It was Oliver. Standing on the edge of the rink, looking back at her. Her stomach contracted, she wobbled on her skates and before she could right herself, her bottom met the ice with a bang.
‘Mum, are you all right?’ Angel skated up to her, now moving like a professional.
‘Yes, I’m fine. This part is well padded.’ She flicked her legs, shifting her feet to try and get traction. ‘Get me up.’
Angel bent double, taking Hayley’s hands in hers and straining to shift her.
‘Hurry up, Angel.’ Her heart was racing. Oliver was here, at the ice-skating rink? Why? What was he doing here? Was he here to see her? She needed to find out. Despite everything, her body was urging her to get off the ice and go to him. She looked again, across the ice, twisting her head to reconnect with him. He wasn’t there.
‘I can’t move you! You’re too heavy!’ Angel screamed. ‘It’s all the fizzy wine!’
‘Let me help you,’ Michel said, appearing beside them with a stop on the ice that Robin Cousins would have been proud of.
‘No, it’s too late.’ Hayley began to unlace her boots. ‘These are coming off.’
‘What? You cannot do this,’ Michel told her.
‘Mum! What are you doing?’
‘I… just… I need to run.’ She wrenched the boot from her left foot. ‘I can’t run in these. I can’t even skate in these.’ She pulled at the second boot. ‘Hold onto them for me.’
She thrust the blades at Michel and started sprinting in her socks across the ice rink, much to the amusement of the other skaters.
Her heart was driving the blood around her body as the freezing surface beneath her feet scalded her soles. She ran like she was treading on broken glass, hopping off the rink and scouring the onlookers for Oliver.
‘Oliver!’ she called, seeking out anything familiar that would lead to him. His dark coat, the tawny colour of his hair, his stance, the shape of his shoulders. She skidded past a woman carrying a tray of coffee and mince pies, her eyes metres ahead, picking off strangers, frantic to find him. And then she saw him, walking briskly towards the exit. She injected more pace into her run.
‘Oliver Drummond! Don’t you leave!’ she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘Stop right there!’
It was like someone had hit a pause button on life. Everything halted. Chatter stopped, the sound of Michael Bublé quietened, people turned to look at her and the only sounds still audible were the blades of the skaters on the ice.
She was breathing hard as she watched him stop. Then he turned around, his eyes finding hers through the crowd. Shestepped on, quickly closing the gap between them as everyone around went back to what they were doing.
She looked up at him, suddenly filled with nervousness. She wet her lips.
‘So, you thought you’d come here and show off your silky skating skills, huh?’ She forced a nervous smile.
‘I’ve been kept amused for the past ten minutes by yours,’ he stated.
‘I aim to please. It’s all deliberate. It’s a new genre of ice dance, a bit like body-popping,’ she replied, putting an arm out then letting her forearm dangle from the elbow.
He nodded and the atmosphere cooled. She didn’t know what to say but she had to say something. And not something verging on the ridiculous. Something real. She didn’t want things to be how they were between them.
‘Michel’s here,’ she stated.
‘I saw,’ he replied. ‘I’m glad.’
‘What you did, finding him I mean, it was such a wonderful thing and?—’
He shook his head. ‘You don’t need to thank me.’
She watched him swallow, agitation in his stance.
‘I was never completely honest with you, Hayley.’
She frowned then. ‘You weren’t?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
