“I’m sorry, Nick,” I mumble, putting a hand briefly over my eyes. “For everything.”
Then I take a deep breath, point in the opposite direction and say loudly: “Oh look. Was that a Panthera pardus orientalis wandering past?”
And out pops Toby.
You know the Jaws music that plays every time the shark gets close to its victim?
This Christmas, my stalker has his own version.
Except instead of der-der, der-der, der-der, he has a fluffy white jumper that plays ‘Good King Wenceslas’ really loudly.
I’ve been hearing it every time Toby accidentally makes an abrupt movement for the last three days.
“Where?” Toby says in excitement, spinning in tiny circles. “There are only twenty adult Amur leopards in existence, Harriet Manners. It’s very unlikely one of them is roaming around Kensington, but can you imagine?”
His hair is flat to his head, his brown corduroys are covered in leaves and his nose is very wet looking. Whatever I did in a past life to deserve this final nail in the dating coffin, I’d like to apologise.
It must have been truly awful.
“Toby,” I hiss. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m just checking you’re OK, Harriet,” he says, wiping his nose on his jumper sleeve and leaving a long, glittering trail of snot. “I don’t want you to end up romantically linked to a total weirdo.”
Irony is going to make my head explode.
“Yes,” I say sharply, unable to even look at my date any more, “like the kind of weirdo who would stalk me all the way to London.”
“Exactly. You have to be super careful these days.” Then Toby holds his hand out cheerfully to Nick. “Hello. I’m Toby Pilgrim, Harriet’s stalker, friend and your new lifelong nemesis. I don’t think we’ve been introduced yet.”
‘Good King Wenceslas’ kicks in again.
I hadn’t realised the jumper had flashing white lights in a Christmas tree shape as well.
Of course it does.
“Nick.” I flush. “You don’t have to—”
“Hi, Toby,” Nick says warmly, shaking his hand. “Great to meet you. Have you been waiting for us long?”
“Only about half an hour. Natalie told me definitely not to follow Harriet on the 4:32 train to South Kensington via Kings Cross, so I knew to get the earlier one.”
Nat. I cannot believe my best friend is using my stalker as her own personal spy.
“Great jumper, by the way,” Nick grins, taking a step back so he can assess it. “My aunt bought me one that played ‘Silent Night’ but I’ve never had the guts to wear it.”
I stare at him in surprise, but his expression is totally genuine. I’m guessing he doesn’t mean Yuka.
“It does take a certain level of bravery and style to work musical fashion,” Toby agrees smugly. “I doubt you have it, Nicholas Hidaka. Also everybody knows ‘Silent Night’ is the least cool carol. You’d have looked absolutely ridiculous.”
“Toby.” I flush a bit harder as Nick laughs. “Please stop.”
Toby looks down sadly at his still-flashing stomach. “Technology has let me down yet again, Harriet.”
Oh for the love of …
With a tiny sigh of resignation, I lean forward and click the off button so he at least stops pulsing for the next few minutes. “I’ll try again,” I say more gently. “Have you quite finished now, Toby?”
Then I give him a look that means in no uncertain terms: you have quite finished now, Toby.
“Not quite,” he replies chirpily. “But it shouldn’t take too much longer.” Then – with a series of soggy sniffles – he gets a notepad and pen out of his turtle-shaped satchel and turns to Nick.
Every year in the UK, approximately 1,300 home fires are caused by open candles, the majority of which happen in December. Honestly, I’m starting to realise that Christmas is actually an incredibly dangerous time of year.
I’m about to burst into flames as well.
“Ready?” Toby says, prodding Nick sharply with his pen. “I don’t give half-marks or pity points, so you’re going to have to concentrate.”
With a lurch of horror, I can just see The Harriet Manners Quiz For Acceptable Suitors written at the top of the page in neat fountain pen. With a top hat drawn next to it.
And what appears to be a seal with a moustache.
Plus a blue spaceship.
No. This can’t be happening. No. No no no no nononononoNONONONO—
“Question one,” Toby says with a broad smile. “Who was Gary Gygax?”
OK:
a) There’s a Dating Harriet quiz?
b) Is it weird that I kind of want to take it myself?
“No no no,” I squeak out loud, jumping forward and trying to rip it from Toby’s grip. “Nick, you really don’t have to—”
“Gary Gygax was the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons,” my date says with a small smile. “Next?”
I pause with a stunned hand in the air.
Huh?
“Excellent,” Toby says, making a little mark. “What word did Marvel Comics officially own between the years 1975 and 1996?”
Nick frowns. “Zombie. They also own thwip, which is the sound Spiderman’s shooters make, and snikt from Wolverine’s claws.”
Then he gives me a little wry what? shrug.
“Comic fan,” he explains modestly. “When I was ten I inherited about two hundred.”
“Point,” Toby says, making a little note. “Although you’re not getting any extra marks. Next – Asterix versus Popeye in a fight?”
“Asterix pre-spinach, Popeye post-spinach.”
Tick. “Would you ever wear white socks with black shoes?”
I can see the change of handwriting on the list. That one’s definitely coming from Nat.
“Yes. If I can’t find black ones, any socks will do.”
This earns him a cross. “Hogwarts house?”
“Gryffindor.” Nick grimaces, pulling a face at me as I let out a tiny Ravenclaw groan. “Sorry about that.”
Sugar cookies. I knew nobody was perfect.
“Ha!” Toby says triumphantly. “Then neither of us gets to hang out with Harriet! I’m Hufflepuff.”
It looks like I’m going to be wizarding on my own: given today’s behaviour, Nat’s clearly Slytherin.
“And, Nicholas,” Toby continues, looking more hopeful, “can you prove that in three space dimensions and time, given an initial velocity field, there exists a vector velocity and a scalar pressure field that solves the Navier-Stokes equation?”
Nick shakes his head. “I have no idea what any of that means.”
“Toby,” I interrupt. “That’s one of the Millenium Prize Problems. Nobody can prove it.”
“It has a million-dollar prize,” Toby whispers at me urgently. “If he’d known, we could have split the winnings.”
I glare at him – I can’t believe he’s trying to profit financially from my love life – then turn to Nick in amazement.
Why is he still standing there?
Why hasn’t he run away, screaming? Why hasn’t he given up and walked away? Why hasn’t he sneered, or looked condescending, or laughed at Toby, or judged him for being such a geek?
Or me for being associated with him?
After all, that’s what every other boy in school has done for the last ten years. I had a crush on Nick already: but Annabel was right.
Now I really like him.
And if he’s still here … that must mean he quite likes me. Maybe Toby turning up wasn’t such a bad thing after al—
“Just one more question,” Toby sniffs, putting the notepad back in his bag and folding his arms in front of him. “Nicholas Hidaka, curly-haired Japanese-Australian supermodel, are you fully and comprehensively aware of just how lucky you are right now?”
Yup. Spoke too soon.
Every year, Santa climbs down approximately 91.8 million dark, narrow chimneys. I’m now so utterly humiliated, I’
d give anything for just one of them.
A dark hole in the ground would do too: I’m open to suggestions.
“Toby,” I whimper, staring at the floor while mentally stuffing my bobble hat straight in his mouth, “you can’t ask somebody something like—”
“Of course I am,” Nick says simply. “Who doesn’t like a girl who knows a full breakdown of jam chart-toppers?”
With a surprised whoosh I look up.
He winks at me.
“Then you are a worthy opponent, Nicholas,” Toby says in satisfaction. “I shall look forward to our imminent dual to the death. Or maybe just a very aggressive game of chess.”
“Ace,” Nick grins. “You’re on.”
He looks at me affectionately in an are you OK now? kind of way.
I nod and give a little I’m OK now smile back.
Then I metaphorically take the stupid dating list out of my head, crumple it up for the second time this afternoon and throw it back in the bin, where it belongs.
Annabel was right.
This time it’s going to stay there.
“I’ve got to go and make homemade Christmas crackers now,” Toby says cheerfully, tightening his satchel straps. “The ones in the shops just never have glass microscope slides in them. Enjoy ice-skating!”
And without further ceremony, Toby leaps down the stairs back into the underground like a little white snowshoe hare: ‘Good King Wenceslas’ jingling in his wake.
There are so many things I need to think about after the last few minutes.
They include:
a) Dungeons & Dragons
b) The Millenium Prize Problem
c) Ice-skating?
Only one of those needs dealing with immediately.
“But,” I say in surprise, staring up at the stone entrance to the Science Museum, “you said … wasn’t there … you told me to …”
Bring gloves.
Oh my God. Nick did not mean rubber ones.
Thank goodness I didn’t get them out.
“Well, that’s the surprise ruined,” Nick says wryly, studying my stunned face. “You didn’t guess already? I assumed you’d already looked it up on Google, reserved your own skates and maybe written some kind of plan.”
Huh. Maybe Nick does know me better than I thought he did.
I just wrote the wrong plan, that’s all.
“Well –” I clear my throat indignantly – “I would have guessed if I’d been given the right clues. I don’t think you’re playing this date properly.”
Nick laughs and puts his hands on my shoulders.
A burst of something warm and sweet rushes straight through me: like hot chocolate, or melted marshmallow or a ginger latte. Or something else delicious I suspect I’m going to get very addicted to at some point in the near future.
Then he spins me around and starts walking me in the opposite direction.
This time, I definitely know where we’re going.
If there’s anywhere I’ve visited almost as much as the Science Museum, it’s the building standing directly next to it. Thanks to various movies about dinosaurs, I’m not the only one.
“There,” Nick says triumphantly as we turn the corner.
In front of us is the Natural History Museum.
The familiar stone building looms, just as it has since I was tiny: orange terracotta bricks and high spired towers; columns and arches, curves and spikes, like the perfect hybrid of an ancient university college and a traditional fairy-tale castle.
All over it runs the carved menagerie of stone animals I named when I was eight years old: Topaz the monkey; Malachite the parrot; Unikite the fawn, Labradorite and Aventurine the pheasants. (My Year Three school project on semi-precious stones made quite an impression.)
Inside this building is the recently discovered skull of a Barbary lion, caged in the Tower of London 700 years ago. There’s a giant butterfly with bullet holes shot through its wings; the first geological map of Britain; a giant squid 8.62 metres long.
The most complete stegosaurus fossil skeleton ever found lives there too, along with the diplodocus that first made me obsessed with dinosaurs.
For me, it’s one of the most precious parts of London.
But for the first time in more than a decade, something has changed. What has always been familiar and comfortable territory is suddenly new and fresh again.
As if I’ve never been here in my life.
As if I’m falling in love with the place all over again.
Lights are everywhere.
The green of the grass has been replaced by an enormous rectangle of white ice, and it’s glowing bright purple: criss-crossed with delicate lines like the creases on the palm of a hand.
Round the edges are thousands of tiny fairy lights, wound round the branches of the trees and down the trunks, woven on to the edges of the ice rink like intricate glowing spider’s webs. A large carousel shines like a rainbow and spins with little coloured horses: red and blue, yellow and pink, green and orange.
In the middle is an enormous fir tree, covered in white lights and tiny red baubles, silver bells, gold bows: glittering and nodding sagely.
Frank Sinatra sings ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’. Violins soar. A piano tinkles.
And dotted around the ice are people.
Giggling and cosy; spinning and holding hands; gliding and laughing and singing.
We know that ice-skating is the oldest human-powered means of transportation on earth. It was invented 3,000 years ago in Finland, when skates were made from animal bones and leather.
But we still don’t understand how it works.
Some scientists think pressure from blades causes the top layer of ice to melt. Others believe ice has a naturally unstable layer of molecules that move chaotically across the surface and make it hard to create friction. The only thing most people agree on is that ice is really, really slippery.
I think the people lying all over the floor right now would concur.
I look back at Nick.
His face is shining reflected purple, like an insanely handsome version of Dino from The Flintstones.
Honestly, he couldn’t have thought of anywhere more perfect to bring me.
But of all the things to do on a first date …
Lion Boy chose slipping?
He turns slightly anxiously to me and holds out his hands. “Surprise!”
Here’s the thing I love about people:
We’re not like gifts.
You can’t hand us to someone, all tied up in a bow and ready to unwrap. It’s impossible to open us up and pull everything out; to see who we are all at once.
Or ever, really.
With people, the surprises just keep coming.
As we approach the rink, it’s suddenly so cold our breaths have started fogging in front of us like tiny rain clouds.
Our tickets are already reserved, so we pick them up at the front desk, hand them over to a man in yellow gloves and grab our bright blue skates. They’re kind of stiff and sticky and they smell like the old teddy my dad stored in the attic for forty years.
We tug them on anyway and start lacing them up in silence.
Nick glances at my flushing face.
“Don’t worry,” he says with a grin, pulling his black gloves back on. “It’s not as hard as it looks.”
I push my hands into my red mittens and nod. “Mmm.”
“It’s just balancing on frozen water, after all. Easy.”
I glance through the window at a girl lying on her back in the middle of the rink, waving her arms around like a beetle.
Nick laughs and stands up. “We’ll do it together, OK?”
He squeezes my hand and I blink at him, and then at my red mitten. There was something I was just about to tell him, and now I’ve totally forgotten what it was.
The hot chocolate feeling is back.
Never mind central heating this Christmas: at this rate I’m going to be powering my
whole country with the warmth pulsing from my chest cavity.
England will never be cold again.
“Ready?” Nick says as we start staggering awkwardly like penguins in heels towards the rink. “Just stay with me.”
And together we step on to the ice.
It only takes a few seconds.
With a deep intake of breath, I hold tightly on to the side with both hands and stare at the ice, glowing in front of me.
I exhale hard and watch my breath drift into the air.
Then I let go and start gently moving.
Slowly at first, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. I push my blades into a V-shape with the heels touching, sliding them slowly out and in again so my feet make a fluid fish shape.
As speed starts to pick up, I bend my knees and do a crossover when I reach the corner: one foot reaching over the other.
Then a one-foot glide in a smooth arc.
A small hop until I’m facing the other way, pushing backwards across the ice.
A tiny spiral.
And as I begin to really fly – weaving in and out between the other skaters like an otter – I can feel it.
The cold, clean smell. The sharpness of my breath. The whoosh of freezing air against my hot cheeks. The unexpected freedom.
A bubble of lightness.
One that expands inside me until it feels like I’m made of foam: as if I’m about to take one more step and float straight into the air.
I give an abrupt shout of joy.
“Nick!” Beaming, I spin round with a neat little twist and stop with an incredibly satisfying swoosh.
A girl directly behind me squeaks in panic, makes a circling movement with her hands and plummets straight to the floor.
Oops.
I help her up apologetically then blink. Nick? I thought he was behind me. He said we’d stay together.
So where exactly is he?
I peer in alarm round the rink, and finally see him: still clinging to the side where we started, surrounded by a cluster of similarly positioned people. All splayed against the edges like the little sticky gummy men you throw at walls.
I race back as fast as I can.
“Nick?” I repeat in surprise as he looks up: legs akimbo, face pretty much squidged against the railing. His arms are clamped urgently round the handrails in claw shapes, and every time he tries to find some traction his feet skitter a little further away.