The Learning Curve (14 page)

‘What’s wrong with these trousers?’ Rob looked down at them.

‘See you on the hill,’ said Pete, ‘I’ll call you all when I find a place.’ He and Ally went about their delegated duties. Rob and Nicky walked together to the potato and sparkler queues.

‘
Tell me!
’ she whined.

Rob stopped walking. He stared at her. She stared back, raised her eyebrows and stuck out her chin. He spoke quietly and she had to lean forward to hear him against the background din.

‘I’ll only tell you if you promise to tell me one thing.’

She started squealing, jumping up and down and clapping her hands. ‘OK! I promise,’ she said.

‘Right.’ His voice was suddenly serious. ‘If you tell me –
honestly
– why you’re so desperate to know, then I’ll tell you what happened last night.’ He crossed his arms and waited.

She frowned at him. ‘Because it’s good gossip, dur-brain,’ she explained. ‘And good mates tell each other good gossip.’

To her amazement, Rob turned his back on her and walked towards the food stall, leaving her staring after him. O-K, she thought slowly. Wrong answer.

‘I . . .’ she started shouting at his back.

He turned round and waited. She paused.

‘Yes?’ he asked.

‘I want extra cheese on my potato,’ she told him.

He nodded, turned away, and continued walking. She stood for a while before turning in the opposite direction to make her way to the sparklers.

Buying the sparklers was a unique experience that Nicky absolutely loved.

They were sold from a stand near the top of a flight of narrow, uneven, concrete stairs that only allowed for one single file of people going up and one coming down. Once you made it to the top of the stairs you turned a sharp right and headed for the back of the queue, from where you could look out over the stunning view of London, punctuated by miniature, distant rockets soaring into the night sky like dancing jewels. Once at the front of the queue, a round, rosy man took your money and handed you your unlit sparklers. Then you moved quickly to an ever-changing huddle of people who were all lighting each other’s sparklers.

As she approached the steps, she began a thought process that she repeated every year. Initially, the sight of them made her think of a Dickens novel, which led inevitably to the
thought that it would be nice to put on
A Christmas Carol
at school this year as part of the traditional Nativity Play. This thought would be followed, immediately, by the thought that Miss James would never allow it, and finally Nicky’s conclusion that one day she must become the Headmistress of her own school or she would never truly be fulfilled. This year, as the stairs appeared, she had already finished her annual thought process and moved on to a new sweet epilogue: The realisation that thanks to her recent promotion, she was finally moving nearer to her dream.

Unsurprisingly, the stairs ahead were horribly squashed as people were trying to make a last-minute dash towards them to buy their sparklers before the show began. Nicky couldn’t rush in her jeans, so she took her time, merrily allowing people to overtake her before she reached them. She approached the bottom of them and joined the queue at exactly the same time as a man approaching from the other direction. It was obvious that one of them would have to give way before they reached the first stair. She glanced up to check the man’s body language for clues as to whether he was going to let her go first or nip in in front of her. He looked down at her at exactly the same moment, and about three hundred rockets roared up inside her body.

Thick fair hair flopped over his forehead and two wide-set, blue-green eyes shone down at her. He smiled.

‘After you,’ he said, in a voice that was so low she could have sworn the ground vibrated beneath them.

He allowed her on to the steps in front of him, one denim-clad leg stepping back to make room for her.

Now was the moment to say something startlingly fantastic.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

Bollocks.

She tried to climb the stairs in front of him in a feminine,
impressive way, hinting at all the different, fascinating aspects of her complex personality. It wasn’t easy in jeans that cut off her circulation. To her horror, she almost tripped, stretching out her hands to the floor, and the humiliation of this was only just lessened by the man’s rush to help her. He stepped up to her level beside her, and with one hand on her forearm, the other gently on the small of her back, murmured with concern, ‘Are you all right?’

His voice, like an electric current, seemed to follow a direct path to all her best bits. She stood up straight and turned to him. He took a step down, so she was now one step higher than him, almost at his chin level. They smiled at each other, the smiles lingering for vital seconds longer than was strictly necessary. She felt warm for the first time all evening.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘No problem.’

‘I-I’m usually quite good with stairs,’ she said. ‘We’ve got them at work and everything.’

He laughed, seemingly as surprised as he was amused. She knew she only had seconds left to study him. His teeth were great. Fantastic jawline. Lips that –

‘Get a move on or we’ll miss the bloody show!’ came a gruff voice from below.

She turned 180 degrees away from him in one and rushed up the rest of the stairs as fast as her jeans allowed her. Should she turn back and give a conspiratorial smile at the foolish world they shared? No, she’d probably fall over.

She reached the top of the stairs and, without a glance behind, turned and joined the queue. She looked to her right at the view below. She could feel Him (he had a capital
H already. ‘Him’! The masculinity of the word made her spine tingle) join the queue behind her, but couldn’t think of anything to say. For the first year that she’d ever queued for sparklers, she was infuriated by how fast and efficiently the snake of people moved forwards. Before she had worked out the precise farewell sentence to say to Him, with the correct amount of eloquent smileage, that would stay with Him for ever, she was at the front, fiddling with woolly gloves and coins.

She joined the huddled circle next to the queue of people lighting their sparklers off each other. And there, facing a straggle of strangers, whose faces were lit by a central golden glow, she suddenly felt A Moment of pure joy. Life was all potential. Life was thrilling. And here she was, right smack bang in the middle of it. (Was he looking? She arched her back a little.)

When he joined the huddle, she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. It would feel too much of an admission. Instead, she watched the end of his sparkler, which went directly for hers, touched it and stayed there. She forced herself to look up at him and was rewarded by him gently increasing the pressure of his sparkler against hers while raising his eyebrows suggestively and giving her a shy yet cheeky grin.

Hello, World, she thought, as a hot flush spread round her body.

She grinned and then they both looked down at their sparklers fusing together.

Then nothing happened and they stood there like two tossers.

Finally the sparklers fused. They shared a laugh in the
sudden golden glow. Then they moved away from the others and approached the stairs together.

‘Thank you for fusing my sparkler,’ he said, his voice all low.

‘My pleasure.’

Just as he was about to say something, his mobile went. She looked down and continued walking, but not before she heard a child’s voice exclaim ‘
Dad!
’ at the other end.

The Moment was over. She went down the stairs slowly, feeling ridiculously let-down. By halfway down, she was already lecturing herself. How on earth did she manage to get so excited so quickly? If it took her that little time to go up, then she deserved to come down with a thud. Stupid thing.

At the bottom of the stairs, she got a text from Pete. She didn’t understand a word of it, so she phoned him back immediately. He began to give her directions to the spot on the hill he’d found in the crowd, and, concentrating hard to follow them correctly, she stretched her arm out and made an abrupt swivel. She found herself standing an arm’s length away from the amazing bloke called Dad and pointing straight at him, almost touching his chest. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her. She stared back. Then they both stared at each other. She slowly put her arm down. His mouth tilted into an awkward smile, wobbled a bit, and then he tried again. His eyebrows rose fractionally. It was rather a sad farewell, she thought, as she watched him slowly turn round and go.

‘. . . and you can’t miss it,’ finished Pete in her ear. There was a pause. ‘Nicky? Hello? Are you still there?’

Nicky blinked. ‘Where?’ she asked, watching the bloke being slowly swallowed up by the crowd.

There was another pause.

‘You weren’t listening, were you?’

‘Um. No, not really.’

‘Where did you hear up to?’

‘Er . . .’ she cast her mind back. ‘“Hello?”’

She heard Pete mutter something about giving him strength before repeating himself. Half an hour later, she was still looking for them all, glancing around her for the mystery man. If they met again, here amidst five thousand other people, it would be fate, she told herself. A sign. But as she glanced more and more hectically through the crowds, she admitted to herself that the chances of seeing someone she actually knew in this enormous crowd were a million to one.

‘
Nicky!
’

She found herself staring into the face of an appalled Amanda.

‘I didn’t know you were coming here tonight,’ accused Amanda.

‘I didn’t know you were,’ defended Nicky.

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘Neither did you.’

‘Who are you here with?’ asked Amanda.

Nicky had always been able to think quickly on her feet; it came from years of having to answer the most unpredictable questions from ten-year-olds.

‘Rob, Pete and Ally,’ she told her. She was too preoccupied to be inventive right now.

Amanda’s face went rigid with martyrdom. ‘Oh. I see.’

‘Do you want to join us?’

‘God, no,’ Amanda’s face set itself into a smile. ‘I get enough of teachers all day. I’m here with friends.’

Nicky nodded slowly. ‘I’ll be sure to give them all your regards.’

Amanda gave her a confiding smile. ‘Yes, you
do
that,’ she said.

When Nicky finally found Rob, he handed her a cold baked potato, Ally handed her a cold mulled wine, and she handed them all dead sparklers.

‘You’ll never guess who I’ve just seen,’ she told them.

‘Amanda?’ said Rob, without taking his eyes off the display.

‘How the hell did you guess that?’

‘I didn’t. She texted me.’

Nicky stared at Rob. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘If you don’t tell me what happened last night, I’ll tell Miss James you think she’s a mad old cow.’

He fixed her with an intense glare. ‘I promise,’ he said, ‘nothing happened.’

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘So why did Amanda pretend she hated you just now?’

‘Because she probably does,’ he said simply. ‘Especially after last night.’

Five thousand people suddenly gasped and said ‘
Ooooh!
’ as rockets exploded above them. They both looked up.

‘So something
did
happen,’ said Nicky, looking back at him. He looked at her.

Five thousand people cried out ‘
Aaaaahhhhh!
’ as pretty pink bows cascaded down from the sky.

They both looked up.

‘We’re going to miss the whole bloody thing if you don’t keep quiet,’ said Rob. ‘It’s over in ten minutes.’

‘If you promise to tell me when it’s over, I’ll shut up.’

‘Deal.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yep.’

‘Prom—’

Five thousand people laughed in surprised delight at the skies above.

They both looked up.

‘I’ll tell you,
all right
?’ hissed Rob. ‘Now shut up.’

Nicky smiled and watched the display just in time to see the finale begin.

They got up and started to queue for the West exit.

Forty yards away, Lilith and Mark were hurrying Oscar and Daisy out of the display. Mark had thought that his mind would be firmly on the Due Diligence tonight, but he had been pleasantly surprised. Lilith had given him the ultimatum of never helping out for another weekend if he didn’t come, so he’d legged it straight from the office. He hadn’t seen what the fuss was about, but now he got it. Seeing his boy’s face light up with joy at the fireworks had been something else. And then there was that amazing girl with the hair and the body and the slightly shy, slightly knowing smile, who had reminded him that maybe, just maybe, there was more to life than work.

He kept his head down, while Oscar pulled at his hand. As he walked on, head down, eyes firmly on the feet of the people in front of him, he conjured up the image of that woman again.

‘Oh look! It’s Miss Hobbs! Miss Hobbs!’ exclaimed Oscar, pointing to his right and nearly dragging Mark off his feet. ‘Daddy! It’s Miss Hobbs. And Mr Pattison!’

Without thinking, Mark spun round the opposite way, keeping his head firmly down. He did not need to see teachers tonight.

‘Hey,’ called out Lilith. ‘Why don’t you meet her? She wants to meet you. Wants to know why you’re not coming to Parents’ Evening. And Mr Pattison’s there too. He’s a complete hunk.’

The children started begging him to take them to her, but he was not in the mood. He kept going in the opposite direction, towards the East exit.

Ally and Pete both lived in the opposite direction to Rob and Nicky and took the bus home. Once Rob and Nicky were on their own again, she got to work.

‘Tell me,’ she whined, trying to run to keep up with Rob, as he neared the West exit.

‘Wait till we’re in the car,’ he said.

She was about to whine a bit more, when she was sure she suddenly heard someone call her name. She turned to look.

She stared for a while. Nothing. Just the usual crowd of families, all fighting their way to the exits. She frowned and then felt herself being pulled along by the arm, by Rob.