Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
I will hazard a guess that the majority of people who live in England will ice skate with the theme of Bolero in their heads.
I wasn’t born when Torvill and Dean made history in Sarajevo or when they made their comeback in Lillehammer, but they remain cultural icons.
Nana loves the figure skating and it was a love that was passed down – I have the fondest memories of afternoons spent in front of her telly in her flat, watching people glide across the ice, throwing each other about, landing as if they hadn’t just been spun around six times by their ankles.
We cheered in her living room with the sea-green shagpile and gave rounds of applause to everyone.
Once Nana picked a flower out of a vase and threw it to the floor.
Naturally, a passion for the sport doesn’t translate to ability. I can manage to stand on the ice and push myself across it in a measured fashion. Don’t ask me to spin. I can just about change direction and that involves putting my hands in a set position to keep my balance.
‘Seriously, the ones who go in the wrong direction should be fined,’ Nick says, as he goes to put a hand into mine. That’s not the greatest idea as it might put me off-balance, but I like the way he holds me close, pulling my arm into his body.
As for second dates, Old Nick (his official name) has done well here.
He remembered my strange fascination with ice skating and booked us a slot at Somerset House, by the river, one of the most perfect places to spend Christmas in London with its towering golden Christmas trees, the ice rink framed by the old stone buildings of the house, a perfect starry night sky above us.
Nana would adore this. She wouldn’t skate.
She’d sit by the side wrapped in a blanket and take it all in, heckle me, shout bravo for any flourishes of decent skating.
I need to take a thousand photos of this for her, throwing poses, and buy her something from the gift shop for when I next see her.
I’m not sure why recalling her in this very moment feels so warming if bittersweet.
‘All OK?’ Nick asks, his hand still firmly in mine.
I snap back to the rink, smile and nod. It’s bizarre to see Nick finally out of formal dress. He’s in jeans, a blue woollen jumper with a white shirt underneath and a Canada Goose coat. ‘So do we go round and round?’ he asks.
‘Yeah, for the full hour, unless you had a routine you wanted to dance out?’ I ask.
‘I could try and lift you,’ he says. ‘You might have to take your coat off though.’
I pull up to a railing to steady myself. ‘People tend to go in circles, stand around, chat, fall down, get up.’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Have you ever stacked it before?’
‘Plenty. Once you get past the shock and the embarrassment, it can be funny. Physical comedy is always a winner.’
We wait for a moment, watching everyone else whizz past us.
There are a number of families enjoying an evening out, kids with penguin aids, their faces full of joy at gliding across the ice, wrapped in matching hats and mittens.
It’s also very much a date-night kind of destination – there are lots of couples in different stages of dating – the hand holders, the newbies, the ones who may have been at odds about being here tonight, one of them skating around furiously and the other standing with their arms crossed by the skate exchange.
‘I feel I should have opted for the knee pads?’ he mentions.
‘And look like that…?’ I say, my eyes guiding him to a man near us who is a tentative skater, padded up to the hilt, with a helmet and elbow pads – his date looking at him curiously, wondering how she’s going to survive the next fifty minutes.
‘You’re fine as you are,’ I say, kissing him softly on his cold cheek.
He looks at me and kisses me on the lips, softly.
If we’re rating romantic moments that I’ve experienced in my lifetime, this is up there – the stars, the tree, the lights all seem to glow as he kisses me on the ice.
I am not immune to romance and it’s hard not to be affected by the magic of it all, so I close my eyes to take it in for a second.
‘You OK there, miss?’
‘Uh-huh,’ I say, looking up at him and basking in the full beam of that warm, crinkle-eyed smile.
In this moment, it feels as though he’s come into my life and swept me off my feet.
The big Christmas party in the tux, the roses, the uninhibited and familiar sex, and now this – it’s all romance as it should be, someone getting everything right.
And I think of other dates where people have failed to achieve this, rookie mistakes like the guy who gave me supermarket flowers with the price tag still attached.
Not just a price tag either – a yellow sticker to let me know he’d got them out of the bargain bin.
And that bloke who thought a meal deal was a nice dinner out.
Nick has climbed to the top of some imaginary dating ladder beating them all.
I feel spoilt and incredibly cared for, impressed by the thought he’s putting into everything.
Nick reaches up to my black wool hat and pulls it down a little over my curls. ‘We went ice skating in Bath that time, remember? I think that’s where you taught me to skate.’
I laugh at that memory, intrigued that he would want to recreate it. ‘You had that woolly hat with the ear flaps,’ I remember.
‘God,’ he remembers with horror. ‘I was a sartorial disaster then, please try and forget a lot of that.’
‘Do you still have your leather bomber jacket?’ I ask.
‘Well, fashions come and go. This time in ten years when we’re still skating in circles, we’ll joke about this again.
’ My pause must tell him that what he’s just said comes as a minor surprise to me.
We’re keeping this incredibly casual. Maybe he’s talking about the ice skating feeling monotonous and never-ending.
‘That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it? ’
‘Ten years’ time?’
He shrugs. ‘I doubt we’d be alone though, right?
Most likely we’d be ushering kids around the ice.
’ He draws my attention to a family zipping around, the dad picking a boy up and making him explode in hysterics as he floats around, kicking his legs.
Words like those should fill me with joy.
This is a man who’s projected this date into the future.
He wants to have kids? With me? I’m assuming that, rather than us escorting random children around this ice rink. ‘I’ve said too much, right?’
I shake my head. ‘You’ve caught me by surprise, that’s all.
Let’s just take this slowly, Mr Coles. Maybe live in the moment.
’ He smirks: I think because when we dated before, the roles were very much reversed.
I was young and in love and thought about our life beyond university, and he was possibly the reverse.
I won’t lie. I signed my name with his surname for practice.
I imagined our kids. I even named them: Mabel and Benjamin.
They would have really loved ice skating.
‘I’m just… it’s been nice to be back in touch. It’s felt…reassuring.’
I wonder if I’ve said the wrong thing. I’m not sure if that’s what great love is built on.
Reassuring is a word you’d use to describe a nurse or a mortgage advisor.
But I mean it in a good way; this does feel familiar.
We’ve done all the legwork to get to know each other.
It feels, for want of a better word, easy.
‘It’s been an unexpected week. I don’t hate it,’ I say jokily, leaning into him as I skate.
‘The opposite of which means you love it?’.
‘No comment.’
‘None needed. Here, reach into my pocket,’ he says.
‘I think that goes against the code of conduct,’ I say, smiling, but I reach in and pull out sweets in a striped paper bag. I untwist the paper and peer in.
‘Red strawberry laces, your favourite,’ he says.
‘You remembered?’
‘I remember things too,’ he says, shrugging his shoulders, and I put one in my mouth to mask my shock.
He used to show up at my student flat with bags of these and we’d race to see who could eat one the quickest, the strings hanging down from our mouths and us both in hysterics.
I offer him one and he untangles a strand.
‘We probably both need the sugar too if we’re going to be going round in circles for an hour,’ he says, using his tongue to sweep the string into his mouth.
He pushes himself off the railing and skates off, waving at me, beckoning me over.
This feels right, this is how being with someone should be, but I can’t help but feel guilty that in the back of my mind, the other Nick sits there almost looking on.
Why have you popped into my head at this precise moment?
I don’t think that Nick would ice skate.
I can’t imagine him going round in circles having fun.
Would he stand at the side, refusing to participate?
I didn’t hug him after that day in the library.
I was almost scared to touch him, so I shook his hand, which makes us official social acquaintances.
I find him very attractive, but I find Henry Cavill attractive and I happily admire him from afar.
I have no idea what he thinks of me but I saw that look of horror he gave me as I was eating that hog roast roll and had sauce all over my face like a feasting Christmas zombie.
We’ve made a half-arsed agreement to possibly work together with this book drive, and that’s it.
‘Come on!’ Nick shouts at me from over the way, waving his arms around trying to keep his balance. I skate over, guiding him to safety, tripping slightly, my arms flailing to regain my balance.
‘See what I mean, physical comedy,’ I joke. ‘So what do you want to do after this?’
‘The hand in my pocket obviously triggered something then,’ he says, as we set off across the ice together, following the crowd of people.
‘No, I mean food?’
‘There’s a J?germeister tent. I think they do raclette if that’s your bag? If not, there’s a French bistro across the way. Le Manger. It’s a patisserie by day but does a mean steak-frites at night too. I’ve been there loads with…’
He doesn’t finish his sentence, I assume because he’s been there with someone who isn’t me.
I should be glad that he doesn’t bring that person up but I am curious, and a look returns to his face that I’ve seen before.
It’s wistful, sad even, and I want to take that look away or at least find out who could have evoked that emotion.
I know he’s not been single for the eight years since we broke up at university but the topic of conversation hasn’t really come up about that space in between.
‘I can do steak-frites,’ I say, to continue avoiding that conversation. ‘I might have to have an early night though; I’ve got to be in the library early in the morning, quite a lot to get through.’
‘I’m sure the kids will survive without story time for one morning – call in sick,’ he says casually.
I look over at him and pause for a second before answering. ‘It’s another event. It’s a book drive that I’ve set up – people are donating their old books and I’m re-gifting them in the community.’
‘You’re giving out old books for Christmas?’ he says, pulling a face. ‘Do you want me to ask my company? Maybe we can sponsor it so you can give out new books?’ he says. ‘We do it all the time for school fairs and stuff.’
I keep skating, trying to get out of the way of a particularly uncoordinated individual but I can’t help feeling a little hurt.
‘There is something about re-gifting that’s nice though, right? Repurposing a book so it can find a new owner?’ I suggest.
‘They’re not dogs, they’re just books,’ he scoffs. ‘Leave it with me, I’ll make some calls. Don’t create work for yourself.’
I don’t reply because I’m not sure what to say. I have a lot of love and pride for the book drive and it hasn’t felt like work. It feels like something good in a season of consumerism.
‘Or maybe you could help? Come down, join me on visits? You might be surprised,’ I say, trying to get him involved, to let him see what I actually do.
‘I’m not sure I can fit it in around work but you crack on,’ he says.
It’s a weird, casual rebuttal of my invitation but it sits there uncomfortably, similar to indigestion.
Do I say something? I really should be able to voice that hurt but I can’t.
Luckily we’re both ice skating so it’s easy to avoid eye contact. It’s simpler to keep moving.
‘You should write more, you know?’
‘I am. I’ve got some deadlines for the New Year.’
‘You should make more time for it. Don’t waste your talent,’ he remarks.
‘I’m contracted to write the rest of the series of bear books, it’s going OK,’ I say.
What is he hinting at? That he thinks my ambitions aren’t lofty enough or that my library work is a waste of time?
I think what he’s saying is well meaning but it unsettles me; I try so hard to be an author, but sometimes I do find it hard to validate my writing or define my success.
‘Maybe I can see if Phil and Meribelle can talk to their contact at Penguin.’
‘Maybe. I mean, I have an agent who does that for me.’
He squeezes my hand. ‘Well, make sure she’s looking out for you financially. That she’s getting the best deals for you. You deserve the world.’
And it’s a compliment. But it almost isn’t.
I don’t want to ruin this perfect moment, the romance of this date, with a conversation about me, my career and what I do and try to do with my life.
It feels better to push that down. We can talk about that another time.
And out of nowhere, I can suddenly hear the soundtrack of Bolero in my head, drowning out his words, and the festive music being piped in from above.
It makes me think of Nana and I wonder what she’d make of this conversation if I told her.
I used to report back on dates – have her squealing with laughter when things had gone horribly wrong.
I remember telling her about when this Nick dumped me in the pub.
She told me to post him prawns in a padded envelope.
She’d love the ice skating but there would be parts of tonight she’d be less keen about.
And for one clear moment I hear her voice clear as a bell in my head, saying, ‘You’ve got a good heart, Kay Redman.
’ I think about another Nick who echoed those words.
I push the thought aside. Not now. I just look up, at the stars trying to peek through the clouds, swaying my arms from side to side as we keep skating, continuing to go round and round in circles.