Breaking the Ice

by Mandy Baggot

  What was the matter with her? She studied the What’s On guide in detail, she should have been expecting the performers to start turning up, she should have paid more attention.

  She didn’t notice Dave’s reappearance until it was too late and he leant over her, resting a plump hand on the desk and breathing deeply so she got the full benefit of the beer and pork scratching fumes. Real ale was obviously on special offer at the pub again. It wasn’t pleasant and Samantha immediately removed her headset and rose from her chair to avoid any further wafts that might be directed her way.

  ‘Alright Duck? How were sales while I was out?’ Dave questioned, sitting his large body down on the chair that immediately depressed a few inches under the weight.

  ‘Good. Humpty Dumpty and Friends is almost sold out, I’ve sold about fifty tickets for various nights of Skating on Broadway and Ballet for All Seasons is also doing well,’ Samantha informed him, taking her bag down from the peg behind the desks.

  ‘Well done Duck. Keep this up and you could be in line for a BOB,’ Dave informed her, smiling just enough for Samantha to catch a glimpse of his gold tooth.

  She smiled back and picked up her bag. A BOB (Box Office Bonus) was a night out with Dave at his favourite pizzeria where he ate too much garlic, drank too much wine and tried to make you do the same. Then you had to try and do or say anything to avoid sharing a taxi with him or letting him walk you anywhere. She had been on a BOB night once, when she had first started working at the hall. Now, although she was the highest selling assistant every month, she made sure she assigned a large proportion of her ticket sales against Felicity’s code. Never again was she going to experience the humiliation of a fat, balding, forty-something trying to hit on her.

  ‘Oh, one thing that happened - Jimmy Lloyd turned up. But the show doesn’t start until tomorrow night and I didn’t think we were expecting anyone today,’ Samantha spoke as she paused by the door that led away from the front desk.

  ‘Prior arrangements Samantha, I should’ve mentioned it. Did he ask for me? I expect he asked for me, didn’t he?’ Dave spoke, leaning back in the chair and cracking his knuckles loudly as he put his hands together.

  ‘Well no, but…’ Samantha started, the noise setting her teeth on edge.

  ‘I let the boys in earlier, the technical crew who are setting up the rink. Nice lads, down to earth, you know - au natural as we say. Jimmy Lloyd wanted to get in some extra rehearsal time,’ Dave informed Samantha.

  ‘Oh,’ Samantha responded.

  She was doing her best not to become irritated as she watched Dave slick his hands through his hair before putting on the headset she had just been wearing. No wonder it was itching her. It wasn’t Gobby’s fur or fleas, it was two tonne of hair products. He went on to put his Brylcreamed fingers all over the keyboard. Sanitising wipes, she needed to order some, she was down to her last packet.

  ‘OK Duck, you get off to your break. The manager’s here to manage,’ Dave told her with another gold toothed grin.

  Samantha gave him a weak smile and headed out of the office and into the main lobby.

  She never went out at lunchtimes. She wasn’t a shopper or one for fancy wraps or expensive pasta lunches, and sitting on a bench in the nearby park did nothing for her. The park was usually full of single mothers with kids who screamed and chased swans with sticks, or tramps lying on the best benches away from the bins. There was usually bird shit on any benches that weren’t taken up by tramps or single mothers and if you didn’t get an over-friendly dog wanting to hump your leg while you were eating your sandwich you were lucky. And then there were the joggers who gave you a death stare as you bit into your tuna mayo and made you feel like you should be eating nothing but Nimble bread and watercress or eating nothing at all and racing round the park supping Evian like it was going out of fashion.

  So, lunchtimes for Samantha involved a short trip up two flights of stairs to the light and sound booth. Although it was only a small room predominately filled with a mixing desk that controlled the in-house speakers and lights, she had made it her haven. She had some favourite books there, a radio and magazines Cleo had given her (the usual celebrity and fashion trash but it passed the time) and she had a bird’s eye view of the arena of the Civic Hall. Most importantly it was quiet, there were no telephones, no customers, and no Dave, meaning she could sit and relax for an hour.

  Cleo had no understanding of what it was like to be quiet and alone with just your thoughts for company. When she’d asked Samantha what she did for her lunch hour she felt compelled to lie. She told her she walked up West most days mentioning Primark and H&M a good few times. She wasn’t sure Cleo believed her but it was better than admitting she hardly ever left the Civic Hall in the daytime and was back there again most evenings.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t have friends, she had been out with Felicity and Karen for drinks after work at least twice, she just preferred her own company. What was wrong with that? Plus she had Cleo to fill any void she might have with her endless chatter and racy lifestyle. It was like sharing a flat with a principal actress in a continuing drama, there was just no need for Samantha to assert herself towards excitement, Cleo provided it all with no effort required.

  She was just about to start flicking through Star Life magazine when she suddenly realised there appeared to be more light coming from the main arena than usual. She moved her seat forward so she was closer to the window that overlooked the floor. She pressed her nose against the glass and the scene that greeted her almost took her breath away. A large proportion of the floor space had been turned into an ice rink and the bright whiteness was shining up into the arena like a reflection from a giant mirror.

  She was just beginning to marvel at her seating arrangement around the rink when she saw someone step onto the ice and start to skate round it. She put Star Life magazine down on top of the mixing desk and watched the skater moving around the ice, getting faster and faster as he warmed up his blades.

  She could see it was Jimmy Lloyd, but he’d changed from what he’d been wearing earlier and was now dressed in a deep blue long-sleeved polo neck and black tracksuit bottoms with thick socks tapering the trousers in at the top of his skates.

  Samantha was transfixed, watching him gather speed across the ice and then jump. He made two turns in the air and landed on one foot, elegantly moving off again as if it had been the simplest manoeuvre in the world.

  Her knowledge of ice skating could be summed up in three words. Torvill and Dean. But she had skated herself, years ago. When she was a teenager she and Cleo had been regulars at an ice disco near to where they’d lived. She had enjoyed the music and the exercise while Cleo had enjoyed teetering around the café in her blades chatting up boys who used to speed around the ice for five minutes, not caring what or who was in their path, and then decamp to the café and decant Martini Rosso into their coffee. The ice rink had long since been turned into a housing estate.

  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.