to see/a shift to get ready for. She has no idea what he does with his day and has given up asking – and anyway, even though her friends would be shocked to hear it, deep down she wonders if this whole situation is partly her fault.
She went batty when she was pregnant. Batty. Did she drive Eduardo away? Did her hormones warp everything so that she demonized him, made him out to be worse than he actually is? As she lies in bed listening to the kettle, the clinking of china, the comforting sounds of another body in the house, she gets an image in her head, a memory: her, seven months gone, huge already and haring through Shoreditch on her bicycle at 2 a.m. Ha! What a bloody nutcase! The Wicked Witch of the East End! So fat she could barely turn the pedals for her bump.
She’d become convinced Eduardo was having an affair and decided to catch him out. She knew he’d be at the MOTHER bar – oh, yes, the MOTHER bar – and she burst through those doors, bump first, practically fighting the bouncers to the ground, a force of nature in maternity jeans. She stampeded around, Billy kicking inside her, alarmed at the sudden onslaught of hardcore techno. When she finally located him in a darkened corner, he was topless, wearing sunglasses and writhing around with another man who was also topless.
So he was gay! That was what all this was about. She had almost felt a rush of relief that it wasn’t just because he was a complete bastard.
But no, he was not gay, he said; he was just off his face, and apparently this was what one does when off one’s face. He was also scared and overwhelmed by the prospect of being a father and he just wanted some fun whilst he still could – was that so bad?
It seemed so at the time, but now she’s not sure, and when she pictures that scene now – him, bare-chested in Ray-Bans, chewing the inside of his cheek whilst she stood before him, a mountain of a woman, bicycle clips around the bottom of her maternity jeans, shouting ‘I hate you; I fucking hate your guts!’ – she starts to giggle, then really laugh, until she is doubled over in a fit of hysterics.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Eduardo stands in the doorway of her bedroom, naked, a mug in each hand, laughing at her laughing.
‘Oh, nothing, nothing … come to bed,’ she says, stretching out a hand. He bends down, puts the two mugs on the floor and almost jumps down beside her.
‘Eduardo! Bloody hell! About four of the slats in this bed are broken, you’ll break it even more if you’re not careful.’
‘Have you still not got round to getting a new bed?’ he says, snuggling up to her.
WELL I WOULD IF I HAD A MAN IN THE HOUSE TO ERECT ONE. She fights the urge to shout, but it’s so very hard.
‘No, I have still not got a new bed.’ She smiles, inhaling his smoky, musky scent. ‘But perhaps you could buy one for me. It’s the least you could do.’
Eduardo ignores that comment and tidies a strand of hair behind her ear. Here it comes, she thinks, the ‘better be going’. But he doesn’t. Instead he starts to kiss her tenderly, ever so gently, so she thinks she might cry, and she once more becomes aware of how much she needs this to stay alive, to feel alive. Mia Woodhouse – you’re still in there, aren’t you?
He softly pushes her hair back. ‘Hello, beautiful,’ he whispers and she doesn’t say anything but she smiles and looks up at him. ‘I want to make love again. Can we make love again?’ If an English man said that I’d be laughing my head off by now, thinks Mia. But somehow a Brazilian gets away with it. Somehow from him, it’s irresistible. It’s 6.45 a.m., the early morning sunshine is turning the room golden, and Mia closes her eyes, throws her arms behind her in abandon as Eduardo presses his pelvis down onto hers.
Then ‘waaaaaaaahhhhhhh!’ Nine months on and it still rips right through her. Still feels like an assault.
‘Billy,’ she sighs, staring up at the ceiling.
‘He’ll stop, he’ll stop,’ says Eduardo, kissing her neck. ‘He’ll go back to sleep, come on, relaaax.’
She tries, she does, but it’s no use.
‘No, he won’t, unfortunately.’ She gently pushes Eduardo off her and drags herself out of the bed. ‘Believe me, that’s Billy for the day now.’
When Mia comes back from the kitchen where she has been preparing Billy’s breakfast, leaving him fastened to the high chair in the lounge, she half expects Eduardo to have gone. It’s the sort of shitty thing he does all the time, after all. But as she approaches the lounge door, she can hear talking.
For a moment she’s confused – whose is the other adult voice she can hear? – and then she realizes, it’s Eduardo’s. She freezes, the dish of porridge in her hand. Then, spying through the crack in the door, holding her breath, she watches them.
Eduardo has pulled up a chair and is leaning on the tray of Billy’s highchair, playing with his small plastic animals – Billy’s all-time favourite toys.
‘And this is a sheep,’ he’s saying. ‘In Portuguese we say “ovelha” … Can you say “ovelha”, Billy? That’s pretty cool, ha? Which is your favourite, Billy?’
Billy’s transfixed: wide-eyed, perfectly still, a string of drool hanging from his mouth, and Mia has to bite her lip to stifle a giggle. Poor baby. Never known a man in the house to talk to him like this, let alone his own father. Well this is a turn-up for the books, she imagines him thinking, I could get used to this.
She could get used to this.
This is how it should be, too. This is how she imagined family life: her wandering about of a morning in Eduardo’s shirt, sexy and yet homely at the same time, with tanned bare limbs (in her case, pale ones with a huge bruise up the side where she continually bangs into the coffee table, but never mind), and daddy, handsome and bare-chested, playing with his son, the smell of coffee wafting through the house.
Then her mobile goes on the sofa and she nearly jumps out of her skin.
‘Ooh, I’ll get that!’ she says chirpily, trying to make it look as though she literally arrived at the door just then, that she wasn’t spying.
‘Hello?’
Eduardo is still playing with the animals – perhaps even more enthusiastically now he knows he’s being watched, and Billy has started to do hiccupping giggles.
‘Mia, it’s me, Fraser.’
‘Fraser!’ Eduardo turns around and looks at her and she doesn’t know why but she smiles and waves at him. ‘How are you? OK? Actually you don’t sound OK.’
‘No, I’ve been better. I got punched in the face last night.’
‘What? Why?’
Mia takes herself off into the kitchen to talk.
‘Oh, God, long story, involving ex-boyfriends and salsa classes and Karen.’
‘My God, Karen didn’t punch you, did she?’
‘No, no, GOD no …’
‘Oh.’
She should really try to sound less disappointed to learn that he hasn’t been punched by his new girlfriend.
‘It was her ex-boyfriend.’
‘Really? Gosh. You are quite the threat then?’
She shakes her head. Why did she say that?
Silence. Mia turns round and looks out of her kitchen window.
‘Frase, are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m OK. Just look a bit like an old alky at the moment, bright red, fat nose …’
She closes her eyes. Poor Frase.
On the other end of the phone, Fraser is examining his face in Karen’s bathroom mirror. He looks dreadful; the bridge of his nose is so swollen that it’s closing up his eyes, so they’re piss holes in the snow, and he’s got a fat top lip.
Karen is at the shop getting milk and more frozen peas. She has taken to her role as Florence Nightingale with gusto and has woken him up several times in the night to check for signs of concussion and to clear his nasal passages of dried blood, so that he is now exhausted, as well as injured.
‘I take it Karen is looking after you?’ says Mia.
‘Oh, yeah, not wanting on that front. Karen is looking after me.’
‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? That’s really, really good. So um, what was the salsa class like?’
‘Yeah, great,’ says Fraser. ‘Well, actually, I made a complete and utter tit of myself, but that’s OK, ’coz it’s all for Liv.’
She laughs. ‘And Olivia wouldn’t have it any other way, as we know. In fact she would be disappointed if you didn’t make a tit of yourself. So come on then, what happened?’
‘Well, besides getting my head kicked in at the end of it all, I was an appalling dancer, so bad it wasn’t funny.’
‘Oh, I bet it was.’
‘I assure you it was not, and I wore totally inappropriate footwear, basically my knackered, filthy running trainers, which then deposited little piles of mud all over this pristine white dance floor.’
Mia covers her eyes and smiles. ‘Oh, God, Fraser, only you.’
‘To top it off, Karen was a brilliant dancer – turns out she was some sort of semi-pro when she was a kid.’
‘Oh, come on, I’m sure she wasn’t that good.’
There was a long pause.
‘So listen,’ she says, before she can help herself. ‘Have you actually told Karen you’re doing the salsa class as part of Liv’s List? That you’re actually doing it for Liv?’
Fraser stands back from the mirror. ‘No, course I bloody haven’t.’
‘Well, don’t you think you should? Just out of courtesy? I mean, she’s going to find out sometime, Fraser, and then she’s going to feel really hurt and really used.’
Fraser frowns; he thinks about this for a minute. Right – so why would he tell her? So she can feel hurt and used now? Did he not have the right to a relationship whilst he was doing the List for Liv? He felt a wave of guilt and panic. She would be back in a second to shower him with unconditional love and frozen peas again. This was twisted; maybe Mia was right, maybe he should just tell her now and get it over and done with. No! No. He couldn’t do that to himself or to her, he was giving this a go and that was that. So he says …
‘Look, I’m not gonna tell her, Mia – is that wrong?’ He really didn’t know any more. ‘Because if I do, it would be the end of us.’
‘That is kind of my point. But it’s up to you. I just don’t think it’s fair if you use her, that’s all.’
Fraser sighs. ‘I’m not using her, I like her.’
‘Well, that’s OK then.’
The door goes and Eduardo comes in, dishevelled and bare-chested, wearing just his boxer shorts and holding a crying Billy at arm’s length. ‘He’s missing his mama,’ he says. ‘You’ve been on that phone for hours.’
For God’s sake, would she ever learn? In Karen’s bathroom, Fraser shakes his head and tuts. That was definitely Eduardo he just heard in the background. There weren’t many people who made Fraser’s blood boil, but Eduardo was one of them. Such a spineless, cocky, useless little twat. Fraser had a feeling he was trying to worm his way back into Mia’s life and here they were – caught out! Why would he be there so early if he hadn’t stayed over? Mia could be really thick sometimes, not to mention a hypocrite. And there she was on her moral high horse about Karen.
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