‘We just want to make it better for you, Clara.’ Rose knew she sounded about thirteen, that the words were a plea, a wish to pull a wand from a back pocket and magic everything better. To make everything easy, for all of them.
Clara smiled, then set her glass down again. ‘I know you do. That’s why you will always be one of my most treasured friends, Rose. But it’s never going to be better. He’s always going to be gone. And I’m never going to be able to pick Poppy up and feel her winding her fingers through my hair. I just have to decide how I’m going to deal with that.’
‘Oh, God. Clara.’ Rose didn’t know what to say. Even Madeleine, normally to be relied on for her chatter, was silent.
How could Clara be smiling? How was she not crying, like Rose was? She knew she was, because the tears were dripping down and hitting the back of the hand with which she still clasped her glass.
‘It’s fine,’ Clara said again, more gently this time. ‘It’s all fine. I’ll work it out. Can I ask something of you, though?’
Clara looked at Rose, doing her best to see past the tears, doing her best to concentrate on the dark eyes behind the soaked lashes as Rose nodded, then rubbed at the tears with the back of a hand.
She knew she was being a hypocrite, that what she was going to ask of them was hypocritical seeing as it was the one thing she hadn’t managed to be, but it seemed more important to say it than it ever had before. ‘Will you stop wasting time and be honest about your feelings?’
‘What do you mean?’ Rose said.
‘You and Tania are more alike than you realise,’ Clara said. She held a hand up as a frown threatened Rose’s forehead. ‘Hear me out. I know you think she has everything sorted. That she’s the lucky one. That you are just muddling through life, that you make all the wrong choices, that your decisions are harder, and you can’t face your reality. That people don’t value the real you.’ Rose’s frown deepened, but her head inclined in something approaching a nod. Her corkscrew curls gave the movement away. ‘The thing is,’ Clara said. ‘Tania feels all those things, too.’
‘How can you know that?’ Rose said.
Clara smiled. ‘Because she told me.’
Rose shook her head.
‘Yes, she did. She told me how much she wishes she were as self-assured as you are.’
Rose frowned. ‘Tania’s one of the most self-assured people I know. She’s always as cool as a cucumber.’
‘On the outside, maybe. But that’s exactly what I mean. The face we show other people isn’t always the full story, is it?’ Clara was gratified to see the smile edge onto Madeleine’s face. ‘Madeleine knows what I mean,’ she said.
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Madeleine said, her gaze flicking repeatedly to Rose.
Clara warmed to her theme, edging her way towards what she really wanted to say. A partial truth, or at least as much of the truth as she could bear to reveal. ‘It’s probably because we do our best to protect ourselves, because we know that some of the choices we make will turn out to be the wrong ones. Or hindsight tells us as much. Sometimes we have no idea of their consequences, no control over the outcome.’ She tried to swallow, but it felt like a ball of thorns had materialised in her throat. ‘There are things that I wish with all my heart I could go back and change.’ Refusing to allow tears to form, she blinked hard. ‘But there are also choices I wouldn’t change for anything on the planet. I nearly didn’t go to the supermarket, the day I met Mike. I nearly stopped at the Potter Street corner shop instead.’ She shook her head, as if that version of events, that parallel universe didn’t even deserve airtime. ‘And there are other decisions, other choices that become clear to us, that become the only logical route to take. The ones which, however hard they are to face up to, ultimately give us purpose. Or peace.’
She paused. The look was back in Rose’s eyes, the one that had been there when talk first turned to Tania and Gull. ‘But ultimately, it’s all aboutmakingthose decisions. Moving forward towards what is right for you. And maybewhois right for you, too. Regardless of what might come later down the line. Tania’s hidden from her emotions for far too long, hidden from what would make her properly happy. And I think you have, too, Rose.’ She glanced at Madeleine, whose gaze in turn was fixed on Rose. ‘Although I get the feeling something might have changed for you lately?’
A beat passed, Rose hitched a breath as if she was about to say something, but instead she rubbed at her forehead and looked away.
Clara couldn’t help but notice that Madeleine was biting at the edge of her lip, now, too. She was hanging on Rose’s every move.
Rose pressed her lips together, her gaze flicking repeatedly towards Madeleine. Just say it, Clara thought. But Rose’s brows flexed close together, and she gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. She turned to the window and didn’t reply.
Madeleine sighed. She looked disappointed.
Clara sipped at her wine, but it was warm, and so she slid the glass back onto the table. She nearly slipped away, through time, to a particularly persistent memory. A memorable hug with Mike, with Poppy wrapping her little arms around both of their necks. But this time she forced herself to remain in the here and now.
‘Is it still snowing?’ she asked. The view from this room was less panoramic than from some of the other bedrooms, not that it mattered in the almost complete darkness.
Rose nodded, shifting to one side as Clara padded across to join her. Snow was indeed still falling, but it was no longer falling straight down. The wind had picked up since their return and was whipping swirls of white past the glass. Silent swarms of ice-flies muffled by the double glazing.
‘Doesn’t look very friendly out there,’ Clara said.
‘Just as well we hadn’t planned to go out for supper,’ Madeleine said, joining them at the window. She peered out, then added, ‘Not sure my snowman is going to survive this.’
A small pinprick of light, nothing more than a firefly among a swarm of ice-flies, arced its way up what remained of the lodge’s driveway. Clara watched as the light danced about, flakes of swirling snow illuminating for an instant before they disappeared, replaced by another, then another. Someone was trudging through snow that was easily a couple of feet deeper than it had been when they arrived back from the centre of Près du Ciel a while earlier. The movement of light showed its owner was making slow progress and Clara realised that trudging wasn’t an accurate description. Whoever it was, they were climbing through the snow with a dogged determination. They must be desperate to reach the lodge.
‘Who is that?’ she said, the answer hitting the front of her brain almost before Rose answered.
‘It’s Lysander,’ she said, hugging her arms across her body.
