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,’
