The Ballroom Class by Lucy Dillon

the second time.

3
    At twenty to eight on Wednesday night, Katie drew up next to an unprepossessing block of concrete 1960s flats and pulled on the handbrake. ‘Are you sure it’s here?’ she said, for the third time.
    ‘ Yes ,’ said Ross.
    ‘Did you phone ahead, though, to make sure? It wasn’t clear on the poster.’ She looked up at the tall, featureless council blocks. ‘It can’t be here  . . .’
    I should have done it myself, she thought. Then I’d know everything was sorted.
    ‘Katie! I know exactly where it is!’ He glared at her resentfully, and for a moment she wondered what on earth an hour of stupid dancing was going to do to bridge the cold, echoing space between them. It was so obvious in the car that there might as well have been plate glass between them, even though she’d tried to fill it by telling him all about her problems with the new contractors. ‘There’s a softplay group in the same place once a week – I sometimes take Jack.’
    ‘OK, OK.’ She undid her seat belt, feeling caught offside as she always did when he told her something she didn’t know about her own kids.
    ‘It’s a Memorial Hall, behind the flats,’ Ross went on, getting out. ‘The houses round it must have been bombed or demolished or something, but it survived – it’s rather nice.’
    ‘I didn’t think there was anything like that round here.’
    ‘Really?’ Ross replied in his annoying passive-aggressive voice, the one he knew wound her up.
    ‘What do you mean by that? If you’ve got something to say, then say it! If it’s some kind of dig about not taking the kids to bloody softplay, then just say so!’
    Katie realised she was standing still, nearly yelling in the street-lit silence of the estate.
    Ross stopped too, and looked at her. He didn’t raise his voice and his self-control only annoyed her more. ‘It’s not always about you. I don’t mean anything. All I meant is that you work in a planning department. I’m surprised you haven’t come across it. Is all I meant. Will you stop trying to pick fights and just calm down?’
    ‘I am calm,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve just had a stressy day, all right? Remember that regeneration meeting over-running, like I told you?’
    Ross said nothing, which was the most irritating response in his armoury of irritating responses. It meant he was thinking something too enraging to speak aloud.
    ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Come on.’
    ‘We’ve both had stressy days,’ he said. ‘Did you even ask how mine went? No.’
    Immediately she felt bad. ‘OK. How was your day, then?’
    He gave her a look, then said, ‘Doesn’t matter. Forget it.’
    Great, thought Katie, it’s going to be one of those evenings. One of those evenings where everything we do winds the other up, no matter how hard we try not to let it.
    A moment or two passed while they glared at each other in the unflattering yellow light.
    We’re getting old, she thought. I used to look forward to us getting old together. And if I have to start again with a new man, he won’t even have seen the young me to make up for these crow’s-feet and flab I’ve got now.
    As usual, Ross cracked first. ‘Sorry. Come on,’ he said, cajolingly. ‘Don’t want to be late, do we?’
    Katie shook her head, harder than she needed to, in order to shake the thoughts from her mind, and followed him towards the Hall.
     
    The Memorial Hall, as Ross had said, sat like a red-brick doll’s house between two grey towerblocks, its arched door and Dutch tiled roof making an unexpected splash of colour in the monotone estate. In Memory of Those Who Fought 1914–1918 was carved into a stone plaque on one side, with First Stone Laid by Mrs Holloway, Lady Mayoress, 20 April 1922 on the other.
    ‘Pretty!’ said Katie, despite herself.
    ‘Isn’t it?’ Ross pushed open the door for her.
    Katie hesitated on the step. Though she cruised confidently into meetings with all kinds of people at work, she always had