The Devil in the Snow

by Sarah Armstrong

She placed both hands on the worktop and closed her eyes. When she opened them, Jude was standing next to her.

  ‘Is Cerys coming home?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Shona stroked his hair.

  ‘Can we see her?’

  ‘She’s really busy.’

  Shona looked at the clock. She had ten minutes to do a fifteen-minute quick walk to school. She could get into London and back before she had to collect Jude, but she’d be clock watching all day, worried about the trains. Ever since they’d been at Mariana’s she’d been determined to always be at the school gate, always be on time. She could wait until Saturday, but the Christmas shoppers put her off that idea. She tapped her fingers and picked up her phone again.

  ‘We’re going to have a day off, Jude. Do you want to go to London?’

  ‘Is Cerys there?’

  ‘I think she is.’

  He nodded. ‘Will my teacher be cross?’

  ‘I’m going to tell a little fib. Is that OK?’

  ‘I’ll get changed.’

  On the train Shona realised how little time she had spent with Jude actually being with Jude. He had changed so much since starting school and his trousers grazed his ankles rather than the soft top of his feet. She’d allowed him to get dressed himself and he chose a thick cardigan with a hood which was perfect for the windy, bright day. He was growing up despite her, she realised. She drew close to him at the window and listened to him note the things in people’s gardens that he liked. She looked at him and saw Cerys in his wide-eyed persuasiveness, his smirk when he said poo. His throaty laugh nearly made her cry when he talked about school, about being chosen first for the football matches at lunchtime. She wondered how he explained away his lack of a father and the horrible man who had lived in his house and the strange one who lived in the garden. He was happy. Cerys had never been happy in this unconsidered way, not without a gift in her hand.

  Mariana thought of him as a poor fatherless child. Her mother thought of him as Shona’s two fingers up to Maynard. Shona had thought of him as both of these things at one point or another, but knew he was much more than this. He had saved her life. Without him she would have watched Cerys be seduced by all the goods her father would provide and then what would her life have meant? Getting pregnant with Jude had not been the weapon she intended, or the child she’d mourned for, but a liberator.

  She kissed his cheek.

  ‘Mum!’ He looked disgusted as he removed it with his jumper sleeve.

  At Liverpool Street she held his hand tightly as they walked down the platform but he insisted on putting his own ticket through the barrier before seriously returning it to her purse. On the train she’d googled the school Jimmy had texted and found the address, near Maynard’s flat in Holland Park. Why had she thought of Edgware? Maybe he’d sold one flat and bought another. She powered her phone off, then slid it into her pocket and turned to Jude. He was looking at the tourist leaflets.

  ‘Dinosaurs?’ she said.

  ‘Are there any guns? Or swords?’

  Shona thought about lying. That wasn’t how she wanted to spend their day together, but maybe a trip to the Tower of London could be fun. Too expensive for fun. She could use it for her essay, she thought, before remembering that that was long overdue. Rob hadn’t been in touch. Maybe he’d had to go back to actually teaching people how to write their own essays, or he really meant it and she wouldn’t be asked again.

  ‘Or sharks?’ Jude pointed to a poster. ‘Can we go in the big wheelie thing too?’

  She had promised to take Cerys on the London Eye about two years ago, long enough for Cerys to have stopped asking. She’d probably have been taken by Maynard now. He was good at instant gratification as long as he could be seen to spend money on it.

  They travelled on the bus towards Westminster, surrounded by sullen Londoners and talkative tourists. Jude gasped when he saw the wheel, then when he saw Big Ben, then when he saw the wheel again from Westminster Bridge.

  ‘I don’t think I want to go up there now,’ he said. ‘It’s very, very high.’

  ‘You can see all of London. It won’t feel so high when you’re up there.’

  Jude looked confused and then frowned. ‘What?’

  Shona smiled. She didn’t know what she meant by that either, it just sounded like something she should say. ‘Never mind, let’s just walk past it and you can see how you feel.’

  Jude grabbed her hand. ‘Maybe we’ll see Cerys from up there.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  From the riverbank, having decided against riding up to the clouds, they walked towards Tate Modern. When they reached the Millennium Bridge, Shona realised where she was heading. She couldn’t think of how to sell it to Jude so she kept quiet and led him towards St Paul’s Cathedral, towards the Occupy tents. They looked just as they had in the paper, chaotic and hopeful and fifty-two days old.

  They sat on the cathedral steps, Jude on her lap to keep his legs warm. She wanted so much to be part of it. This is exactly how she’d imagined her life when she’d been young and, let’s face it, irritating as hell. She imagined the fading stars and waking birds at dawn in the skies above the cathedral. She would breakfast on stale, bitty bread and invite the pigeons to join her, and hope they didn’t shit on her tent. Later, when it was brighter and the buses came, she would lie on her side and, getting the buildings and adverts and traffic just right, they’d look like Battenberg squares with the sugar she loved to kiss off.

  Here the house and everything associated with it felt like somewhere to run from, rather than hold on to. This was somewhere she wanted to belong; give up the house and memories, and place herself in proper proportion to everyone else in the world.

  She couldn’t ask Jude to sleep in his clothes in a small tent and use portable toilets and go without hot water because she felt it would be fun. She didn’t know if she could do it herself. She had grown lazy and selfish. She had to sort herself out first. Maybe she’d start small, by learning to knit. Maybe she should go back and volunteer with Mariana. Maybe.

  ‘Can we go now?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Yes, let’s go somewhere warm.’

  She led Jude to a café across the street and drank coffee as, tight by her side, he ate a muffin and drank some orange juice. Neither of them spoke. Whatever she’d felt among the tents had started something she couldn’t quite grasp.

  Jude looked tired and she worried that he was too cold, that she should keep dipping him into the warm Underground. Still, it really wasn’t as cold as she always felt December should be. Shona thought about how she could manage a diversion to Maynard’s flat or Cerys’ school without alerting Jude and was shocked by the realisation that she didn’t want to. If she saw Cerys, there was nothing she wanted to say. She wouldn’t beg her to come home and she wouldn’t create strings of promises to do anything differently. It would be the same, except for her father’s visits. It wasn’t even for Jude’s sake that she avoided forcing some kind of resolution. She wasn’t going to phone any more, she wasn’t going to ask the school for information. She could wait for Cerys to make her choices. And while she waited she would make the most of Jude.

  She realised he was looking at her.

  ‘Are we going to see Cerys?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it’s just us, Jude. Cerys will come back when she’s ready. I’m so glad you’re here.’

  She resisted kissing him again, but he snuggled into her and that was enough.

  On the train back Shona checked her phone. There was a long and threatening email from Maynard demanding to know why the house sale wasn’t underway. At least he wasn’t asking about the locks, so he hadn’t been to the house. There was an invitation from Mariana to take her to church. It actually said ‘Christmas markets in Cologne’, but she had shown Shona photos from a trip there before and all Shona could remember were pictures of churches. She replied to Mariana ‘Maybe next year’ and then cursed herself. How could she have forgotten she was still angry with her? Mayb
e she just felt she should be angry. Mariana had the right to her opinion about Kallu, if only she didn’t keep saying it.

  Shona had only fifty-two pounds left in her purse and not much more in the bank. It might be enough for a couple of weeks’ shopping if they ate a lot of pasta. The bills would want paying soon. Jude’s school wanted a voluntary donation, that wasn’t exactly voluntary, for a trip, and there were school photos to buy and Christmas cards to order that had Jude’s name on, but were basically stencilled.

  She didn’t regret the money she’d spent in London but felt guilty for not regretting it. She knew she’d become greedy, taking money from Maynard and not ever admitting she lived off him. She was still living off him. She had submitted the sparkly brooch to the local auction house and hadn’t thought what would happen if it didn’t sell. She would have to sell something else from Maynard’s room, no, her front room, but Jimmy still had the four best paintings and she didn’t know what anything else was worth. Maybe Jimmy would end up buying the paintings, but with whose money she had no idea. She had to find a way of making money that didn’t depend on Maynard, and that meant postponing any voluntary work with Mariana. She groaned. She knew what it was like trying to find a job where schools hours and holidays were taken into account. Maybe Thea needed a supporting party fairy. Maybe nothing could compensate Shona for that.

  Jude was looking at her, worried.

  ‘It’s fine, I was just thinking.’

  She didn’t respond to Maynard. She wouldn’t leave the house until it was hers to leave. She would forward his email to Mariana when they had a chance to talk about it. To Jude she said nothing either, but rested his head on her shoulder and her chin on his head as he slept.

  At home he hadn’t woken fully, as she’d expected, but just changed and fallen into bed. Shona looked out from the office window. Rob’s light was on and his curtains closed. She could try to phone him, but suspected he’d ignore the call. And that’s if he wasn’t occupied with someone else anyway. She considered leaving Jude, just for a few minutes, just to run round and gauge where he was emotionally towards her, but knew that she wouldn’t be able to. She’d reach the end of the street, if that, and panic. There was no-one to ask. That’s what she hated most about being alone, the sense that it was seven in the evening and she was trapped there until she took Jude to school. If she had no milk, no bread, that was tough. She couldn’t ask Thea, she couldn’t ask Jimmy and she couldn’t ever have asked Amy.

  There was a long, plaintive howling. She automatically looked towards Amy’s garden, lit up by the lights in her kitchen downstairs, but there was no Amy in the garden. She had been quiet lately. Shona caught a movement in her own garden. Her throat tightened and she drew back. She switched off the light in the room, closed the door to the bedroom, and looked from the window again.

  There was someone, but now she wasn’t sure if they were moving or if some moving thing was catching the light from next door. She could see the outline of trousers and bright feet at the bottom, almost luminous against the black grass. Kallu.

  She let herself out, crept through the bedroom and ran down the stairs. She turned on the lights in the back room and the kitchen before unlocking the back door and then she stopped. She could hear him talking, muttering, both loudly and quietly and then he growled. Her shoulders tensed and she shivered. She never got used to it. She retreated to the back door and sat gingerly on the step in case he needed her. He growled and howled again, even louder. She cringed. If the neighbours had missed the first one, they would definitely have caught that. She saw one of them, Lee, looking out from his window upstairs. Shona heard him through the glass.

  ‘It is him again. Shall I phone the police?’ He turned to talk to someone behind him.

  The curtain fell back in place. She imagined curtains down the street, and Rob’s street too, poised to twitch at the next noise, fingers ready to point at the culprit. She had to get him inside before someone called the police. She wasn’t sure that she should keep getting in the way of how things should be done. Maybe Kallu did need therapy and drugs and a diagnosis, and all Shona was doing was postponing his recovery. She held her head in her hands. She couldn’t bear to lose him, but that didn’t mean she had his best interests at heart. She provided a safe place for him to be mad. She was an idiot so convinced that she could find a different way of doing things, a better and fairer way, that she allowed everyone to suffer.

  Lee was back at the window. She had to calm Kallu down before they did call someone. He had warned her to stay away but she couldn’t let him get arrested.

  She switched off the kitchen light, let her eyes adjust and then climbed the three steps to the garden. Hearing her, Kallu drew his knees up to his chest. She could see ribbons tied to the rosemary bush he was half-hidden behind. He grabbed the ends and threw them towards her. They fluttered back down, and he looked at her. It wasn’t Kallu as she knew him. Never during one of the previous episodes had he looked quite so murderous.

  Shona crouched in front of him, just out of reach. ‘You need to come inside.’

  He snarled, his lips back high over his teeth.

  ‘Stop it. Snap back, or whatever you do. The neighbours are going to call the police. You’ll get taken away.’

  Kallu said something. Shona had no idea what.

  ‘I know you’re there. They will drug you. Come on, Kallu.’ She tried to smile. ‘Let’s go in.’

  She inched her right hand towards him but he just followed it with his eyes. His snarl turned to a smile, which was worse. She turned her head to see if the neighbour was still watching, and in that second his head moved and his teeth settled hard on her fingers. It wasn’t quite painful but the fear that it would become a serious and bone-breaking bite made her shake.

  ‘Kallu, stop,’ she hissed.

  He bit down harder. She panicked and slapped his face with her free hand, but when his head moved he didn’t let go. He turned his head back to face her. This not-Kallu was enjoying it and she realised that none of their history together meant anything at all. He was an animal and she was inviting him into her house with Jude fast asleep upstairs.

  ‘Get off me!’ She registered the panic in her voice and summoned up all the authority she could. ‘I command you in the name of the spirits to release me.’

  He opened his jaws and yawned. She held the wet, bruised fingers lightly in her left hand and settled back on her haunches. He was mad. She couldn’t cope with him and didn’t know how she’d ever thought this was under control. He caught hold of the ribbons again and threw them like before. She edged back from him and knelt on one knee. With this distance she looked at her hand, now in the light from the back room window. He’d drawn blood on three fingers. She wanted to cry with the pain, felt shaky with fear. Kallu stretched his arms in front of him, turned on his side with his back to the rosemary and closed his eyes.

  Shona kept still. She didn’t know if this was a trick to get her to act in some way that would provoke him. She felt the dew start to soak through the knee of her jeans and the crease of her shoes hurt her toes, but she focused on stillness and waited. Kallu breathed quietly at first and then heavily, like a child with a cold.

  The lights from the houses on either side began to go out and still she knelt there until she felt that she should be running. He must be asleep. She needed to wash and wrap her fingers and lock the door like any sensible person. She made sure that she made no noise by resting her left hand on the grass as she unfolded her legs but her bent foot had gone to sleep. She managed to stand and waited for the pins and needles to build and pass. Her first attempt at a step made her ankle fold beneath her. She bit down the cry but Kallu opened his eyes. He stood up. She could see he was partly back, the proper Kallu, but she still wanted to run from him.

  He held his hand out to her but she backed away. She was at the top of the steps and wasn’t sure of her blood supply had returned enough to make them safe. He took a step back.

&n
bsp; ‘Shona,’ he said.

  ‘You bloody bit me!’

  ‘I didn’t. My body did.’ He didn’t look upset, just the same as ever. ‘You know I haven’t got mastery yet. I’m getting there. I warned you.’

  ‘I know.’ The tears started to fall. ‘I don’t know if I’m right about anything any more. Maybe you do need help and you need to be Dominic again and then you can get your parents back and a normal life and I won’t have to get bitten at night in my own garden.’ She wiped at her face. ‘I don’t know anything about this, about anything. I don’t think I ever did, but I thought I did and that was good enough. I loved my children and hated Maynard and that was that. But now Cerys has chosen him, even though he’s a shit, and Meghan is dead and Jude, poor Jude has only got me and I’m an idiot and I have no money. We’ll lose the house and I’m fucked, we’re all fucked. And then I get bitten.’ She shivered and Kallu approached her slowly before taking her arm. ‘And now you’re fine! Just back to normal like nothing just happened.’

  He said, ‘Come on, inside.’ He helped her down the steps and to the back door. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘No.’ She’d never said no to him before. She sighed. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I know you’re playing it down. I know that I scare you. It’s OK. When you want me to leave, I will.’

  He switched the lights on and closed the door. He was back to a young man, a barely adult boy, with deep rings under his eyes and punched hollows in his cheeks. He shook his head wildly and yawned. The sight of his teeth made her shudder and he raised his palms to her.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Shona backed away until she could feel the fridge behind her and rested her head against it. She kept her eyes open. She knew this was possible. There had been other times when he’d scared her, and it was always temporary, but this had changed something. She thought of Mariana’s face if she told her, and groaned. All this and she’d learned nothing.

  He stayed perfectly still, unnaturally still. He was waiting and she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to make him feel all right about this, but he was just Kallu again. Same as ever.