Breaking the Ice (3 page)

She watched Jimmy moving around the ice, changing direction and speed, jumping and twisting and turning. She didn’t know much about the technicalities of what he was doing, but even someone with her limited knowledge could tell he was good.

And then abruptly he stopped, in the middle of the ice, and raised his head to look up towards the sound booth. Immediately Samantha launched her chair backwards away from the window, wheeling herself up against the back wall and dipping her head. She had to make sure she wasn’t seen. No one knew this was her place and she wanted to keep it that way. If she lost the sanctuary of sitting alone in her hideaway at lunchtimes she might be forced to sit in the restaurant that, even though it was rarely busy, was not a place to collect your thoughts. She would end up being befriended by Mrs Nelmes, the lady who came in every day smelling of wee, made a cup of tea last three hours and picked the sultanas out of her scone. Or even worse, she might have to start walking up West and pretending to be interested in boutiques.

She was such an idiot. She shouldn’t have been staring out of the window watching what was going on. It would be her own fault if she’d been seen. She flipped open
Star Life
magazine and went back to reading about anorexic footballers’ wives. How did it feel to be that thin? She didn’t really want to be that thin because it looked like some of them had quite a lot of difficulty just standing up, or maybe that was just the mad, sometimes multi-storey shoes they wore and nothing to do with their lack of waistline. If she was honest though, she wouldn’t mind being slightly slimmer, like Cleo. Perhaps that was why Cleo enjoyed shopping so much. Cleo’s figure was such she could walk into any shop, pick something off the rail and it would fit. Samantha, although only a size fourteen, never seemed to fit into anything properly. It was either too long in the leg or too tight round the waist and that was the main reason why there was no joy in shopping for her. She had had a bad experience in one of the large chain stores once, involving a ‘helpful’ sales assistant, a size fourteen dress and a jammed zip. The incident had scarred her. She didn’t really do clothes anyway so it didn’t matter. She was in uniform most of the time and there was always her wardrobe full of Cleo’s cast offs if she was desperate.

She also wasn’t blonde. Everyone who was anyone was blonde. Samantha had inherited her mother’s mousey brown hair which never seemed to respond to any shape it was cut into, unlike Cleo’s hair that was blonde and wavy like their father’s. Cleo’s hair could be fashioned into any style, given some curlers or tongs and imagination. Currently Samantha’s hair was in a sort of chin length bob. It was supposed to resemble Victoria Beckham’s latest transformation, as suggested by Cleo, but it was starting to annoy her because it flopped over her face at really inappropriate moments. Cleo was also always trying to persuade her to dye it. A number of times she’d brought home some
Superdrug
own brand colorant she had bought on a BOGOF and insisted that they both turn Lightest Light Ash Blonde together over a Chinese and a box set of
Friends
. So far Samantha had managed to wriggle out of it. Twenty four years old and she had never dyed her hair. Apparently that was weird.

Samantha turned the page of the magazine and saw to her dismay that the problem page had been torn out. The problem page was one of her favourite features as, as hopeless as the stories were, it reminded her of the fact that her life was uncomplicated in comparison. She knew she didn’t have hairy nipples, gonorrhoea or a boyfriend who called her ‘lard-arse’ and those facts were comforting.

She closed the magazine and slowly inched her chair back towards the window. Very carefully she lifted her head up to look out of the glass and down onto the ice. She took a deep breath and moved so she could see the whole of the rink. She was glad to see it empty. Jimmy Lloyd had gone.

She breathed a sigh of relief and retrieved her lunchbox from her bag. She opened it up and very quickly realised it wasn’t hers, it was Cleo’s. This meant it housed cream cheese and Worcester sauce. Samantha made a face, she couldn’t stand Worcester sauce. It had been a lifelong hatred ever since her mother had added it to the gravy to pep up the family roast one Sunday. The mixture had been the vilest substance imaginable and had spawned her detestation of anything made by Lea & Perrins. Cleo, in contrast, had to have Worcester sauce with everything, so much so she carried a bottle of it in her handbag. Samantha had once investigated whether you could actually buy the sauce in sachets hoping they would be more discreet to use in restaurants than a two hundred and fifty millilitre bottle.

She hastily put the lid back on the lunchbox to stop the smell escaping even more and put it down on the sound desk. Cleo would be mad when she noticed. She wouldn’t eat tuna, she would have to buy something from the deli and then liberally splash it with the smelly brown stuff. Gobby hated Worcester sauce too, that and cottage pie.

Two

It was 6.00pm before Samantha got home. Home was the two bedroom house she shared with Cleo, ten minutes walk (one tube stop) from the Civic Hall. They had used to live in the outskirts of the city in a large, somewhat spooky house, their father had inherited from his grandmother. Then, when their parents decided to retire to the coast, the spooky house was sold for a small fortune and this enabled the purchase of Samantha and Cleo’s home, as well as their parents’ bungalow by the sea. Cleo had chosen the house. It was at the top end of their parents’ budget in a smart area of the city, and it had been close to Cleo’s work at the time (an assistant at the jewellers where she lasted three weeks before getting caught in the safe snogging a customer). Samantha knew their parents were feeling guilty about moving away, even though their daughters were nineteen and twenty two at the time, and she knew that her mother would be fretting and raising her blood pressure unless she knew they were settled and happy. As long as it had four walls and the essentials Samantha didn’t mind what it was like, as long it wasn’t too far away from the Civic Hall. There had been no question of her and Cleo going their separate ways. Who would turn down the offer of a property with no mortgage just because it meant living with your sister? They complimented each other anyway, well kind of, and Samantha would never have forgiven herself if Cleo had gone to live alone and been burnt to a crisp one day drying a much needed top over the hob.

Samantha let herself in and knew at once Cleo was already home. She could smell incense and that meant one of two things. Cleo was either trying to create an ambiance for a boyfriend she was entertaining later or she’d overcooked something and was trying to mask the smell of burnt saucepan. Or it could be both, that had happened before.

Cleo was in the kitchen, sat at the table, when Samantha entered. She had one foot on a chair with, what looked like, newly painted nail varnish on her toes. In one hand she was holding a copy of this week’s
Star Life
magazine and in the other was a fork she was using to eat from the plate in front of her.

‘
Hi Sis,’ Cleo greeted cheerfully, without looking up from her reading material.

‘
What are you eating it looks gross,’ Samantha remarked, leaning over the plate and taking a sniff.

‘
Urgh, don’t sniff at my plate. It’s a new recipe,’ Cleo responded, pulling the plate towards her defensively.

‘
Throwing a mixture of items from the fridge into a pan doesn’t make it a recipe,’ Samantha told her as she crossed the room and put the kettle on to boil.

‘
I think if you look the definition of ‘recipe’ up on
Wikipedia
that’s exactly what it does make,’ Cleo spoke.

‘
OK, let’s see. There’s onion in there, ham, maybe a little cheese, and potato, oh and Worcester sauce, naturally,’ Samantha told her, getting two mugs out of the cupboard.

‘
If you’re trying to make me believe you can smell all those things I won’t have it,’ Cleo remarked, staring at her sister.

‘
My sense of smell may be a strong talent but no, I just ran through the things I knew had been hanging round in the fridge for a while,’ Samantha told her.

‘
You’re sad Sam, you know that,’ Cleo said, dipping her head back into the magazine.

‘
Yes I know. So how was the estate agents? Were you busy? Did you get to go to any cool houses?’ Samantha asked her, putting a normal tea bag in her cup and a herbal bag into Cleo’s.

‘
It was boring. I spent half the day answering the telephone. I thought that was what they paid a receptionist to do! The other half I spent checking through house details, not very nice house details either, I mean some of these places I wouldn’t put a dog in,’ Cleo responded.

Samantha smiled to herself. Cleo did love to exaggerate. She expected that the homes not fit for a mongrel were fine, but probably located on an estate or in a less illustrious postcode than theirs. Cleo was a little bit of a snob really.

‘
So you don’t like it,’ Samantha said as she made the drinks.

‘
Oh I wouldn’t say that. There are a couple of cute guys that work there,’ Cleo said, spooning another forkful of food into her mouth.

‘
Does that mean you’ll stick it out for a while - at least until you’ve laid them both?’ Samantha questioned, dunking Cleo’s herbal teabag up and down in the mug.

‘
Sam!’ Cleo exclaimed in horror at her sister’s statement.

‘
What?’ Samantha asked, turning to face her sister.

‘
You don’t say things like that! Not you! Not my little sister! Mum would have a fit if she heard you,’ Cleo continued, putting her fork down on her plate as if Samantha’s comment had put her off her food.

‘
Well Mum isn’t here and I am twenty four years old. Just because I haven’t acted the act out yet doesn’t mean I can’t use the word in conversation. Being a virgin doesn’t make you completely oblivious to sex you know,’ Samantha answered, bringing the drinks over to the table.

‘
Oh stop it, you know I don’t like you talking about that,’ Cleo responded and she refused to take her tea and clamped her hands down over her ears.

Samantha smiled in amusement again. Cleo hated the fact she was still a virgin. She was sure she found it almost embarrassing, that was why she hated her mentioning it. If she was truthful though she was a bit embarrassed by it herself. It should have been something she was proud of, but as time went on it just became more of a hurdle she wondered whether she would ever get to jump, so to speak.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to do it, she did, for lots of reasons, like to get it over with and to stop herself feeling like an outsider in a worldwide club. She also wanted to find out what was so wonderful about it that Cleo wanted to do it all the time with practically every guy she met.

She had come close to doing it. The first time was at Cleo’s eighteenth birthday party when she was just sixteen. Cleo had invited Thomas Clancy, one of their neighbours when they had lived in the spooky house. Samantha had thought he was the most gorgeous man she was ever likely to set eyes on. He was tall and lean with thick, dark hair and blue eyes like Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet. She knew Cleo had already slept with him but that hadn’t mattered because Cleo had slept with most of their neighbours under thirty at the time and on this occasion Cleo’s heart was set on laying Miles Jones, the manager at the Post Office.

She remembered vividly the moment when Thomas had asked her to go upstairs with him. Her heart had felt like it was going to burst right out of her chest it was hammering so hard. He had held her hand and pulled her towards him to kiss her and then, just as she started to think the moment had arrived, just as she could almost taste the sweetness of his lips, Cleo burst out of her bedroom, shirt undone, tears streaming down her face with Miles Jones hurrying after her.

And so had ended her moment with Thomas Clancy. The rest of the night was spent consoling her sister about Miles Jones’ wife and two children. His family at home hadn’t bothered Cleo, it never did, she wasn’t looking for commitment, but when it came down to it something had pricked Miles’ conscience and Cleo’s birthday hadn’t gone with the bang she had hoped for.

The only other time was a slightly closer brush with sex when she actually managed to get down to her underwear. The object of her affection had been Joe Phillips who used to work at one of the nearby independent bookshops. Bookshops did more for Samantha than boutiques, so if she did have to venture up West for groceries or something Cleo couldn’t possibly live without, she would inevitably end up browsing in a bookshop. Joe had ordered her a copy of a book she’d been waiting for that she believed to have gone out of print.

She had returned to the bookshop a week after Joe had placed the order and it was then, as he was putting the book into a bag that he asked her on a date. She hadn’t known what to say at first. She was thrown at the suggestion as she didn’t look her best. Her hair hadn’t been washed in two days (thanks to Cleo’s inability to let her know that she had pinched her shampoo and used it all) and she was wearing a pastel pink tracksuit (Cleo having hand washed a scarf with the last liquitab). But Joe had been clever, he hadn’t worded the invite like he was asking her out, he had said it more like they were going to casually bump into one another at one of the nearby pizzerias. So, before she really knew it, she found herself accepting and meeting him for a meal.