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'Well!' Harriet said. She muted the television; the coverage had cut to advertisements. Someone, somewhere, had evidently decided that there was nothing that anybody could say to top that.
'I wish I'd thought of that,' Lalla said. She eyed Harriet with a speculative twinkle.
'One didn't, in 1959,' Harriet reminded her. Nearly sixty years ago; a different world. 'One simply didn't.' She wasn't sure whether she entirely approved of it now. She thought, dissecting her emotions, that it was not so much last century's prudery as the fact that a coach really oughtn't.
'I wasn't there when you won in '59, anyway.' Lalla looked as close to guilty as she ever did.
'Either time. Or '57.' Privately, Harriet was rather glad.
It must have showed, because Lalla looked suspicious. 'What's that face for?'
'If you had been going to carry on like that,' Harriet admitted, 'it's probably just as well that you weren't.'
'Why?'
Harriet pieced her thoughts together as she spoke. 'Well... this time next year, will we remember Katsuki, or will we remember Nikiforov?'
'I think we'll remember both of them.' Lalla laughed. 'I see your point. And if I'd been there in '59, I'd have scandalised the world and turned Harriet Johnson's Triumph into the Lalla Moore Show? Darling Harriet, it wouldn't matter now. You'll always be in the record books as triple world champion and Olympic medallist, and the curtain came down on the Lalla Moore Show decades ago. Do you know, the other day somebody asked me what it was like being in Doctor Who and why on earth I'd married Richard Dawkins.'
'What did you say?'
'That I was terribly flattered, because Lalla Ward must be a good ten years younger than me, and that I had no idea why anyone would marry Richard Dawkins, and personally I couldn't think of anyone nicer to be married to than Harriet Johnson.'
Harriet nudged her in the ribs. 'Flattery will get you everywhere.'
'I might still do it. Next time they dust you off for a bit of punditry.' Lalla took the remote control from Harriet and held it like a microphone. She hunched her shoulders slightly and stared intently through an imaginary fringe at the yoghurt advertisement that happened to be on the screen at that moment. 'Now, one of Britain's greatest figure skaters, Dame Harriet Johnson, gives her reaction to that... remarkable scene. Harriet, haven't times changed?'
'Why are you Clare Balding?' Harriet asked. 'This isn't the Olympics.'
Lalla stopped being Clare Balding and looked severely at her. 'That's not what you're supposed to say. This is you, now.' She sat up straighter, tilted her head a little to the left, and assumed the half-smile and slightly raised eyebrows that Harriet recognised as her own interview face. 'Haven't they just, Clare. Of course, my own dear wife, the renowned professional skater Miss Lalla Moore, wasn't able to be present at most of my competitions...' Lalla returned Harriet's gentle kick and swapped back into being Clare Balding. 'And she couldn't even catch up on Youtube.' She nodded, agreeing with herself and turning back into Harriet in the process. 'She couldn't. Of course, some of it was televised but it's hardly the same thing.'
'You're talking absolute rubbish,' Harriet said affectionately.
Lalla ignored her. 'And then,' she said, being herself again, 'I would hurtle through the crew and cameras and whatnot, and I would knock you flying and kiss you very thoroughly...' She launched herself at Harriet; they ended up stretched across the sofa in an undignified tangle of arms and legs.
'And then,' Lalla finished triumphantly, 'I'd get the recording from the BBC. And nobody would ever forget.'
Harriet was glad that she had seen it coming and managed to land her head on a cushion. 'Don't do that too often,' she said when she had got her breath back. 'My square-turned joints and strength of limb are not what they used to be.'
'Doesn't matter. I may be no carpet-knight, but I'm the same court jester that I always was,' Lalla said between kisses. 'And you, my love, will always be my champion grim.'
'Idiot!' Harriet said fondly.
On the television, coverage switched silently back to the over-excited commentators. Harriet and Lalla paid it no heed whatsoever.