The boy cackles with glee. “Drunk and a mouth on ya. Wait ‘til I tell my mum. She said proper gentlemen don’t curse, but you sure do.”
“Listen here, little mister, I—” I start, but Emily cuts me off with a smooth, “Let me handle this, Olly.”
She crouches down to the boy’s level, still ridiculously graceful on her skates, making me feel even more like a Spanish cow with two left hands who will never find his way back to an upright position.
“What’s your name, buddy?” she asks sweetly.
“Nigel,” the boy says suspiciously.
“Well, Nigel, let me explain something.” She maintains her sweetness, but there’s a thread of steel beneath her words as she adds, “Some people are good at ice skating. Some people are good at being kind. Guess which one you need to work on?”
Nigel’s face goes red. “He looks stupid. Really stupid.”
“And you sound mean,” Emily counters. “Which do you think is worse? Looking silly while trying something new, or teasing someone who’s struggling?”
The boy opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, then ends with a wrinkle of his pug nose and a sigh. “Okay, fine.” Glancingback at me, he adds, “Sorry, mister. You look like a right wanker, but I should have kept that to myself. Happy Christmas.”
“Happy Christmas, Nigel,” I say, a bit of my hope for the next generation restored as he skates away.
Emily helps me to my feet and back to my emotional support barrier, while I fight a fresh wave of completely inappropriate affection.
But there’s nothing fake about the warmth in my voice, as I say, “Thank you, Ms. Darling. No one’s ever taken on a cheeky child for me before. I’m touched.”
“My pleasure.” She grins. “I’m glad he seemed to see the error of his ways. Now, let’s get you to safety before you break a bone. Or your face. Or someone else’s face.”
“Told you,” I accuse. “I’m the worst.”
She laughs. “Not sure about that, but you’re up there. If my sister were here, she’d be having an aneurysm.” She pauses, glancing up at the sky as if in deep thought. “Makes me wish I’d done some filming. Maybe I can ask the French girls to air-drop me a few of their videos. I mean, I cantellIzzy all about your ice-skating stylings, but it’s really something that must be seen to be believed.”
“Wicked woman,” I accuse as she puts her arm around my waist, bolstering me for the final stretch to the exit.
“Very wicked,” she agrees, still grinning. “But I’ll make it up to you with a hot chocolate, Twitchy.”
“As you should.” I sniff, playing up the petulance in my voice as I add, “And I’ll be wanting extra whipped cream. For my dignity. It requires extra whipped cream to recover.”
We make it to the outdoor café beside the rink through a combination of Emily’s patient skill and sheer luck. By the time I collapse into a chair and Emily goes to fetch drinks, I’m just grateful to be alive.
And to have holiday skating behind me for another season.
“Here, drink up,” she says a few moments later, pressing a mug into my hand before settling into the wrought iron chair beside me. “You look like you’ve been through something.”
“I have,” I announce, wrapping my frozen fingers around the drink, which is indeed topped with extra whipped cream. She really is an angel… “You were there. You saw. It was even worse than usual. This might be it, Em.” I stare dramatically into the distance as I add in a softly wounded voice, “This might be the year I take genuine trauma away from that ice.”
“Understandable, considering the near-death experience of it all,” Emily says solemnly, playing along as I suspected she would. “But the way you crawled to the barrier on your hands and knees after that first big fall? Inspirational, really. I wanted to clap. Slow clap. For a long, long time.”
“Now, you’re taking the piss,” I say, glaring at her over the rim of my chocolate.
“No, I’m serious,” she says. “Iwouldhave clapped. But I was too busy reassuring a little girl that you weren’t actually dying. You just sounded like you were, with all the moaning and groaning.”
“I hate you,” I mutter.
She giggles. “No, you don’t. And she was so sweet! She was really worried about you. And her mother—” Something buzzes in her pocket, and she breaks off with a smile. “Oh, I bet that’s Isabelle now. We always joke that she has a skating sixth sense. She always texts when I’m …” Her words trail off as she scrolls through her phone, the pink slowly leaving her cheeks.
“What is it?” I lean closer. “Bad news from home?”
“No, from here.” She shifts the screen toward me, her lips pressing into a tight line. “I set up a Google alert for you, too, so…”
Once again, the headlines are plentiful, and as cheeky as Nigel before Emily gave him a good talking to:
