The community centre had an OK wooden floor and high ceiling but was lacking the mirror array of the dance studio back in Hamilton. Still, the Latin rhythms of the music were the same and Honor fixed her eyes on Clarissa as she warmed them up then talked up the class energy level through the opening bars:Zumba ah ah ay oh!Then, onZumba ah ah ay ah, shouted, ‘Okay-six-seven-eight,’ and danced right into the routine. The class went with her, side-step right, right, dot the toes, side-step left, left, dot. In swung the arms, arcing up together, wrists crossing above heads as the feet side-stepped again,Ay oh, ay oh oh, wrists down to cross behind,ay oh, ay oh oh . . .head turn right, look up as wrists curve up, left and down at the floor.Zumba ay oh! Zumba ah, dadda dadda dadda dadda Zumba ah, dadda dadda dadda dadda Zumba oh.
With a surge of pleasure and a release of tension, Honor felt the music take charge of her feet, easily following Clarissa through a weight and direction change to allow the class to flow back across the room.Zumba ay oh!
Suddenly, it didn’t matter that she was in a pretty basic amenity in England with no mirror wall, dodgy lighting and windows that needed cleaning, or that the instructor had to pressgang her family into attending the class in order to keep it going.Zumba ah ah ay oh.It was just good to be dancing, to be moving in time with everyone else, rhythm quickening, hips rolling, body stretching.
At the end of the first routine her heart rate and adrenaline levels were on the way up, making her whip off her camisole and flip it to the side of the room. If the woman with the slouch pants could show the world a bare midriff, so could Honor.
She was going to dance so hard that there would be no energy left for sour feelings like anger and regret.
* * *
On the odd occasions that he allowed Clarissa to drag him to venture into the otherwise, all-women Zumba class, Martyn generally made space for himself by virtue of the length of his stride and the reach of his rotating arms.
Zumba didn’t thrill him, although he could keep in time OK — unsurprising as he shared genes with the instructor radiating rhythm and presence from the front of the room. But if he’d known that Honor would show up, he would definitely have stayed at home. He’d almost forgotten — no, disregarded — Honor’s husband when he’d kissed her on her doorstep on Friday night. Until Ace had made him see, with painful clarity, what it felt like to be the husband whose wife was getting it on with someone else.
Bad.
He’d decided he’d better keep away from Honor in case he suddenly found himself undressing her.
And now, here she was, a couple of rows ahead of him and wearing so little that he was getting the idea of how undressedwould look. Oh mannnn . . . why did she have to throw off her top and dance in her sports bra? She was a great mover and those two vertical lines that ran up her abdomen, the sure sign of a taut body, were mesmerising. He’d follow those lines in either direction and like where they took him.
Wiping sweat from his forehead with his forearm, he tried to look away.
But she was right in his line of sight. And her wiggle and swing was a class apart. Her fingers flexed and pointed, her back stretched and arched and her tidy little behind was poetry. Real salsa hips. By the third routine she was beaming and laughing, glowing with the fun of dancing, and he’d worked out that she was able to follow the routines so easily because Clarissa was indicating changes of direction with a pointing finger, or the leading foot by placing her hand on the appropriate thigh. That Honor could interpret placed her on a higher level than the rest of the class.
Clarissa’s shouts of ‘Zumba!’ were usually greeted by self-conscious silence but Honor was quite at ease giving exuberant ‘Zumbas!’ of her own. The energy level climbed with every ‘Whoo!’ and ‘Yeah!’ and Zoë, Nicola and Bev, who generally treated the class as something they played at doing for Clarissa’s sake, were joining Honor in a dancing fury. For once, they really needed the drinks they brought in shiny bottles with spouts on top.
Actually, he was glad for Clarissa. He watched her glow with pleasure as she demonstrated — not for the first time, he had to admit — the difference between Cuban motion and waggling your bum. ‘Ball-flat,’ she called, ‘not heel-flat. Tiny steps and then your hips will sway away from the side that’s taking the step.’ And suddenly, not just Honor’s hip action was following Clarissa’s. The whole class ‘got’ it and Clarissa’s face was one big grin. ‘Yeah! Great! Now, we need to practise our break back. Fora break back step, we never put down the heel of the foot that is breaking back—’
Clarissa and Honor seemed set on outdoing each other in the pizzazz department and Clarissa had to keep dropping back into tutor mode to collect the class up and put the less able of them on track. But it seemed as if every one of the women was concentrating hard on keeping up.
Whereas he was concentrating hard to not get hard, with Honor’s rolling round behind in constant Cuban motion and the lycra no more than a second skin over her breasts. He’d never sweated so much in a class. Or been so out of breath. He could hardly wait for the cool down and final stretches so he could call a brief goodbye and slide out of the door as he zipped into a fleece and got himself and his aching groin the hell out of there.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Hey!’ Honor smiled at Ru who was at the sink, where he seemed to have spent most of the last week. Covering off days had morphed into a full-time job, washing steaming dishes, baseball hat reversed and a spike of hair sprouting from the front.
‘Hey.’ His hands didn’t pause in their mechanical repetition and his attention remained on the gleaming white dishes.
She tied her apron with rapid movements. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing.’ He shoved a plate into the drainer.
Honor paused. She recognised deeply pissed off when she saw it. She checked that Robina was out of the room and Sophie was at the other end of the kitchen, flipping scones off a baking sheet. ‘Still not enjoying working at the Teapot?’
His hand clenched around the dish mop. ‘Hate it.’
She checked in her pocket for her pencil and pad. ‘At least it’s self-defence class tonight — that ought to be fun.’
His hands reached for more plates from the stack. ‘I’m supposed to be going into Brighton.’ He still didn’t look at her.
‘That’s a pity.’ She spoke lightly but her mind flicked to ‘close attention’ mode. Ru had been getting quieter and more morose as the week had worn on. ‘The class gave me a lot of confidence, last week. I was intending to go again tonight but I’m not sure I want to — alone.’
Ru scrubbed violently at a burned-on raisin. Rinsed. Sighed. ‘Yeah, OK. I’ll do the class with you first.’
‘Great, thanks.’ She slid her pencil and pad from her pocket. When she’d accomplished a circuit to check status at both inside and outside tables, she cleared up after a few early birds, scraping the plates and carrying the stack over to Ru. ‘Have you had more trouble with Frog?’
‘Not yet.’
