The Devil in the Snow

by Sarah Armstrong

  She didn’t think it would be more than a day or two, just long enough for him to tell her about Meghan. And, please God, he’d be gone before Maynard turned up.

  She laid out the spare duvet and blankets on the floor of the shed and threw a pillow on top.

  ‘This doesn’t seem right, Dominic. Wouldn’t you rather sleep on the sofa? It’s fine for a night or two.’

  ‘This is where I need to be.’

  He looked around the shed. It wasn’t a working shed, luckily. Neither she nor Maynard had ever been interested in storing paint pots or bits of wood that might come in handy. All of Jude’s outside toys had been given away except for his scooter, and that tended to stay in the hall, his football in his room.

  She heard a giggle. Jude was peeping around the door.

  ‘Back inside, Jude.’ He walked away slowly and she pulled the door to. ‘Dominic, you mentioned someone called Meghan before.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know who that is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me what it is? The message?’

  ‘Soon. Mastery is coming, and then you will know.’

  Shona noticed his eyes looked different. They had seemed hazel before, but now they looked blue. He placed one hand on her arm.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not here for Cerys. I know you’re worried about her.’

  ‘OK.’ She believed him but had a strange dizzying sensation that, back in her house, it would sound stupid when she thought about it. Why would he say that? She shook it off. ‘When you said people were watching me, did someone tell you about Meghan?’

  ‘No.’ He yawned and looked young again, not even eighteen. More like twelve, tired and grumpy.

  She knew she’d get nothing from him tonight. ‘You don’t need anything else? A drink, a toothbrush?’

  ‘No.’

  Shona walked to the back door and turned around. Jude was hiding by the side of the shed. He groaned and followed her inside.

  Shona could hear Cerys’ music playing in her room. She settled Jude on the sofa in front of the TV and dithered at the bottom of the stairs. She needed to say something to Cerys, but didn’t want it to sound as if she was accusing her of anything, not even a crush. It was so easy to offend Cerys these days and she wanted to do this right.

  There was a noise behind her as Maynard turned his key in the lock. He looked surprised that she was standing by the door and they both just stared for a moment.

  ‘Are you waiting for someone?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ Shona’s heart fluttered. ‘Why are you here? Did Cerys call you?’

  ‘No.’

  Maynard waited for another moment and then walked past her. He opened the front room door with another key on his weighty key ring and went to close it behind him. He wasn’t carrying an overnight bag, but Shona asked anyway. ‘Are you staying tonight?’

  ‘Yes. And maybe tomorrow. If Cerys hasn’t eaten, she might like to go out for a meal. Has she?’

  Shona hated his polite, ‘I’m so civilised’ voice. As if she wouldn’t remember what he had said and what she’d said back. She put on her most prim voice. ‘Why don’t you go and ask her?’

  ‘I will.’

  He closed his door.

  If Cerys was going to tell him she would, regardless of whether Shona tried to keep them apart. Shona went into the back room and sat on the sofa next to Jude. She took his fingers out of his mouth, kissed his coarse blond hair and put her arms around him.

  She whispered into his ear, ‘Maynard’s here. Don’t be scared of him, he won’t come near you. I won’t let him.’ Jude leaned in towards her and put his arms around her stomach.

  ‘He always shouts at me about my stuff.’

  ‘He’s an idiot. I didn’t know he was coming, sorry.’

  ‘He makes Cerys cross with me too. When he’s here, she doesn’t like me. I don’t like Maynard.’

  ‘I don’t either. One day he’ll go and we can take back the front room,’ said Shona. ‘We’ll put your name on the door and fill it with all your stuff.’

  They went quiet as they heard the door to the front room open and heavy steps up to Cerys’ room. There was a muttering of voices and flutters of steps, Cerys bubbling away and Maynard guiding her out the door. Silence.

  ‘Total shit,’ said Shona. She turned to Jude. ‘That’s a not-for-school word, OK?’

  Jude nodded. ‘Total shit.’

  ‘I’ll make some dinner.’

  ‘Music, music, music.’ Jude switched the TV off and checked which CD was in the machine. ‘This one?’

  ‘David Bowie. That’s perfect, start dancing and I’ll catch you up.’ Shona went through the fridge and freezer, pulling out all the nicest food so that Maynard couldn’t eat it. They would feast on tiger prawns, with rice, maybe, and smoked salmon on toast. And Maynard liked sardines, so sardines on toast too. ‘Shall we have everything on toast, or do you want rice too?’

  Jude jumped into the doorway, lion-posed. ‘I want rice too.’ He bounced away. Shona wished she could put a lock on the back room that only kept Maynard out. She hated the way Jude cringed in front of him.

  Her mind wandered back to the shed but she refused to check it. Check him. It all felt made up now she was inside with Jude, cooking and being normal. She almost asked Jude whether it was real, but he was dancing away school and Maynard, and she didn’t want to interrupt. She missed spending time with Cerys like this, silliness and thoughtless love which didn’t have to be careful about which words it used. She tried to be normal with Cerys, tried not to buy her affection, but Shona still felt she was always waiting for her to choose which space she wanted to occupy. Hers or his.

  It was all about spaces, with both Shona and Maynard. When Maynard stayed, he removed Jude’s shoes from the shoe rack and chucked his coat in the bottom of the under stairs cupboard so he didn’t have to see it. Maynard spoilt Cerys with clothes and meals and hi-tech knick-knacks. Shona said nothing. It was that silence that kept her with Maynard until Cerys was old enough to choose.

  2

  Shona finished buttering the toast and stared out of the kitchen window at the one she’d worked out must be Rob’s bedroom. She thought it was, anyway, but it was hard to tell which was his house from the back. She thought back to what Dominic had said about people, so many people, watching her. He’d been in the shed for a week now and there’d been nothing else. No message and no oddness. Nothing she could quite put her finger on, and yet he made her nervous. Her skin tingled sometimes and it reminded her of standing in front of her father. It was fear. Had she never been scared since then? She’d been furious, devastated, happy, but not fearful. She was lucky. She had been lucky. The thought of Dominic scared her and she knew she should run from him, but she hadn’t. It could never end well when she denied her instincts.

  People are watching. Dominic had repeated that last night. After, thinking about it, she felt both scared by it and stupid for believing him. Yet at the time it all seemed to make sense. He made sense. And then there was Meghan. She believed he knew something about Meghan, even if she didn’t know how. Somehow she never seemed to ask the right questions when she was with him. They fluttered into her mind once he was out of sight. It wasn’t like her at all. Normally she was so sure of herself she would question anything.

  A movement drew her gaze down. Dominic was standing in the doorway of the shed. She thought he was frowning, but his lips smiled. She waved and he let himself into the kitchen. He looked like a piece of summer blown in through the door, sun-bleached ends to his hair which reached down to the neck of his T-shirt, and baggy combat trousers which skirted his bare feet. She’d felt silly shopping for him, or maybe embarrassed like he was a dirty secret. As though if she bought him clothes she was asking him to stay. But he stayed anyway. And sometimes he went to work. Shona had gone to see him there, just to see if he was telling the truth.

  Dominic joined her at the window. The slow blue sky stretc
hed over the luminous roofs around them. A steady breeze drove the smell of the sea through the open door.

  ‘It’s beautiful, like it’s still August,’ said Shona. ‘I can’t believe that Jude has to go to school. What a waste of a day.’

  ‘Don’t take him.’ Dominic helped himself to a piece of toast. ‘Do whatever you need to do.’

  ‘I have to take him,’ Shona murmured.

  ‘Then take him.’

  Jude scraped his chair back and joined them at the window.

  ‘We could go to the beach,’ said Shona.

  They stood side by side as Shona made and unmade her decisions.

  ‘Are you busy today, Dominic?’

  ‘No.’ She could hear his smile.

  She turned to look at Jude. She shouldn’t ask him, it wasn’t his decision or his responsibility.

  ‘I’ll phone the school. And I have to confirm the visit with Jimmy. What else was I supposed to do today?’ Her mother had left messages, but she was in no rush to see her. She crouched down to talk to Jude. ‘It’s just this once, OK? School is really important and you have to go, really. Even on birthdays and things.’

  Jude nodded. ‘What about Cerys?’

  ‘She’s gone to meet her friends already.’

  Shona knew that Cerys would say no if asked to come with her and Jude, but knowing Dominic was going might be different. She’d caught her hanging around the shed a little too often, just in the hope of Dominic being there. One afternoon there had been five teenage girls sitting on the grass, giggling. It was best if Cerys just went to school.

  She whispered to Jude, ‘Go and get changed.’

  Jude kicked off his school shoes and ran upstairs.

  ‘Why are you whispering?’ whispered Dominic, his toast half eaten.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she whispered back. ‘I’m just wondering whether I should phone Callum’s mum. We’ve been meeting them on the way. Just bumping into her, but still. Maybe I should.’

  ‘Phone her then.’

  ‘But she might think it’s really bad.’

  ‘Don’t phone her then.’

  Shona looked at him. ‘You’re no help at all.’

  He smiled. ‘I know.’

  In his slightly too-tight shorts Jude looked like the toddler he suddenly wasn’t, according to everyone but Shona. She could still see the baby he was in the way he drank seriously from a juice bottle. She could see the unsteadiness of his progress through the rock pool as well as the way he approached the waves with the confident arrogance of the teenager he would become.

  She’d spent all summer worrying about him starting school, that he wasn’t ready and would be overwhelmed and diminished by being one of many. It was the last summer that they could see an end to, a definite stop date in September. She’d never worried much about taking him to every session at nursery. There was no obligation to as far as she was concerned, even if the women running it weren’t so sure. Ever since they started having Ofsted inspections they’d taken it far too seriously. No-one really cared about their reports apart from them. People just wanted their children to have a couple of hours of fun while they did something else. Or Shona did, anyway. Now, dropping him off and picking him up from school, it was Shona who felt overwhelmed and diminished. When she phoned the school, she had to give Jude’s full name, his teacher’s name and what year he was in. He was one of many and she was one of many, many mothers.

  Jude turned and splashed water towards her. He was fine, seemed fine. Or maybe she’d only been seeing what made her life easier.

  She joined him at the line where sandy shells became acres of dark mud.

  ‘Do you like school, Jude?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Do you like lots of children, do you play with everyone?’

  ‘I like Callum. He’s naughty. He gets told off.’

  Shona decided that if there was a problem, if Jude was unhappy, she’d know. She didn’t need to know that he gravitated towards the worst behaved boys in the class. Callum’s mum, Thea, seemed nice and sometimes it was best just to leave it at that.

  Shona took Jude’s hand and walked him along the shoreline. Dominic lay by the crumbling cliffs, his eyes open and his head resting on his crossed arms. Jude stopped at the high tideline of rocks, brittle with barnacles, and screamed every time his stick stirred up a crab from the sand. Shona caught a couple of tiny sand-coloured ones and tried to get him to look at them but he turned away. The second she put the crabs back and they buried under a stone he stirred his stick again.

  She sat back from the rocks, trying to arrange her hands so that they didn’t get cut by the oyster shells. Her sandals were full of sand, scouring her feet smooth, but there were too many stones to try walking without them. Jude didn’t seem to feel them like she did, his gritty socks left next to his shoes. She thought of the things she should have brought from the garden, the spades and bucket with the broken handle. She closed her eyes and listened to Jude splashing.

  They’d mostly gone to Clacton over the summer by train. Cerys had been whisked off to Crete by Maynard and returned bronzed and even ruder than before. In past years, Shona would have worried than Maynard wouldn’t return with her but their stalemate still held. He wouldn’t take her and Shona wouldn’t tell.

  Clacton had been a bright and busy distraction, not like Mersea. Here the cliff behind didn’t shelter them from the wind entirely, but curved it around them with the bitter smell of the sea and salted hair. She heard a splatter. Jude was throwing small stones, trying to hit a larger one he’d jammed upright. His sunhat, a little too large, had finally fallen off and he refused to put it back on again. The sun wasn’t strong but he couldn’t go back to school with sunburn after being supposedly sick.

  Shona led him back to the bags and nudged Dominic’s arm.

  ‘We’ll have to go and find some shade for a while. Jude needs a nap and probably an ice cream.’

  Jude, red-faced, was drinking from his juice bottle but the spout kept falling from his mouth as his head nodded back from sleep. He crawled into her arms and she arranged herself so her shadow protected him from the sun. She looked at Dominic properly. He clearly hadn’t been listening. Or hearing. His eyes looked at the sky and she looked up to see what he was watching. Dozens of sand martins darted above them, across the clear sky, in and out of their nests in the cliffs. Unlike the hovering, screaming gulls, their hunt and return was silent, almost mathematical, based on curves and angles of speed. She tried to follow one for a short time but her eyes quickly became tired. She couldn’t tell the birds from the black specks floating in her vision, and closed her eyes.

  She hadn’t been to Mersea for a long time, not since she thought of Colchester as the big city. She thought of how, while she was at the sixth form, she had sat on a rotten pier and eaten kiwis with her friend Steven, who lived in Peldon, reading Eliot and watching the dark skins float off like solidified jellyfish. Then they’d gone back to get drunk with Claire, and waited for the ghost to play the piano.

  She jerked awake. It was only early, about half past eleven, but both boys had been lying for hours in the sun. She hadn’t been organised, brought sunshades or anything sensible, just an old bottle of sunscreen and two towels. They had come on the bus, to an unmarked bus stop she had to somehow memorise to get back again. It was an impromptu visit, she had plenty of excuses for why she wasn’t prepared, but she still felt negligent. She felt that she looked negligent, although only two other people had passed them since they arrived, as far as she knew.

  She saw the sweat build up on Jude’s forehead and upper lip. He was always a hot sleeper, his dreams steam driven.

  ‘Dominic, I need to cool Jude down. Can you come back up with me for a bit?’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Dominic.’ She touched his arm. ‘Can you hear me?’

  He looked awake and there, but he was somewhere else entirely. She felt that tingling sensation in her stomach as she examined his fierce e
xpression and moved away. Jude flung one arm out and shifted uneasily. Shona decided to risk it, to take him to the café and come back for Dominic. She tried to justify it to herself as she carried Jude along the path that took her to the top of the cliff. Dominic wasn’t her child or her responsibility. He chose to live with her and had no claim on her as she had no claim on him.

  There was a long grass field, with trimmed and longer sections, and finally the car park and the café. He would be there, and if he was gone he was gone. He was eighteen, after all. She paused in the café doorway. He was only eighteen, still a teenager. She forced herself through the door.

  Loaded with drinks, three sandwiches and packets of crisps and no bag, she had to wait until Jude woke up so she didn’t have to carry him too. Thea texted a couple of times, wishing Jude a speedy recovery from his fictional stomach ache. She should have invited her and Callum along. She wouldn’t have been judgemental about it, maybe. Then again, when Cerys was first at school Shona had tried as hard as possible to play everything right, to take her to the right groups and prompt a temporary interest in a range of activities. She would never have allowed her to skip school, not for a birthday, not for a dentist appointment. Everything was beyond reproach as far as Cerys went, apart from the deeply unhealthy hatred between her loving parents. She texted Cerys a couple of times, but she wasn’t replying. Cerys would have replied to Dominic in a second though. Shona had seen how she waited in doorways for him to notice her.

  Shona tried not to imagine what Dominic was doing alone on the beach. She’d been thinking of what could have brought him to her, and had fixed on the idea of the summer riots. All those children who had been caught up in the excitement of chaos and had their lives restricted by convictions, their futures crossed out. He didn’t seem the type in some ways but, from what she’d read, there hadn’t really been one. They didn’t see themselves as political or dissenting, just pissed off. She shook her head, that wasn’t him. She had felt it though, their anger. She understood why they did it.