The Wish List - Sophia Money-Coutts Page 0,104

I said, as my fingers grasped his and I stepped on to the ice like an old person.

He grinned. ‘Maybe. I’ll be Jean if you’ll be my Torvill?’

I inched along the ice, praying not to fall immediately. Small children slid around me like professionals. Ruby had done several laps already, hair flying behind her. I laughed as Hugo pulled himself along by the rail on the side of the rink while Mia shouted beside him: ‘Let go, don’t be such a wimp. Why am I marrying such a wimp?’

‘I’m not a wimp, it’s a long way down,’ Hugo shot back in a panicked, high-pitched voice.

‘Go!’ I said to Zach, who was tugging me along. ‘This is boring for you.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s funny. Look, concentrate, lean back. You’re bending like you’re constipated.’

‘Shut up!’

‘Well, you are. That’s it. And bend your knees a bit more. There we go. Use your arms for balance. Look, you’re off!’

I was off. Sort of. There were still children outperforming me, but I sped up. I let go of Zach’s hand and pushed one leg out behind the other, making a satisfying slicing sound with my boots.

‘YOU’RE SIMPLY THE BEST,’ shouted Eugene as he went past me, spinning in a little circle.

‘Show off!’ I yelled back.

Zach swooped up behind Dunc and took his hand.

Jaz let them go on ahead and skated over to me. ‘The hero worship’s strong in that one,’ she said, nodding towards them. Zach was pulling Dunc along to gurgles of laughter.

‘Cute.’

‘It is,’ said Jaz, looking from them to me. ‘So where’s Rory?’

‘Stuck with work. Getting a late plane from Berlin.’ I’d had increasingly apologetic messages that day and another bunch of flowers. Pink lilies this time, an even bigger bunch than the roses he’d sent earlier in the week. If you glanced through Frisbee’s window, you might have thought it was a florist not a bookshop. Flowers seemed to be Rory’s automatic way of apologizing. Send a big bouquet, all would be well.

‘How are things with him?’

‘All right.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, nodding. ‘Really.’ Then I sighed. ‘It’s just been a weird week.’ She already knew about Marmalade but I explained about the Tory party, the dress, our row afterwards.

‘Well,’ she said, looking back out to the rink, ‘either it’s the first test of your relationship, and if you really like him then it’s fine. Or…’

‘Or what?’

She bit her lower lip.

‘Go on, when have you ever been afraid to tell me something?’

‘Just make sure you’re not in a relationship for the sake of being in a relationship. There are others out there, you know. Look at me and George.’

‘Me and George is it now?’ I teased. ‘So you’ve seen him?’

She smiled. ‘Yeah, we went to the park at the weekend with the kids, and then he had a glass of wine at mine afterwards.’

‘Snogged yet?’

She shook her head. ‘Nah, I think it’s going to be a slow burn, this one. He seems to have Maya most nights and I’ve got Dunc but, yeah, we’ve messaged every day. So all I’m saying is you never know when someone’s just going to appear in your life.’

I nodded but, surprisingly, felt a flash of jealousy. Other women seemed to find boyfriends so easily, swinging seamlessly from one to the next like a monkey in the jungle. I’d waited years for just one and the thought of not having Rory made me feel panicked, as if I would be sliding backwards in life. I couldn’t lose him this quickly. ‘Jaz, I can’t break up with Rory after one bad week.’

‘I’m not saying you should. Just make sure you’re in this for the right reasons. But enough chat, we can’t stand here all night like a pair of pensioners.’

She pulled me away from the side and, as the opening chords of ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’ twanged through the speaker, we skated around the Christmas tree, Jaz screaming Bon Jovi so loudly that parents pulled their children away from us. I fell over, a spectacular collapse to the ice as my legs slipped from underneath me and I found myself flat out, my jumper riding up and exposing my belly to the cold. This sparked a brief flashback to the dance floor of the Tory ball, except here nobody looked down their horsey noses at me. Instead, Jaz squatted to help, although unfortunately this meant she went over too and we lay, screaming with laughter, until one of the supervisors skated over and said we were obstructing the others.

Then

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