Summer Flings and Dancing Dreams (11 page)

So when John said he had an uncle in Melbourne and a dream to live in Australia, I offered to go with him. I had nothing to keep me here except my mum, who was too wrapped up in herself to care, and John and I talked long into the night about leaving the cold and the memories behind. We’d been together about eight months when I fell pregnant, I was surprised but not too worried. We’d already committed to a future together and this would just cement our lives further, but when I told him, the look on his face told me everything I needed to know... he rolled another ciggie and asked me how much I’d need to ‘get rid of it’. From that moment I started a different journey – one I’d be taking alone. He went off to Australia and I stayed behind, I never heard from him again. I have never once regretted my decision to have my daughter, but John left me with a mistrust of men.

Over the years I’d had the odd fling, but I’d been wary after John and scared stiff of being let down again. It’s not unusual for a young person to have their heart broken a few times before finding ‘the right one’, but I’d always imagined I’d find a partner and live happily ever after. Until my thirties I held out for it – but now I was tired of waiting.

Sharing my life story with Tony in a wine bar full of people wasn’t easy, and I was trying hard not to burst into tears again.

‘And in the past few weeks as I’ve started to dance I’ve realised that there’s a little bit of me that sparkles, and isn’t quite so world-weary and battered as the rest of me. When I get on that dance floor, that little part of me grows and I’m stronger, more confident, in charge of my body... my life too, I suppose. It’s so empowering and I know now I don’t need a man to change my life – I just need courage, like the Lion in Wizard of Oz.’

‘Yes... that’s exactly it. I know just what you mean, I feel like the real “me” is the one on that dance floor.’ He smiled, ‘But if you’re the lion, can I be Dorothy? We did that play at school and I was born to play Dorothy, but those tyrants made me play the tin man... the tin man!?’

‘I guess we all have our disappointments in life,’ I tried to laugh, but my nose was running and my eyes were streaming. ‘I’m sorry, but telling you all that stuff was like a detox,’ I sighed.

Tony gave me a handkerchief.

I took it gratefully and wiped my nose. ‘Is it scented?’ I asked through my tears.

‘Yes... spring lavender, sweetie.’

‘Who in the twenty-first century even has a handkerchief... let alone a lavender one?’

‘I do. Now can you just move away a little, your saltwater tears are dripping on my Armani jacket.’ I looked up through mucus and tears and he was smiling. ‘I’m only joking... not about you leaning on me – about it being Armani. It’s Primani and the last thing it needs is you blubbing all over it, you crazy bitch.’

I laughed, and touched his arm; ‘Thanks for listening, Tony.’

‘Thanks for letting me. I know I can be a bit of a prickly old queen, but I can see you’ve been through it and it explains a lot. But don’t forget, Lola, you’re a big, strong woman.’

‘Less of the big...’ I laughed.

‘A
big
strong woman who’s discovering what she wants,’ he widened his arms out to stress the hugeness and I wafted him with his hankie.

‘Some people watch the dancing on TV and think “Ooh I want to dance like that – I’m going to find a class – I can see myself in that glittery frock.” Ballroom magpies, love – they just see the glint and head straight for it, but there’s no substance, no willingness to put the hours in. You know because of your mum and dad that dancing isn’t all about the sequins, it’s about blood, sweat and tears... and a few sequins if you’re lucky. But you know all that and you’re determined, and whatever you might say about not being ambitious, there’s fire in your eyes, babe.’

I was touched by his observation.

‘Now, I know it won’t be easy, but let’s seriously think about dancing at Blackpool, focussing on that goal will give us both something to aim for and train for... it will be our Copacabana.’

‘Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl,’ I smiled.

‘Yes... and he was called Tony... oh we were meant to be you and me. Oh...’

‘What?’

‘I just remembered what happened at the end... it was tragic, she was very, very old and kept hanging around the dance floor.’

‘Yes – and he was dead, because he kept saying how old she was,’ I warned and we both laughed loudly then quietly hummed the song together.

Tony was right, I had found what I was looking for, but it would be good for me to focus on a goal now. I had, for so long lived in fear of heading into the light and here he was a knight in shining armour offering me his hand. He was holding it out to me, a goal, something to aim for, something to achieve – no excuses, no ‘tomorrows’, we start now. I was me and though I could learn from the past and be inspired by my parents – it wasn’t
my
future.

I felt a surge of excitement and fear pulse through me. ‘I think I might just consider competing,’ I said, biting my lip, ‘after all, I’ve got a great partner. I can almost taste those sequins.’

‘Babe, you have the very best partner, and you were born with sequins running through your veins, I don’t know how you kept off that dance floor all these years.’

‘Yeah, life just got in the way. But now might just be my time. And the more I think about it the more I want to do everything my parents didn’t... for them.’

‘That’s good Lola, but you have to do it for yourself as well. You have to free yourself, love, I’ve had some traumatic love affairs where I thought I’d die when they dumped me – but I always had the dance. It’s a refuge in a cruel world and it sounds like there’s some painful memories tied up in there, so use them – channel your feelings, take hold of them. I sometimes think you’re pushing them away – embrace them and dance through.’

What he was saying made sense and I felt a light go on somewhere inside me.

‘Oh listen to me going on, I suppose I’m just worried you’ll do what my other partners have done, train and go through hell only to give up halfway through.’

‘I won’t. I can’t give this up, I’m doing it for my dad but also for me.’

‘Yeah. I think we should celebrate that. Do you want another white wine or shall we go all out and have a couple of pink ladies?’

I nodded and off he went to the bar for the next round, and after much laughter and several more pink ladies, he bundled me into a taxi home. I look back on that night as being pivotal in my commitment to making dance my future, and filling my life with sequins again. It was meant to be and my life had been leading up to being back on that dance floor. I was elated, tipsy, giggly... and just a little bit scared.

I
t was almost
Christmas and as Sophie would be in Bangkok I was contemplating my options. 1) A Christmas with my mother and her friends at Wisteria Lodge where a pantomime involving all residents and their families would be taking place? 2) A day with Tony at his sister Rita’s house, followed by an evening on Grindr selecting Tony’s next shag? Or 3) A day home alone with some good DVDs, whatever I wanted on the telly, a nice dinner and the ‘Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special.’ It was a tough one and I came to the conclusion that home alone was the winner.

And it was surrounded by fairly lights, my tree twinkling in the corner and a small turkey crown roasting in the oven that Cameron Jackson, my first love suddenly came back into my life. I don’t mean he was actually in my living room, but he requested my friendship on Facebook. I had no idea he was even on Facebook, I wasn’t a regular user and had only joined because it was another portal to Sophie, so receiving a request from him on Christmas day was wonderful. It felt like... well, Christmas!

I immediately found his page but couldn’t see anything until I’d accepted his friend request. When the photos and comments suddenly flooded the screen, I was overcome with emotion. It was so weird seeing someone I’d known almost thirty years ago, and through the slightly greying hair and the leaner, more lined face, I recognised the schoolboy I’d once loved. It was also weird to think how people’s lives go on once they’ve left ours. It seemed like his life had been full-on – even his most recent posts gave a sense of a life very much being lived. There were pictures of him doing charity runs and at parties, shots of him smiling in sunglasses from foreign beaches and just seeing him again made my heart flutter a little. I looked closely at some of the blurry photos to see if there was a wife, but it was hard to tell, no one was tagged. Then I remembered the relationship status at the top left side of the page, and to my relief there was nothing that said ‘married’ or ‘in a relationship’. I imagined he would probably be in a relationship of some sort, but today wasn’t the day to see him in a clinch with a pretty wife. To see ‘married’ as his status when I was all alone on Christmas Day might have put me off my chocolate covered brazils. I scrolled through his page, hungry for information, for any indication of where he worked, what he was like… who he was sleeping with? I gazed closely at smiling summer photos of him with a football and a younger man (his son?) on a beach. There were palm trees, so it was obviously somewhere far away and exotic... definitely nowhere I’d ever been. I scrolled down anxiously taking it all in. Cameron in sunglasses leaning out of a car, in a sunny pub garden with his brother, standing proudly behind a smoky barbecue with a pint in his hand... several smiley kids in the forefront of the photo.

Then my heart plummeted even further when I spotted a recent photo of him with an attractive young blonde. They were stood by a Christmas tree, he had his arm around her and she was positively twinkling, who could blame her? He still looked good. I put my glasses on I could see he’d tagged her, so I did what any self-respecting Facebook stalker would do and clicked straight to her page. Sadly as I was met with a disappointing blank because I wasn’t a FB friend and couldn’t see her details. I had the only detail I needed though, her name. Holly Jackson... his wife. Great. Like everyone else I’d known, Cameron had moved on with his life and was settled with a perfect partner, a handful of kids, family holidays, friends, barbecues and bottles of wine all summer. I suppose I’d just assumed as he’d requested my friendship on Christmas Day he must be messing about on Facebook and therefore alone. But he just wanted to add me to his list of friends and show off about his holidays and his family and his lovely big life. It was only a ‘friend’ request, I told myself, checking my tiny turkey crown, opening a bottle of wine and taking a big slurp. I didn’t want to chase after someone out of my league and get embroiled in some online thing that might lead to more heartache – he wouldn’t fancy me now. He’d loved the younger me, someone who was a bit more lively, fresh-faced with no wrinkles or strands of grey – someone quite different – a girl from another planet.

Seeing Cameron’s happy ever after was quite a dampener and gave me doubts about myself that even the ‘Strictly Christmas Special’ couldn’t quite eradicate. And before going to bed I couldn’t resist checking Facebook again – and as the screen flickered to life I could see a red sign over the private message logo. I gasped slightly and my heart fluttered a little as I opened up the message and saw it was from him. It was like reaching back through the past, touching something that had once meant so much to me, and I felt quite overwhelmed as I read his words.

Hi, it’s you Laura isn’t it? I saw your photo you haven’t changed, you’re still as good-looking as you were at school!

I flushed slightly – and it wasn’t the wine or the menopause. He was still as cheeky and flirty as ever then – even if he was married. I sat down with the laptop on my knee and replied.

Hi, yes it’s me! I saw your photo too and I remembered how you always wore your school tie around your head. How are you?

He responded immediately, saying he was fine, and he now wore ties round his neck. I asked if he was enjoying Christmas with the family (my not so subtle way of checking on the health of his marriage). He responded by saying ‘I’m spending Christmas at my mother’s, which I found interesting – particularly the ‘I’ instead of ‘we.’ He asked if I was married and so I felt it was okay to ask him, but when he said he was divorced, I thought ‘I’m not being made a fool of here,’ so I challenged him in a light-hearted way about the beautiful blonde on his timeline.

‘She’s my daughter, Holly, she’s seventeen,’ he said, with a smiley face logo. I smiled to myself, relieved he wasn’t married to a gorgeous blonde.

He explained that he was now divorced from Holly’s mother – which I have to admit pleased me and I told him all about Sophie. I intimated that I’d had endless lovers, countless offers of marriage but none of them were right for me (well, a girl needs good PR). We messaged each other for hours, sharing memories of school and of our relationship too and the years just slipped away. We’d grown up together and been through the whole teenage thing and I found him just as easy to talk to as I had then. Cameron and I had a bond I suppose - both virgins when we met we discovered sex together, which was quite a special journey to share with someone. He’d always be special to me and I enjoyed our trip down memory lane. He reminded me of a time when the chemistry teacher found us snogging in the lab, and how his parents came back early one night almost catching us in their bed. We had been through a lot together in those two years, and had gone from schoolkids to young adults. It was funny to think that this man I was writing to knew everything about my early life, my young body and was back here chatting to me. I’d never expected to hear or see Cameron Jackson ever again, he was so deeply embedded in my past it was as though he didn’t exist outside that time of flavoured lip gloss, first kisses and fumbled sex.

Eventually we said goodnight, both promising to keep in touch, and as I closed my laptop I thought about what Sophie would say when I told her I’d been flirting online. I was so pleased with myself, I was a thoroughly modern woman with a job, a life and now my own online ‘friend’.

Over the next few weeks I kept in touch with Cameron. He was a breath of fresh air, always talking about the past, reminding me of a time when anything could happen. We’d had the world at our feet, yet like most kids that age we didn’t realise or appreciate everything we had. Though he hadn’t changed, he was still funny but he obviously had an important job at the local council and he loved his two kids Holly and Jack. It was good to talk to someone without the distractions of work and family – in our little online bubble we could communicate privately without the rest of the world even knowing about it. I got the feeling he yearned for the past and all the freedom we had when we were younger. ‘When you’re young life seems to go on forever, you wait for birthdays and Christmas and think they’ll never come, but you spend the second half of your life holding them back,’ he wrote in one of our chats.

I felt the same, and meeting someone who had been such a big part of my life during that heady time reminded me what it felt like to have future and all the infinite possibilities it held.

I found the combination of dancing and Cameron to be quite a delicious cocktail and when I told Sophie she was actually impressed.

‘Oooh, Mum, you dark horse,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll have to come home immediately before you do something you regret... I hope you’re taking precautions?’ she said, impersonating my voice.

I laughed. ‘If only that were necessary,’ I sighed. ‘Firstly I doubt I could get pregnant at my age and secondly he is merely an online flirtation... though we have exchanged phone numbers, which in today’s world is probably the equivalent of getting engaged.’

We laughed about it, but if I’m honest I think even on that first night I’d begun to warm up that little piece of Cameron that had been left in my heart.

Meanwhile, Tony was constantly telling me to stand straight, his hand always in the small of my back metaphorically and physically moving me forward. He would sometimes cook for me in his cramped little flat and over delicious salads and fish dishes we’d talk about dancing. Even sitting at the table, our fingers would dance across the surface to explain a move, our arms showing the other one a particular hold, a finger click.

Tony was keen for me to make the very most of dancing and helped me to change my own rather fatty diet for something more healthy. He was like a personal trainer, always telling me I could do one more step, eat one less cake and that I was capable of anything.

‘You can do it, Laura – so stop saying you can’t,’ he’d say crossly if I ever even hinted that I might just throw the towel in. We worked hard, trained until the sweat dripped from our faces and my limbs screamed for me to stop, but we pushed through and I felt better for it. My body was beginning to feel firm, my legs strong and Tony said I was building stamina because I could dance for hours and never complained.

‘One more run through,’ he’d say, holding out his arms or just standing in his opening pose and I would willingly follow his lead. And as much as I needed him, I realised Tony needed me too. Until we met, we’d both spent Sundays alone and when Tony felt like hell at midnight wondering where his life was going he now had me to call. I can’t tell you how many of those midnight calls I received where Tony had to be talked through a man problem or even a dance we were trying to crack together. I’m convinced we were the only people in the world who could call each other without even saying hello and start with ‘that back step into your tango was stiff tonight...’

I even kept a calm communication with Sophie and stopped leaving frantic messages on her phone. I held back from declaring an international emergency and demanding to speak to the British Ambassador of wherever she was if she didn’t respond immediately to my texts. She was, is my heart and I would always worry about her wherever in the world she was – but I could channel it now and give my inner parent paranoia a day off every now and then. My energy and time was now being taken up with the dance and I was filled with an inner calm like I’d never felt before.

I began to like the way my body was changing too –I’d lost weight, and at forty-four I felt more confident than ever about my physical self. I’d never enjoyed walking into a room or being noticed, so I’d kept myself to myself, happy to stay in the background. But now I didn’t try to hide, staying under the radar in case I was noticed, I wanted to be noticed and the physical confidence was making me a stronger person. At work, when Julie reminded Carole and I ‘no chit-chatting on the floor, ladies,’ when we were actually on a break, I didn’t nod and scuttle off like before, I squared up to her. ‘We are having a conversation Julie – not a “chit-chat”, as you put it. We are two trusted, mature employees having a short break in a very long day and I speak for both of us when I say please will you not address us like we are three years old.’ She was taken aback and so was I – but she never said the c word again in my presence.

Carole was amazed; ‘What’s got into you?’ she’d gasped.

I shrugged, but I knew it was down to the dancing. For me there was no more hiding behind a smile and being afraid to speak up because I was scared to rock anybody’s boat. In the past I felt like I had to apologise for being me, for not being good enough, or slim enough or strong enough. I’d felt like a disappointment to everyone, but I wasn’t a disappointment to Tony, he said I was ‘a bloody revelation’.

‘You are looking good, girlfriend,’ he commented with a whistle one night as I arrived in new jeans and trainers for a training session. I’d let my hair grow a little, had it shaped and spent more than I normally would on a sea blue cotton jumper. I wasn’t wearing my glasses and Tony said I looked ten years younger. I was taking more care over my appearance these days because I didn’t feel invisible any more and wanted to look my best.

‘You are doing so well I want to try the Argentine Tango again,’ Tony said.

‘Really? So soon?’ I sighed. I’d just begun to feel really sure of myself, and I didn’t want a night of leg-locking if it led to my confidence being knocked because I couldn’t do it and losing what little self-esteem I was building. ‘I don’t feel ready, Tony, I just need to practise at home on my own a bit more... let’s give it a week or so...’

‘No, you’re putting things off again, Lola – I thought we weren’t going down that road of saying ‘I’ll do it next week, tomorrow.’ I don’t want to hear your theories on why it won’t work, I just want you on that floor gagging for it,’ he snapped, ‘just listen to the music first, let it flow through you, imagine you’re having sex with a gorgeous straight guy,’ he winked.

So we tried again, but still I couldn’t ‘feel’ it the way I felt the other dances.

‘I know you thought I was joking when I said you needed a good shag, but girlfriend you so do,’ he said afterwards. ‘Why don’t you get Facebook guy over and offer him your body on a plate?’