of loads of other possible names? He and Ella had lived so deeply in the moment for that night that he hadn’t even picked up on how little she’d volunteered about her family and background. He’d kicked himself after she’d gone for that, so self-absorbed had he been in talking about himself. Their conversations had been about hopes and dreams, future plans. They’d truly lived in a bubble of perfection.
He’d left her in the past, believed that it was for the best. And now a couple of hours in her company and he wasn’t so sure.
***
He caught up with her as she went to return her skates. She pulled her boots back on, being careful not to use him to lean on for balance. Physical contact with him seemed to scramble her brain, and that spelled danger.
‘You didn’t need looking after back in Devon either,’ he said. ‘Remember when we met? That guy claiming you’d short-changed him with his bill.’
A smile rose on her lips at the memory.
She remembered the flickering tea lights on the tables in the restaurant. The too-big Christmas tree in the corner that had snagged her clothes every time she walked past it with plates balanced on her hands. She’d worked in smarter restaurants in her time, but the pay had been good, a friend of hers had got her the job for the busy festive season and she was grateful for the distraction. Her first Christmas without her Gran. Celebrating didn’t even make it onto her to-do list. It hadn’t really done that since either. Christmas was a money making opportunity to her, and that was the way she kept it.
‘He was drunk as a skunk and chancing his luck,’ she said. But you stepped right in,’ she grinned as she remembered. ‘You were still squaring up to him, even as I got the sack and we were both thrown off the premises!’
He laughed and she smiled back. He’d been the most stunning guy in the room, sharing a table with a group of mates, a cut above the local clientele with his relaxed designer clothes and dark good looks. The other waitresses had clamoured to serve his table. Not Ella. She needed money, not complications. And yet when he’d stepped in like that he’d elevated himself above the usual dross. Because she wasn’t used to having family or friends stick up for her, let alone total strangers.
‘You did pour a pitcher of beer over his head,’ he pointed out. ‘I don’t think I can take the full credit.’
How cold and fresh the salt air had been after the heat of the restaurant and kitchen as the door had slammed shut behind them and she’d found herself alone and looking up at him on the icy pavement. The first person to wade into a battle for her since her Gran had gone. That was where it had started for her, they’d been together for the next fifteen hours, but with the benefit of hindsight she knew now that her heart had been vulnerable to him from the moment he stepped in. Awareness was a great thing. She knew her weaknesses now when it came to him, and getting in too deep this time around just wasn’t going to happen.
‘Exactly my point,’ she said. ‘I didn’t need your help.’
She could enjoy his company, spend a few days with him, but at the end of it she knew she’d be able to walk away.
He handed her a cup of mulled cider and she blew on its steaming surface, breathing in the delicious scent of sharp apple and sweet cinnamon. They found a bench and he sat down next to her and she looked out across the rink, the white fairy lights giving it a magical touch. Music from the band drifted across the ice.
‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this loads better than sit-up-straight napkin-in-your-lap fine dining? You can keep your Michelin stars.’
Her eyes sparkled and the tip of her nose was pink. He wanted to kiss it.
‘OK,’ he conceded. ‘Maybe it was. Maybe I’ve got a bit stuck in a rut of dinner in restaurants.’
‘Is that what you’ve been up to then, since we last met? Fine dining and behaving responsibly?’
The dullness of his life smacked him squarely between the eyes in the face of her vibrancy. He took a sip of his cider, the alcoholic kick of heat spreading in his abdomen.
‘You want a potted history? I can give you that in the space of about a minute.’
He could hear an edge of bitterness in his own voice and he curbed it, forced a neutral tone. Wasn’t that what he’d been doing for years now? Forcing himself to be neutral, not to feel aggrieved or resentful. He was duty-bound after all. Resentment of that was a pointless waste of time.
‘After we met I finished my medical degree. Then I did a couple of years foundation training as a junior doctor.’ He paused. ‘Then training for general practice.’
‘With your father?’ she said.
He nodded. His had been a family strong on tradition, generations of doctors before him.
‘That’s right.’
‘He must be really proud of you, following in his footsteps like that.’
There was a wistful edge to her tone that registered somewhere in his subconscious. He didn’t answer that. He wasn’t really sure pride came into it. He’d known his long-term career plans for so long that sometimes it felt like he’d been born with them. Any prospect of deviating from them might have been possible once, but not anymore. Not since his father’s stroke and the slow decline of his health.
‘So you’ll be a GP in your home town. At your family practice?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You don’t sound so thrilled about that,’ she said. ‘I thought you wanted to work abroad. Weren’t you going to work as a medic in war-zones or poor areas or something?’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe I got that mixed up, it was a long time ago.’
A wistful pang stabbed him somewhere below the ribs and he jumped a little as it made him realise how resigned he was to letting go of that particular dream.
‘That was just an idea I had back in college,’ he said dismissively. ‘It never came to anything. Things change. My priorities didn’t allow for it in the end.’
And so he’d gone on to GP training instead of specialising elsewhere.
‘Your priorities?’
He shrugged.
‘Family stuff,’ he said vaguely. ‘Would you like another drink?’
‘What about girlfriends? she said, when he sat back down, her voice completely neutral as if she couldn’t care less. It gave him a surge of hope that she asked at all.
‘No one special,’ he said.
At first that had been down to the hard work and gruelling hours of his medical training. Later, when one relationship after another failed in its early stages, he had to admit that maybe there might be more to it than that. Accused of being distant, of not really investing himself fully in the relationship, in actuality his lack of interest hadn’t been conscious. Unfortunately the kind of woman who really spiked his interest was the kind
