How We Met (9 page)

‘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?’

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 behaviou
r.

‘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.

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.