ahead of them in soft clouds and it turned out inclement weather had its advantages. The buzz of people at Hyde Park Winter Wonderland was still there, but it wasn’t overcrowded. Unfortunately it also meant the ice rink hadn’t sold out. He attempted to dig his heels into the frosty path as she dragged him eagerly towards it.
‘We could get a drink?’ he suggested.
‘We can do that afterwards.’
She turned back to him, the tip of her nose pink from the cold, her eyes sparkling and frost clinging to her hair in the silver glow of the fairy lights strewn overhead and all around them, and he felt his resolve falter.
In the centre of the rink was a Victorian bandstand and live music drifted across the ice. Parts of the UK might be at a standstill due to the blanket of snow but there was no sign here in the city of the fog that was blighting the airports. They seemed to have escaped the worst of it and there were plenty of people out enjoying the novelty of the bizarre weather.
‘I don’t do ice skating,’ he protested. ‘I haven’t done since I was about six.’
‘So what exactly is that you do do?’ she asked, totally ignoring him and leading the way to pick out skates. ‘Michelin-starred restaurants and family parties? What are you, fifty? What about the fun stuff?’
‘That IS the fun stuff.’
‘What size are you?’
She held his gaze belligerently until he grudgingly said ‘Twelve.’
Five laborious minutes later and he was laced into a pair of plastic skates. For Pete’s sake, it felt as if his ankles were in a vice. He struggled after her toward the rink, doing his best to stay upright. She sailed past him and did a neat little turn, then slowed down so he could keep up. Small children and couples holding hands bombed past them on both sides. The twinkly Christmas-ness of it added a surreal unreality to the situation. A couple of hours in her company and anything seemed possible.
And in a flash of déjà vu he understood. Hadn’t that been the thing that was most intoxicating of all about her?
****
‘You need to relax your knees a bit,’ she said as he clumped awkwardly along next to her, upright and straight backed, as if he were on the conveyor belt walk at Heathrow with a suitcase and a manbag hanging off him. ‘It’s easy really, just all about balance.’ The fact he’d given it a go despite his reluctance pleased her. The flash of a grin in spite of himself as he picked up speed gave her a glimpse of the guy she’d met back on the coast. The one who’d paddled in the freezing cold sea that late afternoon before Christmas, lifting her in his arms and threatening to dunk her in while she’d squealed with laughter. Afterward, they’d found a pub with a roaring log fire and he’d ordered them both coffee with a side of brandy to warm them up.
She moved smoothly ahead of him, keeping her balance easily. She hadn’t skated for ages, but there’d been a rink in Bristol where she’d lived with her mother and gone to school. She’d done it often enough in the past to pick up the knack again pretty quickly. She was rather enjoying the superiority of it all, staying just in front of Tom so he could get the full benefit of her prowess, when a small child with an orange bobble hat and a manic grin careered into her at an insane speed. In a millisecond, self-assurance gave way to chaotic pinwheeling of arms and grimacing of teeth and then, with an unladylike squawk, she lost her balance and ended up part of a massive tangle of arms and legs on the ice. The kid disentangled himself, totally unscathed, and skated away while she looked up at Tom. A thin spray of ice coated her face and she could feel a cold damp patch soaking into the seat of her jeans and a sharp stinging on her left knee.
‘It’s all about balance, right?’ he said, looking remarkably steady on his skates and holding a hand out to her.
****
She grabbed his hand and was back on her now rather wobbly feet in one strong pull, leaning over to check her stinging knee and noticing that he kept hold of her hand. There was a tear in her jeans through which a bleeding graze was visible.
‘Are you hurt?’
The concern in his voice brought a flutter somewhere deep in her chest. It was probably because the only person who ever had a stake in her well-being was herself. She stood up straight immediately and gave him a breezy smile.
‘I’m fine. Come on, let’s get going again.’
He tugged hard enough to stop her intended big flourish of a skate off and she saw him watching her with a steady calm.
‘Let’s take a breather and check out that leg.’
He pulled her by the hand to the side of the rink, somehow managing not to fall flat on his own arse in the process.
‘I’m perfectly alright,’ she protested all the way. He totally ignored her. For Pete’s sake, she’d gone down hard. She was lucky she hadn’t broken her bloody neck. He pulled her across the rubber skate matting to a quiet spot and made her sit down while he unlaced her skates and tugged them off.
‘You’ve cut your leg. So stop with the moaning and let me check you haven’t done anything worse.’
He held her foot, encased in its thick woolly sock, in his hands, and slowly rotated her ankle. Her eyes were drawn to the gentle way he cradled her heel, his thumb sliding slowly up her instep.
‘Hurt anywhere?’
She shook her head.
‘Only my pride.’
He ran practised hands up and over her knee, checking for swelling, and the unexpected slide of his hand over her inner thigh took her mind right off the sting of her grazed knee. He was kneeling in front of her, and he raised his head to meet her eyes steadily with his own dark grey ones, both hands moving over her leg with a touch that could now only be described as a stroke. Her stomach gave a delicious flutter that spread slowly lower to tingle between her legs and simultaneously rushed up to her brain to exhibit itself as clanging alarm bells.
She stood up sharply.
‘I don’t need looking after,’ she said, adding a couple of paces to her personal space. ‘I didn’t need it five years ago and I don’t need it now.’
He stood up next to her, feeling the distance she’d put between them, knowing it wasn’t just a matter of physical space. His heart sped in his chest as if he’d skated a few circuits of the rink at full pelt instead of limping around it on two left feet. He’d forgotten how long and slender her limbs were, how her fine-boned fragility hid the fiercely self-reliant person underneath. A surge of protectiveness flooded through him, and the fact she didn’t want his protection made her all the more alluring. She was her own person, now as then, not about to rely on him to take her through her path in life, determined to take responsibility for her own destiny rather than expecting him to make it happen for her. She felt like a clean crisp breath of icy fresh air, and it made his senses spin.
The elapse of time had convinced him she hadn’t been all that – maybe they hadn’t been all that. Self-preservation had made him tell himself he’d done the right thing in not looking for her when she’d run out on him. It had been the only way to silence the nagging thought that it was a mistake, letting her go like that without a fight. Not that he would have had much of a headstart on tracking her down, she’d made sure of that.
