twenty-one
AMANDA
For the firsttime in as long as I could remember, I woke up on Boxing Day without wanting to hide under my duvet all day to avoid the post-Christmas fallout. No hunched shoulders or clenched jaw. No having my mother phone to rant about how we’d spent thirty-seven more minutes with Dad than her.
Bliss.
Instead, opened the curtains with a smile, only to be met by a blanket of white as far as the eye could see. Snow. Damn it, Henry had mentioned snow, but I hadn’t been prepared to the thick, fluffy inches that had appeared. Not that it wasn’t pretty, it was, but with snow came logistical issues.
Henry was already gone from my bed, having headed down to see Merv and shovel the paths and put down grit. A broken leg would be the last thing we needed.
The house was surprisingly quiet when I made it downstairs. Until I neared the front door. Shrieks and squeals filtered through the solid wood, and I sighed. I hadn’t intended to gooutside, but I had to check in on my clients, who I’d expected to still be bedded at the early hour. I pulled on a pair of boots and my thickest coat, and I reached into my pockets for my ugly gloves. Thick and cosy, but utterly horrendous.
‘Amanda!’ Henry shouted as I stepped onto the stairs outside. Cheerful and suspicious.
Before I could answer, something thudded against my thigh.
‘Ouch,’ I said.
A sea of giggles met me, and a curly blond mop appeared from behind a parked jeep. Then half a dozen smaller heads.
Henry had the audacity to grin.
‘Come play!’ His hands cupped around his mouth. ‘We’re having a snowball fight.’
‘No thank you,’ I yelled back.
The oldest boy immediately lobbed another snowball at me. ‘Are ya chicken, Amanda?’
‘I’m not chicken.’
The air was crisp and frozen, the snow sparkling like someone had dumped white glitter over the world. Merv pranced about in a winter coat, kicking up the snow much to the children’s delight.
Henry stood there with an infuriatingly smug look, and his army of Aussies. I was doomed.
‘I think she’s chicken, alright,’ he said to a chorus of laughter.
‘If you hit me with anything?—’
WHUMP.
A snowball collided with my shoulder. Henry bent down and gathered another.
’You absolute tw… um… rotter!’ I shouted, taking the stairs and bending down to scoop up a handful of soft snow.
‘She's joining!' yelled one of the children.
‘No, I’m?—‘
WHUMP.
Another hit my back. I twisted to see a child making a run for it.
‘Right.’ I declared, balling snow between my hands. ‘You want war? You get war.’
Five minutes later, I was in battle. Shrieking and laughing, slipping and pelting snow at anyone who moved. The kids took sides, switching allegiances to whoever they decided was in the lead at any one time. Merv tried to eat snowballs while children darted around, trying to be stealthy, but mostly failing. Snow clung to our clothes in white clumps, and everyone’s noses soon turned the brightest pink.
Henry caught me around the waist when I tried to dodge him and spun me, making me a still target for a volley or snowballs from the children. We teemed up and pelted them back until we grew both frozen and tired. At that point, I turned on Henry and delivered him a glancing snowball to the chest. With all the drama of a Regency gentleman losing a duel, he grasped his chest and tumbled over in the snow.
