‘What does it mean?’ she asked, eyeing the bus shelter’s electronic display. ‘You’ve got two minutes to enlighten me.’
‘Oh god, don’t make me.’ He made a tortured face. ‘I promise, only prose from now on.’
‘Come on now, Mr Thomas – share with the whole class,’ Rosie quipped.
He bit his bottom lip and said, ‘Fine. It’s from an A. E. Housman poem – the opening line. The TLDR summary is that we should enjoy life in the moment. Drink in all the beauty we can.’
His eyes swept her face, then, and the intensity of his gaze sent a shiver through her. A second later, as the bus pulled in to their stop ahead of schedule, she was almost sure she’d imagined it.
To Rosie’s delight, she was surprisingly graceful on roller skates. After a couple of false starts she got the hang of gliding along, changing direction successfully and coming to a stop when needed.
Aled, on the other hand, was more ungainly than she’d imagined possible. Like a newborn foal, he stumbled and cursed, struggling to remain upright. It was as if his sheer height and heft made the whole thing harder, his large frame requiring superlative balance and total control of his suddenly wheeled size 11 feet.
Rosie hooted at the sight of him clutching the black metal gate they’d entered the park through, which stood wide open and adjacent to the mobile skate rental stand.
‘Come on, you can do it!’ she trilled. ‘I believe in you. Just try and let go!’
He threw her a look that was half furious at her piss-taking, half thrilled that she seemed to be enjoying herself so much.
‘Easy for you to say, Tinkerbell,’ he said, his voice wry and amused. ‘I must have at least a foot further to fall than you do.’
‘Easily,’ Rosie conceded, skating over to him, emboldened by the discovery that she wasn’t half bad at this. ‘However, you said you’d do this with me, so let’s be having you.’
Gingerly, he removed one hand from the railing he was holding. He wobbled and bellowed ‘Shit!’ the word barely audible above Rosie’s burst of laughter.
Without thinking, she extended her arm and offered him her hand. He hesitated. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked. ‘If I go down, I’ll take you with me.’
‘It’s a risk I’m prepared to take,’ Rosie said. ‘Besides, you’ve saved me from breaking bones before, remember?’
‘Of course I remember,’ he told her, sliding his large warm hand into her smaller, cooler one. Within seconds, Rosie realised her error.
The contact with him had immediately rendered her knees weak, and it took every shred of her core strength not to collapse onto the dusty path beneath her. There was something strangely paradoxical about Aled’s effect on her. At the same time as feeling completely safe with him – finding the sensation of touching him almost like a relief, or a homecoming – being around him was totally destabilising. Her heart thumped as her lungs struggled with the simple act of breathing.
With some effort, she restored her own balance and pulled Aled away from the fence so they could skate slowly along in tandem.
‘Dear god, this is terrifying,’ he said, a little breathlessly.
‘Oh, come on,’ Rosie scolded, hoping that teasing him would restore her equilibrium. ‘Surely you’ve done scarier things than this on your grand tour? Bungee jumping? Sky diving? Fire eating?’
‘Nah,’ he admitted. ‘I was always more about the landscape and local cuisine than potentially life-threatening leisure pursuits.’
‘Fair enough,’ Rosie laughed. A second later, she couldn’t resist asking: ‘Is there anywhere you still want to go?’
‘Honestly? I don’t know,’ Aled said, straightening his spine slightly as he grew more confident that he wasn’t about to keel over. The motion drew Rosie closer towards him, and her breath caught in her throat. She ached with the need to be nearer still.
‘I dunno if I’m maybe a bit tired of wandering,’ Aled continued. ‘When I first came to London I thought it’d be a short stop on the way to somewhere else. Then I realised the flat needed work, which I decided to stick around for … Plus Rhianne’s here, and now school are asking if I’ll consider staying on.’
‘Really?’ The word came out high and shrill, and Rosie worried it betrayed an unreasonable degree of excitement on her part. Fortunately, Aled was concentrating so hard on not collapsing that he seemed not to have noticed. He was still holding her hand, his grip firm but warm.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘The person whose job I’ve been covering is on maternity leave. Apparently she’s confirmed she’s coming back, but in the meantime someone else has resigned. The head grabbed me last Friday to say the position’s mine if I want it, which is obviously nice.’
‘Wow,’ Rosie said. ‘Definitely flattering. What did you say?’
‘That I’d think about it,’ Aled said, cautious and a little cagey. ‘It would be quite a commitment. And a major change of plan.’
The words were cold water on Rosie’s rapidly burgeoning hope that he might stay.
‘D’you think you can manage now?’ she asked him, not wanting to drop his hand but knowing that – for the sake of her sanity – she had to.
