Dance Lessons

The instructor, a tiny woman with a voice like a foghorn, took one look at Priya and Sam and sighed. 'Six weeks?' she said. 'We'll need a miracle.'

The first lesson ended with Sam stepping on Priya's foot eleven times. The second ended with both of them on the floor, after an ambitious turn that neither of them had been taught. By the third, the other couples had started to give them a polite amount of space.

So they practised at home. They pushed the sofa against the wall, rolled up the rug and played the same slow song over and over until the neighbours knocked on the ceiling. One, two, three. One, two, three. Sam counted under his breath, frowning, and Priya laughed every time he lost the beat.

Somewhere in the fourth week the counting stopped. They stopped watching their feet and started watching each other, and the waltz became something slower and closer than anything on the syllabus. Hands drifted from shoulders to waists, from waists to buttons. The song ended and neither of them noticed.

'This isn't in the routine,' Priya murmured against his neck.

'I'm improvising,' Sam said, and steered her, with surprising grace, towards the bedroom.

At the wedding, they danced without a single mistake. The instructor, seated at table nine, wiped her eyes. She never found out what their practice sessions had really involved, and they never told her.