Her eyes prickle with unexpected tears and she quickly blinks them away. It’s probably done him good, she reflects as she slips quietly out of bed. Her coming up here means he’s had to manage the kids, their home, and the last bits of Christmas. And rather than shirking his duties he’s risen to the challenge. Okay, wrapping a few presents for his own parents is hardly heroic – but in all their years together she can’t recall him ever wrappinganything. Not even for her birthday or Christmas. It’s been vouchers in envelopes, or a bottle of perfume clearly bought in haste and handed to her unwrapped.
Once he really pushed the boat out and presented her with a family meals-type cookbook in a gift bag.Justwhat she’d needed. New ways to make flipping sausage and mash! She knew Martha had had a hand in the gift bag element, as she’d overheard her telling him off. ‘Are you just going to give it to her like that? For God’s sake, Dad!’ Joel doesn’t get the whole ribbons, gift tags, wrapping paper thing. But now he’s coming to meet her at the airport! And this must mean one thing.
That he loves and appreciates her after all! Because driving out to Stansted Airport for her benefit is, by Joel’s standards, akin to traversing Siberia wearing only his socks.
Shelley pads across the room, parts the curtains a little and blinks at what’s before her.
Snow! So much snow, thick and white and covering the garden and the hills beyond. So much white that land and sky have merged. Only the loch is a different hue, gleaming silvery grey. The world is monochrome and Shelley stares, transfixed.
Perhaps, she thinks, Joel is coming to the airport because he wants to make it up to her. Finally, she decides as she dresses quickly in jeans and a sweater – and then, at the front door, pulling on a pair of Michael’s green wellies – he’s realised that being in possession of a penis means you still have to pull your weight. And that his isn’t so colossally huge that it makes itimpossible for him to stand at the sink and wash up. That it’s not so exhausting to drag around all day that evenings must be spent, near comatose, on the sofa.
Shelley steps outside, blinking as the dazzling whiteness tingles her eyes.That’s it,she realises.It’s taken me coming up here for Joel to remember that I am an actual person.She’s wondered sometimes, these past six months especially. Because he’s seemed different. Even more distant and blasé than usual. Preoccupied too, as if he’s had something – or someone – on his mind. There have been nights out with friends, which he’s been vague about. And when he’s come home from these nights, he’s slipped into bed and turned his back to her. She’s known he was awake, that he was lying there with his eyes open. She could just sense it.
What was he thinking about? What was going on?
‘Joel?’ she murmured one night. She touched his back and he flinched. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Just really tired.’ He exhaled slowly and then his breathing deepened and settled, as if he was asleep. But she knew he was faking it. When you’ve been with someone for twenty-five years you justknow.
Snow crunches underfoot as Shelley makes her way to the edge of the garden. Trees are clotted with snow, and fence posts jut out from the thick white blanket like pencil lines. It’s a Christmas card, right here. Did Joel really remember to drop off the cards to their neighbours? She catches herself fretting about home, and mentally shakes herself out of it. Is she too controlling, wanting her grandma’s decorations brought down from the attic and a holly wreath for the front door? Isthatthe problem? Her thoughts break off as someone groans quietly where the cars are parked.
‘Roger!’ She smiles and tramps over towards him. More snow is falling now in soft flakes.
‘Morning, Shelley.’ He smiles, hot-faced in a brown bobble hat and a thick padded jacket. He tweaks at his beard. ‘This is something, isn’t it?’
‘It’s incredible.’ She spots the shovel, propped up in a drift of snow. ‘Are you trying to dig out your car?’
‘Hmm, yes. Quite a job but we need to get back today. In fact we should have left by now. It’s the local kids’ Christmas party later and I still need to finish Theo’s costume?—’
‘You mean fancy dress?’ she asks, and Roger nods. ‘Youdo that?’ she exclaims.
‘Well, yes.’ He looks bemused by her reaction. Yet for a moment, this man’s willingness to make his kid’s fancy dress outfit is more astounding to her than the vast quantity of snow that fell during the night.
‘Well, Theo and Frida come up with the idea,’ he clarifies. ‘Theconceptis theirs. They’re very good at that.’ He says this jovially, with no trace of bitterness. ‘But I tend to do the construction.’
‘Right.’ Momentarily, Shelley tries to picture Joel being put in charge of such a task. But it’s impossible to imagine. Switching her attention back to the snow, she looks around to where Roger has been digging. Of course, if the Sampsons’ car needs to be dug out of the snow, then Niall’s will too. All of the guests are supposed to be leaving today. What if theycan’tdig their way out? And what if the snow is still lying tomorrow – on Christmas Eve! – and she and Lena and Pearl can’t get to Glasgow for their flight home? No, that can’t happen. Shelley pushes the thought aside and turns back to Roger. ‘D’you think you’ll manage this?’ she asks.
‘To dig us out?’ He grabs the spade. ‘Have to. No question about it. There’s a prize for best fancy dress and we won it last year. Theo went as a cracker! And this year he’ll be a Christmas pudding.’
‘But how—’ she starts.
‘Not as tricky it sounds actually. I built a wire frame and covered it with papier-mâché. Layers upon layers of the stuff. Had to buy extra newspapers, even the trashy ones we can’t abide, haha?—’
‘No, I actually meant how?—’
‘So the basic structure’s done. A huge papier-mâché sphere that’ll be suspended from his shoulders, and all I need to do is?—’
‘Roger,’ Shelley cuts in, ‘I meant, even if youcandig out your car, how are you going to get up onto the road?’ Her gaze follows the track. Or rather, where the track lies beneath a thick layer of snow. ‘We’ll all help you. Of course we will. But what will the actual road be like? Will it be possible to drive safely?’
‘Oh, the gritters will have been out,’ he says firmly as he starts digging again.
Shelley frowns. ‘D’you think gritters come all the way out here?’
‘Of course they do!’ Frida announces, stomping towards them now in a thick sweater and pyjama bottoms stuffed into wellies. And now Niall appears, followed by Lena and Pearl.
‘Oh my God,’ Lena breathes. ‘We’re snowed in!’
‘No, we’re not,’ Frida exclaims. ‘This is twenty-first century Britain and we need to get home. Theo has a party to go to?—’
