Page 2 of Take the Lead

W hen my alarm goes off in the morning, my first thought is that I’ve got nine more blissful hours alone with Merle today. I can’t think of anything I’d like more. I want to look my best, so I’ve given myself extra time to do my hair and make-up. I have a good feeling about the day ahead.

I need a coffee before I start getting ready and my flatmate is waiting in the kitchen with a mischievous smile. ‘So have you come back down to earth yet?’ she asks.

‘Not really,’ I laugh, reaching past her to check if the kettle’s still hot.

She nearly choked on her wine last night when I told her what happened at the studio. Given that she practically had to bundle me out of the flat and frogmarch me to the train station to make sure I didn’t bottle out of going, she was as surprised as I was by the way things turned out.

‘So will there be more of the same today, do you reckon?’ she asks with a twinkle in her eye.

I laugh again as I fill my mug. ‘I can but hope.’

‘You might fall in love,’ she says dreamily. ‘It happens on Strictly all the time.’

‘To celebrities,’ I remind her. ‘Not to twenty-three-year-old nobodies.’

‘You’re not a nobody,’ she says sternly. ‘You’re a gorgeous soon-to-be TV star who deserves her Dirty Dancing moment. You could even end up marrying him.’

I roll my eyes, but I have to admit I can’t wait to find out if there’ll be more kissing with Merle today.

The dancing part is still giving me palpitations – I just can’t imagine ever being good at it – but the prospect of another close encounter with a gorgeous sex god is certainly a strong incentive to get me back to the studio.

If there’s more kissing today, and the next day, and maybe even every day for the whole five weeks of the competition should we make it right through to the final, who knows what might happen after that? Could it become something more?

‘So, are you going to tart yourself up before you go in today?’ Lucy asks. And there’s no point trying to deny it – she knows me too well.

She waves her favourite leggings in the air and asks if I want to borrow them. They’re black with mesh cut-outs running all the way up the sides and I always think she looks amazing when she’s wearing them. I grab them from her eagerly.

‘Enjoy,’ she says with a wink, as she retreats to her bedroom to get ready for work.

I take a long sip of my coffee and thank my lucky stars that I never have to go back to the crappy admin job I left to be on Fire on the Dance Floor .

Lucy loves it at the fancy ad agency she joined a couple of months after university, and it’s hardly surprising – her office even has its own bar.

But I just took the first job I was offered because I thought it was important to get some work experience on my CV – then I stuck at it, even though I was bored senseless, because I didn’t want future employers to think I had no staying power.

My plan had been to hang in there for a year then sign up to all the job alert sites and move on to something better.

That’s not how it panned out, though. Before I’d even been invited to an interview, I was hit by a bombshell at work that completely floored me, when one of the girls in the office calmly broke the news to me that she’d been seeing my boyfriend behind my back since I introduced them at a company get-together a month earlier. The shock nearly made me vomit.

Our two-year anniversary was only a few weeks away.

We’d got together at university and were still going strong almost a year after graduation.

Or so I thought. I don’t know how I managed not to fall apart in front of my colleague as she tried to make it sound like she was doing me a favour by telling me – which she was, of course, but I couldn’t see it at the time.

When I had it out with Ed, he didn’t even apologise – he just said he’d post any stuff of mine he found at his flat back to me when he got a moment. His lack of emotion was another punch in the stomach. It was like I’d never meant anything to him.

After that, my hunt for a new employer didn’t go well.

As I battled with my misery, I was so convinced no one would want to hire me that I struggled to convince anyone they should.

And as I didn’t have enough money saved up to hand in my notice without another job to go to, I just had to put up with the torture of seeing that girl at the office every day, knowing she and Ed were now together and that everyone else at work knew it.

So you might wonder why it took so much arm-twisting to get me to eventually jack my job in and join the Fire on the Dance Floor line-up.

The show offered the escape route I wanted and the chance to win a sizeable cash prize that would mean I’d never need to feel trapped in a job I hated ever again.

But having only just suffered such a monumental humiliation, it felt like the last thing I needed was to make a fool of myself trying to tango in front of millions of people.

I had absolutely no intention of applying to go on the show when I first showed Lucy the call for contestants I’d seen on Twitter and joked about putting myself forward. But Lucy, being Lucy, had other ideas.

‘This is the perfect way to get over Ed,’ she declared. ‘You’ve been moping over him for long enough. It’s time to start living your life again.’

‘It’s only been six weeks,’ I protested, but she wasn’t deterred.

‘This could be your new career,’ she enthused. ‘And if not, it would look great on your CV.’

Then she really turned on her powers of persuasion. ‘And just imagine the look on your colleague’s face if you told her you were leaving to be on the telly. That would stop her being so smug.’

When I still refused to apply, Lucy sent in a video application without telling me. It was a clip of me prancing around our flat when I was several bottles of champagne into a New Year’s Eve celebration. It would hardly have had Beyoncé quaking in her boots.

I was furious with her when I got the email from Channel 6 asking me to come in for a meeting at their office in Hammersmith.

She knew how down on myself I was feeling – it was hardly the time to be baring my soul on national television.

But Lucy was adamant it would do me good to take myself out of my comfort zone and have something else to focus on.

‘You’ve got nothing to lose by just talking to them,’ she insisted. Then she turned on the persuasion again. ‘They wouldn’t want to meet you if they didn’t think you had potential.’ And, ‘You’ll always wonder what might have happened if you don’t go for it.’

In the end I agreed to meet the show’s producer, Shane Mitchell, just to get some peace. I’d go, explain why it wasn’t for me, then that would be the end of that.

But Shane had an answer to every obstacle I tried to put in my way.

When I told him frothy ballgowns weren’t really my thing, he said that wouldn’t be a problem because the show wasn’t including any of the ballroom classics, only lively urban and Latin dances, in a bid to appeal to younger viewers.

When I admitted I couldn’t afford not to work for months on end just to take part in a dance competition, he told me they were sticking to a short run for the debut series – five weeks, so the viewers don’t lose interest – and that the contestants would be paid five thousand pounds each for participating. More than I earned in my actual job.

When I asked him why on earth he thought people might be interested in seeing someone like me learning to dance, he smiled warmly and said that was exactly the point: having regular people like me on the show rather than celebrities would make it more relatable for the audience.

And after that I was out of excuses. I fell silent, my head spinning while I chewed my lip until I actually tasted blood.

‘We’re so excited about this project and we’d really like you to be part of our success story,’ Shane said, with such enthusiasm that it was hard not to be swayed.

And then something just clicked. Yes, it felt a bit like I’d be throwing myself off a cliff and just blindly hoping there weren’t any rocks beneath the sea’s surface.

And after the way things ended with Ed, I had serious doubts about my ability to make good life choices.

But I was also sick of feeling miserable.

That moment when my colleague told me Ed was cheating still haunted me every single day and I wanted to stop being reminded of it.

So, before I could think of any other ways to talk myself out of it, I signed on the dotted line.

I still had to suffer through my four-week notice period at work, but it was easier to handle knowing it was coming to an end.

And then, before I knew it, I was free – and thrown into a whirlwind of group rehearsals, where there was so much to learn, so much to think about, that I didn’t even have time to wonder if I’d done the right thing.

And here I am now, wondering why I ever hesitated. I’m itching to get to my second day of kizomba practice with Merle – and so thankful Lucy decided she knew what was best for me.

‘Gorgeous,’ Lucy declares when she sees me caked in make-up and with a swishy new blow-dry. ‘He won’t be able to resist you.’

I hold up crossed fingers. ‘I hope you’re right.’

But on the way to our Kensington studio, my bravado starts to falter. What if Merle has decided kissing me was a mistake? What if I turn up looking like this while he just wants to forget all about it? The doubts crowd my mind as the Tube clanks its way across London.

By the time I reach the studio, I’m almost as nervous as I was yesterday. And I nearly jump out of my skin when I swing the door open and step inside, because he’s crouched down right beside the entrance, pulling his dance shoes out of his bag.

He straightens up to his full height, studies my face and says, ‘You look tense again. Are you thinking about me or are you thinking about dancing?’