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said nothing, but I could see him disapproving of the speed with which I drank. Finally he spoke of the subject that sat between us like a pork sausage at a Jewish wedding. ‘Will you talk to Mary tonight?’ I sensed he’d already spoken to her. This was Mike the ambassador at his best.
    â€˜Will she talk to me?’
    He went to reply, I even saw his lips move and by the smile I think he thought I heard him, but his answer was swept away by the maelstrom of music that suddenly assaulted the restaurant. I shouted at Mike to repeat his answer, but he stood and walked away, not even hearing my second plea for him to stay and say it again. The music cut across all conversation like a cosmic mute button as the Turkish dance sounds penetrated everycorner. Whirling bazookas assaulted the senses and, judging by the expressions on the other diners’ faces, offended almost everyone. Their grimaces said it all. No one was happy. Then from the furthest and darkest part of the restaurant burst the belly dancer from hell. She gyrated her way around the room, the slaps of her bare feet with tiny bells at the ankle clearly audible above the treble-laced music because of the different texture of flesh on wood. I’d never seen a belly dancer before, but I have an image culled from old Hollywood films where such a dance was portrayed as mildly erotic. The women were slim and busty with wild hair swinging in time with pounding hips and wide eyes, the whites exaggerated by thick black eyeliner. They enthralled sweaty cigarette-smoking men as they approached a frenzied climax. Such an image did not square with the dancer I watched. She was more an embarrassment than sexual lure. Red blotches of angry acne marked her face, which was visible even in the darkened room, and more movement came from the rolls of fat on her stomach than from her hips. When she stretched she revealed a jewelled belly button. The occasional glimpse of the fake ruby reminded me of a boat in rough seas at the tip of a wave before dipping out of sight again. Finally, like a spinning top, the intensity of her dance waned. By the time she had circulated the room and returned to the corner from which she’d burst she was breathless and sweating profusely. As suddenly as the music started, so it ended, mid-beat, without so much as a hint of fade. For a moment there was silence in the room, everyone waiting to see whether there was an encore. When they were satisfied the silence was permanent, the chatter returned.
    Mike was gone and he’d taken his answer. He was still at the table, but now he sat next to Mary.
    Her stare was frightening. I felt as though she’d watched me the entire dance, boring through my outer skin to reach my core. Where had the power come from since the first tepid look at the beginning of the evening? Maybe she’d finally summoned up all the bad thoughts of the past years. Maybe Mike had said something to ignite a sudden passion. Had he misheard me when that burst of music shattered our conversation and passed it on? But then what could he possibly say to make it worse between us? I looked away and found Jo’s far more welcoming eyes.
    Jo was drunk. She might have kept pace with me, but at a hell of a cost. Her eyes shone like moist beads as she struggled to focus and she leant her head on a hand that hardly seemed able to balance the weight. Her knee was rammed against mine now as it had been throughout the dance. She talked about herself once she had my attention but I listened to nothing. She had grown more attractive with age and her short bobbed hair suited her better than the big perm of her youth. I hadn’t thought of her once since we’d left school, but I knew by the way she gazed into my eyes that she had thought of me. We’d groped once, when we were sixteen at a party in Sandringham in an old shed at the rear of the garden. It was the only haven from the frenzied drinking and dancing of