The dance instructor asked them whether they still wanted to learn the lift.
Mara looked at Theo. He looked at the instructor. The instructor looked at the notes on her phone with the patient disappointment of someone who had expected a more decisive pair.
“We've canceled the wedding,” Mara said.
“Yes. Elena told me. The lift?”
Theo raised one eyebrow.
“It's still an available way to leave the ground,” Mara said.
“It's quite a small one,” the instructor said.
“In that case.”
Her name was Inés. She was younger than either of them and wore soft shoes which made no noise when she crossed the little room. Mara's sandals made an enormous amount. She had brought them because they'd seemed like dancing shoes when she stood still in front of the mirror.
They had booked the lesson because the original first dance looked harmless in a video and dangerous when they attempted it in the flat. Theo had stepped on a trailing bit of Mara's skirt. She had stumbled into the coffee table. They had decided they needed help before anybody watched them.
Now there was no first dance to rehearse, and they were standing in a cool studio with a floor that hadn't been selected to hurt anybody. There was a wall of mirrors, one large window and a chair on which Theo had deposited his miserable hat.
Inés put the phone down. “We can just dance. If you prefer.”
“I want to see him attempt the lift,” Mara said.
“Thank you,” Theo said. “She has complete confidence in my failure.”
“That's important in a partner,” Inés said.
Mara liked her.
They started with walking. This offended Theo, who said he had been doing it for some time. Inés asked him to demonstrate. He walked toward Mara, and Mara stepped back onto his foot.
“Very strong start,” he said.
“You moved into the place I was going to be.”
“That's dancing,” Inés said.
She moved their hands. Mara had been holding Theo at an angle designed to keep a respectable amount of distance between them. Inés placed her hand farther along his shoulder, then showed Theo where his should go against Mara's back. His palm settled beneath her shoulder blade. She felt his thumb shift, finding a place it had found before.
“Better?” Inés asked.
Mara nodded.
They walked. Theo took smaller steps. She followed until she thought she knew where he was going, then moved there before he had decided.
“Wait,” Inés said.
“She's very bad at that,” Theo told her.
“He makes it look like a permanent condition,” Mara said.
“Again.”
They did it again. This time she kept her eyes on his collar instead of the destination. There was a small damp mark at the edge of it from the shower. He'd come out of the villa bathroom smelling clean and rubbing his hair with a towel while she hunted for the sandals. She had said he could use the hairdryer. He had asked whether she was planning to make him look respectable. She'd said there were limits to the afternoon.
Now they moved to music. Inés had chosen something whose beat Mara could hear without trying to feel romantic about it. Theo counted quietly at first, then stopped when she narrowed her eyes.
“I'm assisting,” he whispered.
“You're conducting an inspection.”
His mouth twitched. She followed the turn properly and enjoyed it so much she forgot to look displeased.
“That's good,” Inés said.
“An accident,” Mara said.
“Have another.”
They went across the floor. They went back. Theo's hand was warm against her, and the hem of her dress moved around her knees in a way that made her like having them. For years they had danced badly at other people's weddings, in kitchens, once in a garden when a neighbour played music loudly enough for them to regard it as an invitation. He knew how she would laugh if he became too earnest. She knew how to make him become earnest.
Inés stopped the music before Mara had decided whether she wanted it to stop.
“We can try the turn with a little more space.”
Theo let go. Mara lifted her hair off the back of her neck and looked toward the mirror. They stood side by side, flushed and vaguely disorganized, his shirt loose at the waist, her sandal strap escaping its buckle. They looked like people having a good time. She turned away before she could decide what else they looked like.
“Water?” Inés asked.
Theo fetched the bottles from the chair. He handed Mara hers with the cap already loosened. She drank, then held it against the hot side of her neck.
“How many teaspoons do we own?” he asked quietly.
She nearly choked.
“Not yet.”
“Just checking.”
It was their old signal for rescue. They had invented it at a dinner where a man would not stop describing the purchase of a kitchen. Mara had asked Theo the question with desperate seriousness; he'd immediately stood and said they ought to get home and find out. Since then teaspoons had removed them from arguments, tedious drinks, an exhibition they'd agreed to visit out of affection for somebody they wished they liked slightly less.
Inés was changing the music. She hadn't been tedious for a second.
“We're not leaving,” Mara said.
“I know. You were looking very serious.”
She touched the cap back onto her bottle. “I'm having thoughts.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“Go and put your hand where she told you.”
He laughed, put the bottles down and returned to her.
The lift began as an entirely reasonable proposition. Inés showed them a small movement, demonstrated the supporting hand, explained where Mara should put her weight, and then told them to try without actually lifting anything yet. Theo was so careful Mara became immediately difficult.
“You can touch me.”
“I am.”
“As if I'm something with a delivery note.”
“I'm trying not to drop you.”
“That's a very long-term ambition.”
He looked at her. She heard the words after she'd finished saying them and wished she could scoop them off the floor.
Inés waited. Mara cleared her throat.
“I'll stop being awful.”
“Don't overpromise,” Theo said.
She laughed, relieved and a little ashamed. His hand moved more firmly against her waist. This time when she stepped into the movement she felt him there, solid and familiar, and didn't try to do the whole thing first.
Her feet left the floor for perhaps half a second.
She made a sound so unlike a glamorous lifted bride that Theo laughed while putting her down. He didn't drop her. He did step back awkwardly, and she had to clutch his arm before her sandal could complete whatever escape it had begun.
“Again,” Inés said, grinning now.
“For insurance?” Mara asked.
“Because you liked it.”
She couldn't sensibly deny that.
They did it again. Theo looked directly at her this time. She stopped smiling long enough to feel the lift, the tiny strange confidence of being moved by another person. When he put her down she stayed close. His hand was still at her waist.
Then Inés applauded once, cheerfully, and Mara remembered the rest of the room.
They finished without a lift, moving through the simple steps they'd learned. Theo began humming over the music. Mara recognized the tune immediately and told him to stop.
“It's improving this,” he said.
“Nothing is improved by Two Hearts, One Suitcase.”
“Our car journeys.”
“You're thinking of your car journeys. I am a captive.”
Inés asked what the song was. Theo described the pop duet they'd discovered years ago playing over a petrol-station radio. He made it sound like an established achievement of music. Mara watched Inés search her memory, then gave up trying to correct him and sang one terrible rising note.
Inés laughed. Theo supplied the other note, which was even worse.
“No,” she said. “We cannot dance to that.”
“Nobody can,” Mara told her. “It's prevented several times.”
They finished the lesson breathing harder than they had expected. Inés told them they were a pleasure, though perhaps not a model pair for instruction. Mara thanked her. Theo collected the bottles and his hat, then looked at the dented brim and put it back down in his bag instead of on his head.
Outside the studio, the warmth struck Mara's face. She stopped in the shade beside the door to fix the sandal strap. Theo crouched before she had worked out how to bend without dropping everything.
“Give me your foot.”
She rested a hand on his shoulder. He refastened the buckle, turning it to keep the loose end tucked in. His hair was warm beneath her fingers. She could see the back of his neck, the place he sunburned first.
“There,” he said.
She took her foot down. He stood. Neither moved away quickly enough to make the space entirely ordinary.
“Drinks?” she asked.
“Yes.”
They walked toward the terrace bar. She didn't link her arm through his, though she wanted to. He carried her bottle with his, both gathered awkwardly in one hand. When he passed them across the bar he put hers first.
They sat with cold glasses and watched people coming up from the pool. Adrian crossed the terrace with Malcolm, talking. Mara saw him, then looked back at Theo. Theo had seen her see him.
She didn't want to turn either man into an explanation she owed the other.
“I'm going to the market tomorrow,” she said.
“I thought you might.”
“With Adrian.”
He nodded once. His thumb stayed on the side of his glass.
“Right.”
“You've got plans?”
“Kit's still deciding whether he can be upright.”
She smiled, but he hadn't quite invited the smile. She let it fade and drank.
After a while he asked whether she thought Inés had enjoyed teaching them or was simply unusually polite. Mara said she had definitely enjoyed the moment they nearly fell over. He said they should put that on her website.
She laughed. He looked pleased, then put the glass down and rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand.
Mara watched the small motion and wanted to go back into the room where he'd been allowed to put both hands on her. Instead she asked him to pass the olives, and he did.