Ice Dancing Episode 13

It was only after I had cleaned Fiona up and got her into bed that I realised I had never really thanked him. All I had done was shout at him. The next morning, Fiona had a blinding headache. She didn’t remember much of the night before at all. “What did I do? What did I do?” she kept saying.

She could hardly lift her head off the pillow and every time she tried to stand up she had to rush off and be sick again. I gave her painkillers and a lot of water but no sympathy at all. She said “Sorry, mum,” and a bit later, “I’ve made a fool of myself,” and then, “What will he think of me? Oh my God, mum, what will he think?”

“I expect he thinks you’re a daft wee lassie,” I said nastily. “He can’t have found it very attractive – watching you throwing up your guts into a black plastic bucket.”

Later on that morning, Annie rang me. “Did the wanderer return?”

I told her all about it.

“Christ, I bet she’s embarrassed.” “She is.”

“Well she’s going to feel even worse. Have you seen the paper?”

“No. I haven’t been down to the village yet. Why?”

“The paper” meant the local weekly newspaper that was usually full of group pictures of coffee mornings or retirement parties, with the occasional burglary or brawl or lost dog thrown in for good measure.

“Your new neighbour’s in it,” said Annie. “What? What has he done?” “Nothing. It’s what he is that they’re interested in.”

“So what is he then? Come on, Annie. Don’t keep me in suspense!”

“He plays ice hockey. He’s come to join the Kestrels for the season. The coach says with his excellent record he’ll strengthen their defensive line-up and be an asset to them and they’re lucky to have a player of his calibre. Or words to that effect.”

The Kestrels were a professional ice hockey team that played out of an arena some miles away in the next town. Some of their players were Canadian or American, some European, some Scots. It wasn’t the most popular sport in Scotland.

When people talked about “the game” here they generally meant football. Fiona had been to the hockey once or twice with her school friends but it had never appealed to me or Sandy. I knew nothing about it, though Fiona told me that all kinds of people went. “Old people as well,” she said, pointedly, looking at me and her father.

“I think we’ll have to go and see them play,” said Annie.

“Maybe we should.”

Later on, I took a bowl of eggs down to the cottage: big, brown, free range eggs. I had wiped them over with extra care so that they looked good.

Joe came to the door with a mug of coffee in his hand. He seemed surprised to see me and ever so slightly offhand. Or it may have been that he was just tired. He didn’t invite me in and he didn’t offer me a coffee. In fact he didn’t say much at all. It felt strange to be standing on Louise’s doorstep and not to be invited in.

“I came to apologise. And to say thanks. felt I was rude to you last night.”

“No you weren’t. Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad I found her. How’s the patient?”

“Fine. Hungover. Ashamed of herself.” “Happens to the best of us.”

“I’ve brought you some eggs.”

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“Well. Just to say thanks.”

I handed them over. He smiled and took them.

“I’ll put them in the fridge and give you your bowl back.”

“Oh there’s no hurry. I’m not short of bowls.”

There was a little pause. He still didn’t invite me in, just stood there awkwardly with the eggs in one hand and his coffee in the other. So I went back home and tended to my hungover daughter.

Sandy had slept through the whole thing. In the morning, he was up and about early and when he came in for lunch I told him Fiona had a tummy bug. I don’t know if he believed me or not, but he didn’t argue.

Later I took her more painkillers and weak tea and toast and warned her not to say anything to her dad. I assumed I could rely on Joe to keep his mouth shut. “Thanks, mum,” she said.

“What did you drink?”

“Chloe brought a bottle.”

“But what was in it?”

“She’d gone round some of the stuff in her dad’s drinks cabinet and taken a bit of each. She said it was a sort of cocktail.”

“What kind?” I asked. “Molotov?” But it was wasted on her. She just shook her head.

“Chloe tasted it and she didn’t like it, and the others didn’t like it either, but I thought it was all right. So I finished it.” “Why?”

“They bet me I wouldn’t.”

“And if they told you to go play in traffic, would you do that as well?”

“It was OK. It tasted OK. Then it started raining and I said I was going home. They went home too. I don’t remember much after that. Well I remember being in Joe’s car and him telling me to hold on while he got me home. And the next thing I knew, I was barfing in the bucket.

Birthday party

He didn’t invite me in... In fact, he didn’t say much at all. It felt strange to be on Louise’s doorstep and not be invited in

It was Charlie McGowan’s fiftieth birthday and we had been invited to his party in the village hall. I didn’t really want to go. I wasn’t much good at parties.

Besides, I was heading for forty myself and I didn’t want to be reminded of my own advancing middle age. Charlie was living down in the village at that time. He was newly divorced and he had moved back in with his mother, temporarily he said, though she didn’t seem to be so sure about that part of the arrangement.

Betty McGowan had been preparing for this party for weeks. She said she was doing it to cheer Charlie up, but he didn’t seem to be too distressed by his divorce from Margaret. Their kids were grown up, and I don’t think they had been getting on well for years. Then Margaret did a course in Business Studies at the local FE college and got a new admin job with the council and before too long there was a new man as well – somebody she was working with. “A suit,” said Annie. “A grey suit.” She had seen them around the town together. The new man wore very fancy ties, allegedly.

Ice Dancing by Catherine Czerkawska, Dyrock Publishing, £9.99 and Kindle E-reader from £2.99. For more of her books, including The Posy Ring and A Proper Person To Be Detained, see www. saraband.net.