The Ballroom Class (25 page)

When Katie and Ross had done a slow lap of the room, with only three more collisions and a new bruise on Ross’s foot, they picked their way back to the table to find Lauren in animated conversation with Trina. Handbags and jackets were placed territorially on the empty chairs, and their eyes were swivelling like Wimbledon spectators as the dancers swished by. Trina’s red-lipsticked mouth was moving even faster than her eyes in a running fashion commentary worthy of the Grand National.

‘. . .  someone should tell her pink satin isn’t her friend. It isn’t anyone’s friend, come to that, unless you’re a drum majorette or under three years of age. And is he gay? Him! There, in the lime shirt. He looks far too well turned out to be  . . . Oh, hi, Ross! Katie!’

Katie squeezed into a free chair and helped herself to the jug of orange juice on the table. She hadn’t realised how parched she was until she saw it. The heat and the effort of dancing were surprisingly fierce. ‘Hi, Trina. Have you been here long?’

‘Long enough to have had a foxtrot with Mr Octopus over there in the yellow shirt,’ she said, nodding darkly at the dancefloor. ‘Watch out for him. I’d say the only thing quicker than those flashing feet are his hands. That’s where Chloe is now. Learning a new way to get out of corners.’

‘Still, at least you’re meeting new people, eh?’ said Lauren, quickly. ‘Katie, have you seen Angelica?’

‘Yes. She took the time to slag off my feet, then sashayed away in the arms of some enormous hunk,’ said Katie.

Trina giggled. ‘Ooh, you are funny, Katie.’

Am I? thought Katie, but she felt flattered.

‘Well, good for her – she’s taken Chris off my hands for this one.’ Lauren topped up her glass. ‘I hope she can do something about his waltz. He’s already ruined one pair of my fishnets.’ Her brow creased. ‘It’s really unsexy, not being able to count to three. Or move your feet.’

‘Your mum and dad seem to be enjoying themselves,’ said Katie, as a flushed Bridget and Frank approached the table. Bridget was fanning her round face, and Frank was guiding her with a sweetly protective hand on her back.

‘Yeah, it’s dead sweet how good they are,’ said Trina. ‘You know, watching them, they obviously still—’

‘Don’t!’ said Lauren, covering her ears. ‘Whatever you were about to say, don’t! I’m living at home now.’

‘We were just saying,’ Trina said to Bridget, ‘how well you two dance together. Budge up, Ross – they’ll want to sit down!’

‘Sit down? Certainly not! We’re just getting going!’ Bridget extended her hand to Ross. ‘You youngsters, no stamina! Now, Ross, I know it’s not correct form, but would you care to dance?’

Ross looked quickly over to Katie.

‘Go on,’ said Frank. ‘I’m hoping to take Katie for a spin round the floor, if you don’t object?’

‘Not at all!’ Ross’s face relaxed, and he led Bridget back into the throng of bodies as the music changed to a slower ballad, sung by a female vocalist Katie didn’t recognise; like most of the songs, it was about a love affair of some kind. Happy, unhappy, it all sounded the same. Katie watched Ross’s serious expression change from concentration to a gentle smile as Bridget’s head bobbed in conversation, then they had turned out of sight.

‘May I?’

She realised Frank was still standing there, his hand outstretched.

‘I’ll be coming back for you later,’ he added to Trina, with a charm that Katie would never have guessed at from his quiet, brown-jumpered appearance in class. There was something about stepping onto a dancefloor that seemed to do something to people – well, Katie corrected herself, some people. Not her.

Awkwardly, she got up from her seat and took Frank’s hand, very conscious of the unfamiliar contact. It was warm and dry, with little ridges of hardened skin. Gardening, she wondered? Or DIY? Katie knew she was over-analysing to take her mind off the nerves that still plagued her when she had to dance with someone other than Ross. It was intimate but formal at the same time; they were almost hugging, thighs nearly touching, hips brushing, hands moulding together, but all so they could move in ordered, formal steps.

It felt different from class. Like the first time she set off in a car after passing her test.

‘All set?’ Frank said, with a kind smile. ‘I think this one’s a waltz, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ she said. He knew it was. He was just being nice, to make her feel less of a complete beginner.

‘Now then,’ he said, as his hand settled on her shoulder-blade and, with a tiny pressure from his fingers and a bend in the knee, let her know they were setting off.

Katie felt acutely self-conscious, and wasn’t sure where to look. At his face? Over his shoulder? Come on, she told herself. People have been doing this for hundreds of years without getting into a tizz about it.

Frank turned her round into a simple waltz step and she lost sight of the dance-class table.

So if they can all do it so easily, why can’t I? thought Katie as she trod on Frank’s polished toes and stumbled in her high heels. I’m never going to be any good at this.

‘No need to look so worried!’ he said, steering her effortlessly out of trouble. ‘You’re doing very nicely. Just relax.’

‘Sorry.’ Katie looked instead at the faces of the dancers passing around her. They were chatting, smiling, flirting, singing along to the music, having a wonderful time. Not concentrating hard on the basic waltz steps they knew.

They were nearly at the end of the room. Katie was gripped with panic as the edge of the floor loomed up, the music pressed relentlessly on and her mind went blank. How were you meant to turn round? She didn’t want to mess things up.

She looked up at Frank apologetically. ‘We’ve only had one waltz lesson. And I’m not very good in corners!’

‘Not to worry, love, I’ve done a few waltzes in my time. You know,’ he went on, moving them slightly to the side to let another couple pass, ‘it might be easier if you let me take charge of the directions. What with being a bit taller, I’ve got a better view of the on-coming traffic, you see.’

‘Oh God, am I leading? Sorry,’ stammered Katie, flushing. ‘Angelica’s always on my case about that, but you get into habits, you know  . . .’

‘Don’t worry.’ With a very subtle pressure on her back and a little extra angle in his foot, Frank eased them round the corner, turning her so neatly that her skirt twirled out, although Katie was concentrating too hard to notice. ‘You’ll get used to it – I know it took Bridget a while to believe that a bloke knew what he was about, and that was forty-odd years ago!’

‘Did we just do a corner?’

‘We did indeed.’ Frank twitched his eyebrows and smiled, and the bags under his eyes deepened. He had a comforting, dad-like smile, and she felt some of the tension in her arms melt away. ‘Rather neatly too, if you ask me.’

‘We haven’t done waltz corners,’ marvelled Katie.

‘Well, you have now. And you didn’t feel a thing, did you?’

Her brow creased, trying to work out how it had happened so she could practise it. ‘How did we do it? What were the steps?’

‘I’ll show you later,’ he said, as she forgot to change feet. ‘Let’s not get tangled up in details now, shall we?’

They danced on, and Frank let her concentrate, giving her an encouraging smile now and again.

Lauren was so lucky, having nice Frank to practise with, thought Katie. If only Dad had taught me to dance, I wouldn’t have to be here having lessons now.

She couldn’t imagine her father dancing. He didn’t have time for that sort of thing. He barely had time to play golf at the weekends, which would definitely have taken priority over waltzing.

‘Sorry, sorry!’ she said, as her brain suddenly froze as Frank tried to turn her into a spin of some kind.

‘My fault, I should have let you know that was coming,’ he said easily. ‘Ba dah, pah, pom, pom, pom  . . . When I was learning all this, about a hundred years ago,’ Frank went on, conversationally, ‘my mother told me that
her
mother had told her that the trick was to listen to the music, not the voice in your head counting. I reckon that’s the secret. Enjoy the music, and forget about where you’re meant to be putting your feet. That’s not your problem – that’s the man’s! Leave the tricky stuff to him, eh?’

‘Things have moved on a bit since then,’ Katie said, automatically.

‘At work, maybe, but not on the dancefloor, love.’ Frank nudged her into another corner, deftly slipping between two twirling couples who passed in a ‘’scuse me, ’scuse me’ flurry of hot breath and Magie Noir.

One of them, Katie noticed, was Ross, holding Bridget’s little hand up high, as if he’d been doing it for years. When had he learned to turn around like that? They were chatting away, Bridget nodding and laughing as Ross’s eyebrows moved, obviously in the middle of some story. They looked like proper dancers.

‘Ross seems to have picked this up much faster than me,’ she heard herself say, and hated how petulant it sounded.

Frank gave her a funny smile. ‘Well, Bridget’s been making me look like Fred Astaire for years. Good partners can do that.’

And suddenly the music came to a close in a flourish, and around them couples separated in gracious curtsies and bows.

‘Thank you, I very much enjoyed that,’ said Frank, nodding his head. A few beads of perspiration had appeared on his bald spot, but he looked flushed in a happy way.

‘No, thank you,’ said Katie, as they squeezed their way back to the table. ‘Sorry about your poor feet. I just can’t get mine to do what’s in my head.’

‘Oh, it’ll come,’ he said. ‘Penny’ll drop and we won’t be able to keep you off the floor!’

Katie smiled politely. That was hardly likely. Prisoners who learned basket-weaving in prison didn’t usually end up master furniture-makers.

‘Lauren? May I have this quickstep?’ he said, as the band on the sound system struck up a brisk forties rhythm.

‘We haven’t done the quickstep.’

‘Nothing to it, love. Just follow me.’

She saw Frank offer his hand to his daughter, who pretended to pull a face of sheer embarrassment at her mother, but then took it with a half-hidden smile of genuine love that made Katie want to sigh inside. Lauren and Frank stepped onto the floor, about the same height, with Lauren in her wedding heels and they sailed off.

That’s a lovely relationship, she thought. I hope Hannah and Ross will be like that one day.

If we haven’t screwed up the kids by getting a divorce by then.

We’re not going to split up, Katie told herself. We’re going to fix it. Somehow.

She sat the next few dances out, preferring to watch as Angelica came back for Ross, and then for Greg, then sailed off with Baxter, at which point swathes of dancefloor cleared so everyone could admire their fancy linked steps and trailing arms. Ross was in demand, from Chloe and Trina, and every so often she would catch sight of him.

‘Katie?’

She turned. Ross had led Bridget back to her seat, and was standing very close to her, so close that she could smell his deodorant and the more intimate musky smell of his warm skin. ‘I’m reliably informed that this is a cha-cha,’ he said, seriously. ‘And I think that’s the one we can do, isn’t it?’

His hair had turned darker and flopped into his eyes with the exertion of dancing in a crush of bodies, and he’d undone another button on his shirt. Ross wasn’t unattractive, she thought with despairing objectivity, trying to fan her earlier flickers of attraction into something more – so why can’t I feel it any more? Why don’t I respond to him as a man, the way I used to? What’s wrong with me?

‘I’ve been waiting to dance with you, but it’s so hard to say no when people ask and you feel a bit sorry for them,’ he added. ‘Come on.’ He led her into a little space. ‘There isn’t so much moving around in this. We can just stand here, near the table  . . .’ His expression was mildly ironic. ‘Nice and safe.’

Ross took her hand, slipping the other one around her shoulder-blade and she put hers on his arm.

Come on, Katie told herself. Feel his hand touching you through the dress! Feel his hip brushing against yours! Fancy him! But there was nothing. She looked at the shirt and was reminded that unlike Greg’s, Ross’s wardrobe depended on what she decided to get for him. That wasn’t sexy. That was being his mother.

‘Katie,’ said Ross, warningly. ‘Don’t lead.’

She was about to protest when Greg and Jo came rushing up. Jo’s hair, carefully piled into a chic updo when they entered, was escaping in messy spirals, and her shiny face was creased with concern.

‘I’m so sorry, but we have to go,’ said Jo, putting her hands on both their shoulders. ‘There’s a problem at home.’

‘Oh God, what?’ Katie’s head filled with a slideshow of disasters, the ones that sometimes tormented her in long meetings when her phone was turned off. ‘Is it Hannah? Are they OK?’

‘Honestly, Jo, don’t be melodramatic,’ snorted Greg. ‘We don’t all have to go. The babysitter called,’ he said to Katie. ‘Apparently Hannah’s complaining of a tummy ache, and so Molly is as well. You know what they’re like at that age. No puking or anything, but she’s worried. Didn’t want to leave it till we got back.’

‘Just when we were having so much fun!’ said Jo, apologetically. ‘Listen, if you want to stay, Greg’s right – I can look after her and Jack, if you want. Stay. Call a cab.’