“Yesterday this room was covered in a coating of ice.I spoke of an icebreaker metaphorically, but last night proved the ice between us was more than that—it was tangible.Do you feel it’s gone now?I feel warmth, a sense of closeness.We’re going to build on that.I want each of you to think of a secret.Something your partner doesn’t know about you—something you’ve deliberately kept from them.”How Nikolas resisted turning to Ben he didn’t know.
“Think of this secret and ponder why you’ve kept it.Then you’re going to tell it to us all here in this very special, safe room.Those of you without a partner, you’ll be telling yourself this secret as much as us.Think about why you keep this self-knowledge buried so deeply.I’ll give you all a few moments to prepare.”
There was a universal flicking of eyes between couples and some very nervous laughs.The doctor consulted his clipboard.
“Nigel, would you like to share first?”
No, he wouldn’t.
“Nigel?”
Nikolas looked up and around the room and began to address them but then twisted around to Ben as he spoke.
“Do you remember my friend Gregory?”Ben’s eyes narrowed.His face paled slightly, probably not noticeable to anyone else—but Nikolas saw it.
“Do you remember we went on holiday together?”Ben nodded, completely silent.
“I promised you I wouldn’t fuck him…”
Ben began to rise automatically: fight or flight apparently kicking in before he could stop himself.
Nikolas laid a hand on his arm.“I kept my promise.I swear to you I kept my promise, and I didn’t let him touch me the whole time we were away.”He licked his lips a little but held Ben’s gaze.“But I let him watch me when I…I don’t think that broke our agreement at all, but I feel bad about it, because I don’t let you watch—but then he was old and dying and you’re not.”
* * *
The silence was thick, almost painful, like the pressure before the tsunami.Fergus didn’t need to call on Ben to respond with his secret, because Ben, keeping Nikolas’s gaze, replied deceptively evenly,
“Do you remember Natasha?”All eyebrows shot up at that.“Well coke wasn’t the only thing I let her blow.”
The silence was broken by the sound of one or two jaws dropping.
Ben was impressed that not a flicker of reaction passed across Nikolas’s face.The temperature in the room had plummeted, but apparently he was the only one who felt this.
Fergus coughed lightly.“Okay…Well, err…hold that thought.Um…John?”
John shook himself.“Oh, yes, I was going to tell you, Mark, I sometimes don’t rinse the plates before I put them in the dishwasher, even though you nag me to…”
“God, yes, I was going to tell you I forgot to take your library books back for three months and kept lying to you saying I had…”
The chorus of confessions continued in a similar vein, each man sounding relieved and embarrassed in equal measure that their sins were so trivial, so domestic.One even confessed to secretly owning an original series Star Trek tricorder.They were all clearly ignoring the thunderclouds over the couple sitting with folded arms and stony expressions in their midst.
The doctor nodded when the last of the confessions was done.“Now, reflect on why you kept those little…well, why you held those things inside.How do you feel now?”
No one glanced in the direction they likely all wanted to.
“All right.I want to move on now.I think that might be best…Predictably, when I tell you all you’re going to get a sumptuous dinner tonight—there you go, exactly, you always all cheer…but this is going to be a dinner with a difference.You have to pair off for an intimate dining experience but not,” he held them all riveted with a gleeful, expectant pause, “with your own partners.Now, I know you’re going to find choosing very hard—”
“I’ll take James.”
“I’ll take Samuel.”
Nikolas and Ben had made the exchange and dragged their chairs over to their new places before the others had time to process the interruption.Arms were folded again and stony expressions resumed.
“Oh, well, in that case perhaps the rest of you would like to…” Nervous shuffling, like children in a school playground desperate not to be left to last, ensured even the most reluctant to pair off eventually did.
“Right, the aim of this exercise is to imagine you are complete strangers but tonight you’ll be on a first date.How do you strike up a conversation?What do you say?What do you tell a stranger about yourself?Right, you have half an hour to plan your conversation on your own, then we’ll have coffee, and then two hours to learn as much as you can about your new partner andthen, with all this new knowledge, you must introduce your new partner to the group.I’ll give you a little clue, gentlemen: the key to this exercise is listening.There’s a reason we evolved with two ears but only one mouth.”
Each new couple pulled their chairs out of the group to sit together and work through the exercise.It afforded the opportunity for Ben to drag a chair behind Nikolas.Nikolas was staring at the carpet, lips pursed.Samuel was thinking deeply, making vague notes on the paper he’d been issued.
