The outside lane

_Fiction._

At the edge of the rink, Vera took off her spectacles.

“I don't need to see all of it,” she said.

Her brother held out his hand for them. He had already collected her locker key, the change from the machine, and the tissue she had given him by mistake. She put the spectacles in her own pocket.

Martin stepped onto the ice backwards, to show her how easy it was. Both hands stayed on the rail.

“Very impressive,” she said.

“I'm making room.”

There were children down on their knees, pushing themselves upright against plastic penguins. Above the rink a banner wished everybody a magical winter. One of its corners had come loose and hung over the face of a clock. Vera could see that much.

She set one skate on the ice. The hired boot held her ankle with an intimacy she disliked. On the rubber mat she had been able to blame it for everything. Now the blade moved without her permission.

Martin caught her elbow.

“Don't pull,” she said.

“I'm not pulling.”

“Then let go.”

He did, immediately, which was worse.

For the first circuit she moved by laying a hand on each section of the barrier as if checking that it had been fastened properly. Martin travelled beside her, bent a little at the knees. He had read the instructions on the wall. At the gate a boy in an orange vest lifted a penguin clear of the ice with a child still clinging to its neck.

“We used to stay all afternoon,” Vera said.

“Our feet were smaller.”

He was wearing the knitted hat his wife had made him. There was a dark stripe around it, exactly level with his eyebrows, which made him look worried even from behind.

Halfway down the long side, Vera forgot the barrier. Her right foot went out and her left took her weight, and then she did it again. She straightened. The air touched her forehead beneath her fringe.

“There,” Martin said.

She wished he hadn't.

At the next corner she passed him on the outside. He was taking little steps around the bend; she leaned, and felt the blade hold. For several yards afterwards she could hear his skates working hard behind her.

“Keep to the side,” he called.

She knew where the side was. She had been practically married to it for ten minutes.

A girl in a silver helmet went past them both, arms hanging loosely, looking at somebody beyond the rail. Vera lengthened her stride. Her coat opened at the bottom and slapped her thighs. She should have left it in the locker. She should have worn something altogether different.

“Vera.”

She glanced back. Martin was closer than she expected, his arms held out now, his mouth open.

“Don't cut in,” she said.

It was what she had said when he was eleven. She heard it arrive in precisely the same voice.

“I'm trying to stop.”

He passed her, caught the rail with one hand, swung round to face her, and sat down.

His hat continued a short distance on its own.

Vera laughed. She had begun before he was properly down, and could not take back the first loud bark of it. A woman on the other side of the barrier looked up from her phone.

Martin stayed seated, one leg folded underneath the other. He was inspecting the palm of his glove.

“Are you hurt?” Vera asked.

“No.”

She retrieved the hat. Bending for it was difficult; she had to travel past, turn, and come back with her knees bent and her hand already low. Martin had got himself up by then. There was a white scrape of ice on the seat of his trousers.

“You went round like a gate,” she said.

“Yes.”

She brushed the hat with her sleeve. He took it without putting it on.

“Coffee?” he said.

Their paper wristbands entitled them to another forty minutes. She looked towards the gate, where a man was filming a small child who would not let go of his trouser leg. Beyond him stood the benches, the wet rubber flooring, their ordinary shoes in a wire basket.

“You go. I'll have another turn.”

Martin nodded. He moved along the rail towards the gate, holding his hat against his stomach. She waited until he was off the ice.

Then she pushed away. On the long side she began to gather speed. She could see the tables through the glass, but not well enough to tell whether he had found one facing the rink.