Page 104 of For Real

Eventually he falls over, and we come to a giggly, gasping, cuddly halt.

“Now you’ve just got to do it to music,” I tell him.

“Now I just have to have a lie-down somewhere. Maybe with a cold flannel on my forehead.”

I mock-scowl at him. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“I told you, I can’t dance.”

I pull him back into hold. “Nuh-uh, you don’t dance. There’s a difference.”

“Not to me, there isn’t.”

I try to think of something that would be good for a quickstep and hum the opening of “Walking on Sunshine.”

Laurie turns into marble. “And certainly not to Katrina and the Waves.”

Apparently not. I peer up at him—the man I love and can’t call boyfriend. I think of him on his knees. How he touches me. How he looks at me. The sadness in him and the secret joy he gives only to me. All the ways he makes me powerful.

All the ways he doesn’t really know me.

That’s when I know what we should dance to. “‘Dear, when you smiled at me, I heard a melody…’”

And Laurie smiles, and we dance, and it’s a fucking disaster. Since I kind of have to concentrate a bit on singing, I can’t count at the same time, and so Laurie keeps getting lost, and it’s like our bodies have completely forgotten how to move together.

I’m just about to call the whole thing off, when—

“‘Zing! Went the strings of my heart.’”

Another voice joins mine. A way better voice, an effortless tenor belonging to someone who can actually sing. It’s Jasper, leaning in the archway that leads back to the cloisters, wineglass in one hand, cigarette in the other.

Laurie and I collide. Stare at him. He gives us an airy little carry on gesture, like this is totally normal.

So we put our arms around each other again. I lead and Laurie follows and Jasper sings, and there’s moonlight, and we dance and dance and dance until we fly and my heart is so zing. I can’t even.

9

Laurie

Toby didn’t come back.

At first I thought he was just late, then I thought I’d confused the day, and then I realised he wasn’t coming at all. I told myself that it was entirely his right, that it was inevitable, that it was probably for the best. But I was frantic.

Was my dancing really that bad?

But he’d told me he loved me. You didn’t say that to someone, and then—Oh God. Not again. Not again.

It had only been a couple of hours, but suddenly my house was full of empty rooms, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t bear to be in it, but I didn’t dare leave in case Toby turned up. I kept half hearing the doorbell. He would tumble over the threshold and into my arms, just like always, and there’d be some story, some mistake, some misunderstanding, and we’d laugh, and I’d feel angry and foolish at the same time, but I’d forgive him. I’d forgive him because I was desperate to feel angry and foolish.

Instead of alone. And bereft.

And still foolish, for having let this happen. For having known all along that this would happen, or something like it, and made myself naked for him anyway. It wasn’t even masochism. It was a basic failure to learn.

Toby would have called it hope.

I kept thinking about last weekend, searching compulsively for the hint, the hint that surely had to be there, of what was to come. The moment it had gone wrong, and I hadn’t noticed. But I couldn’t find anything. We’d been happy. Hadn’t we? Wandering hand in hand through golden streets. If people had been inclined to look askance at us, I hadn’t been inclined to care. Perhaps Toby had?

On Sunday, I called Grace. I didn’t ask her to, but she came over anyway and kept my futile vigil with me. It helped. It meant I couldn’t cry. She wouldn’t have judged me for it, but I’d never liked doing that in front of other people. Without the excuse of sexualised suffering, anyway.

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