Let It Snow

by Sue Moorcroft

  Funny how the cold air stung her eyes to watch them.

  Finally, they tramped back up the hill to Max and Ona’s house and Lily helped Janice put together ‘Boxing Day Pie’, which involved slicing up the leftover turkey and sausage meat, pouring gravy and wine over it in a roasting tin and mashing up leftover root vegetables for the topping, then sticking it in the oven to cook. The boys were happier with fish fingers, little jacket potatoes and peas, but the Boxing Day Pie did very nicely for the adults, washed down with beer and followed by plunging into the stash of chocolate.

  Lily helped Dugal build a Lego house while Max showed Keir how to put a wooden train track together, which Keir much preferred taking apart. Then they all got ready to march further up the hill to Los’s house for fondue.

  ‘It’s lovely that the children are invited, isn’t it?’ Lily said to Ona, who was pushing Ainsley in a buggy that seemed to be his car seat fixed to a set of wheels.

  ‘The Swiss are very family-minded.’ Ona’s ski jacket was a dark gold and set off her pretty freckles as she tipped up her face to admire an especially beautiful balcony hung with swags of greenery and lights like icicles. ‘It’s great not to need babysitters but not so much when we want a night off on our own with a bottle of wine.’

  Lily had been feeling slight butterflies, not just because approaching Los’s house brought forcibly to mind the days she’d spent in the annexe with Isaac. It was meeting Los again in view of the job on the horizon – a job that seemed almost too good to be true. Los, though, was a great host. He welcomed Lily with a kiss on each cheek and a firm, ‘You’ll find a few people from British Country Foods amongst the company this evening but we leave business until tomorrow, yes?’

  ‘Marvellous,’ Lily agreed gladly and was able to settle down to enjoying herself without feeling she was supposed to be networking. Stephen, who she knew from her last visit, was there with his partner, but otherwise she wasn’t always aware whether those she met were potential colleagues or not.

  The meat fondue was delicious and she ate more than she’d thought possible after Boxing Day Pie. Dugal and Keir ate so many marshmallows dipped in chocolate that Lily thought they’d burst.

  Finally the children were so tired that Ona said to Max, ‘We need to get them home.’

  Tubb and Janice were ready to go too, Tubb tiring easily these days, and so Lily thanked Los and Tanja and joined the procession for the short walk back. A thin veil of snow was falling, muffling the sounds around them as it drifted softly from the dark sky between star-like lights strung above. It was like an advert for a magical Christmas holiday in the mountains. Lily fell silent, admiring the even carpets of white on the chalet roofs, thinking ahead to Garrick picking her up to meet with Los tomorrow and whether the trousers and jacket she’d packed would be right for the occasion.

  As they turned into the drive in front of Max and Ona’s house, she heard vague exclamations and a surprised laugh, with Max saying, ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. Lily, did you know we were to have an extra guest?’

  ‘No?’ She tried to see past Ona and Janice, who were both turning to grin at her. Then she caught sight of the tall man on Max’s doorstep, woollen hat pulled down over his ears, standing very still and gazing at her. ‘Isaac!’ she gasped. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Plane from London City to Zürich, train to Biberbrugg and taxi here.’ One corner of his mouth quirked up. ‘I brought your Christmas present.’ He pointed to a gift-wrapped box balanced on top of his rucksack in the porch.

  ‘More presents!’ Dugal hollered, suddenly fully awake.

  Isaac crouched down to pat his head. ‘Sorry, mate. There’s only this one. Santa left it in England for Lily by mistake.’ He shifted his gaze to Lily. ‘Probably she forgot to tell him she was coming here.’

  ‘Aw, OK,’ sighed Dugal, while Lily’s cheeks burned at the dig.

  Lily found she was trembling as Max and Ona stamped the snow from their boots and ushered everyone into their home. Isaac gave Ona a hug and shook Max’s hand. ‘Don’t worry that I’ve come expecting hospitality. I’ve booked a hotel room. Congratulations on becoming parents again.’ He smiled at Ainsley, who was just beginning to whinge about it being his feed time.

  Max and Ona took the boys upstairs but Tubb resisted as Janice tugged discreetly at his sleeve. ‘So what’s happening with my pub while you’re out here playing Santa Claus?’ he demanded.

  Isaac didn’t even look at him. ‘It’s only a friggin’ pub! There are more important things.’

  As Tubb gaped at this heresy, Janice linked his arm and steered him away. ‘He’s right. You and I have already come to the same realisation or we wouldn’t be here. You left him in charge. I expect he’s left Tina at the helm. It is only a pub.’

  Tubb dug his toes in again, this time demanding of Lily, ‘Are you OK with him being here?’

  Dumbly, Lily nodded.

  Finally, Tubb let himself be towed away. Then at last there was just Lily and Isaac in the living area, the Christmas tree lights winking merrily as the door closed. She licked her lips. ‘I haven’t seen you get snappy before.’

  ‘I’m human, same as anyone. You and Tubb have made it up?’ When she nodded he said, ‘Good.’ He came no closer but his body heat seemed to bridge the gap between them, luring her like the Sirens’ song lured sailors onto rocks.

  She resisted its pull. ‘How’s Hayley? Was her bad news very bad? Is it OK for you to have left her so you can come here?’

  He frowned. ‘She didn’t have bad news – thankfully it was good. No sign of the cancer spreading and no further treatment. In time she’ll have further surgery to complete the reconstruction but she’s on her way back to normal life.’

  Lily was stunned. ‘But I rang your phone and she was sobbing about the histology results!’

  His brows shot up. ‘She hadn’t got her results at that point. What was upsetting her was that her appointment to hear her report was postponed until the following day because the consultant was called away. The extra wait got to her. She’s been super-emotional throughout her ordeal, which she can be forgiven for.’

  Lily gaped at him. At the darkness of his eyes and the weariness around them. ‘She’s going to be OK?’

  Realisation dawned in his eyes. ‘That’s what it was,’ he said slowly. ‘When you rang and she was emotional you assumed she’d had bad news. You gave up on me.’

  ‘I—’ She took a physical step back at this interpretation of events. ‘I thought she needed you.’ She didn’t say ‘… more than I did’ because it wasn’t true. There was ‘need’ and ‘need’, that was all.

  He thrust his fingers through his hair. ‘Holy hell, I wish you and I could have just found time to talk.’ He took a couple of deep breaths and then continued in a gentler tone. ‘I had to be there for her until she had her results but she didn’t get those until Christmas Eve. I saw you leaving the village late that afternoon and the evening shift was crazy. I knew – or thought I knew – I’d be alone with you on Christmas morning so I planned to talk to you then. As it was—’ he threw up a hand in a hopeless gesture ‘—I didn’t get that chance. But as soon as Hayley realised you’d left she coolly made arrangements to stay with my parents because she doesn’t need the level of care she got from me now her last drain is out. She was determined to free me to come after you and Mum backed her up. Said Hayley was doing what she thought right – and her and Dad thought she was right too. They’ve even taken Doggo.’

  ‘Wow.’ Lily wasn’t quite able to absorb it all and readjust her thinking. She’d been so certain that Hayley had a long, hard road ahead and would need Isaac until she could get her support elsewhere. ‘So you’re leaving to take your instructor courses?’

  Ignoring the question, Isaac scooped up the Christmas present wrapped in blue paper sprinkled with gold stars. ‘This is for you.’

  Automatically, she took the box-shaped gift, fumbling when it proved unexpectedly heavy.

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nbsp; Hastily, he put one of his hands beneath it, brushing against her and making her jump. ‘It might be better to unwrap it on the table.’

  She let him place it on the polished wooden table top, then, wonderingly, she eased the paper apart at the seam. Under the paper was a plain brown box and she had to pull off the tape that secured it shut. Inside was a cloud of white tissue paper.

  She pulled it aside to reveal wood and carvings.

  She stared. ‘It’s a cuckoo clock,’ she breathed. Packed snugly around the little wooden chalet with a stack of logs outside were the chains, weights and pendulum that had made the parcel so heavy.

  ‘A Lötscher. I’m probably the only person ever to bring a cuckoo clock into Switzerland. I ordered it online and had it delivered to the pub.’ Most of the frustration had left his voice now and uncertainty had taken its place.

  With one trembling fingertip she touched the little door sheltering the cuckoo. ‘It’s the one I loved in the shop in Zürich. It was incredibly expensive though.’ She glanced at him.

  He’d jammed his hands into his back pockets and shrugged. ‘It was supposed to be symbolic. I was going to explain on Christmas Day. But you’d buggered off.’ His voice was flat. Tired.

  Glancing around, he selected a medium-sized picture hanging on the wall and took it down. Then, carefully, he took the clock from the box and hung it on the hook, set the hands to the correct time, hung the pendulum and smoothly pulled one of the weights to wind the mechanism.

  Its TICK-tick, TICK-tick permeated the room.

  Lily gazed first at the beautiful clock and then the no less beautiful but decidedly less cheerful man before her, dark brows down over dark eyes. She had to swallow before she could coax words out of her throat. ‘What’s the symbolism?’

  For several seconds she didn’t think he was going to reply as he set the clock’s hands to a few minutes to nine. Then, finally he turned towards her. ‘You kept saying we had no time. The clock was meant to say I had all the time in the world for you.’

  ‘But your courses—’

  ‘Balls to the courses. If you’d let me talk to you, I would have explained my plans have changed.’ Finally, slowly, he moved towards her, one step, two, until he stood only inches away, close enough for her to hear him breathing.

  ‘So what are your plans now?’ She spoke calmly but her pulse was thundering in her ears.

  His eyes smiled. ‘To discover what your plans are and try and persuade you to let me be part of them.’ He took her hand and carried it to his mouth, brushing her knuckles across his lips.

  ‘But you’re on your way somewhere else,’ she protested shakily.

  His smile reached one corner of his mouth. ‘You’re currently “somewhere else”. Can’t that be the somewhere else I’m on my way to?’ He loosed her hand and slid his arms around her, making her eyes half-close at the feel of his body against hers, a feeling she thought she’d never have again. ‘I can find courses here,’ he went on. ‘Or if you go back to the village, I can base myself there. Doggo’s pining for you,’ he added. Then, more seriously, ‘I’m pining for you too, continuously and painfully. My heart’s spinning in my chest just to be in the same room with you again.’ Behind him the clock murmured TICK-tick, TICK-tick. His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Do you have time for me, Lily?’

  Joy broke over her in a hot wave. ‘All the time in the world,’ she breathed, giving him his own phrase back.

  Beneath her hands she felt his body relax. ‘A couple of weeks ago you told me not to kiss you any more. Will you unsay that, please?’

  In answer, she pulled his head down to hers, pressing against his hard body as if trying to get right through his clothes.

  His hands dropped to her behind, the line of his body following the curve of hers. ‘I lied about the hotel room,’ he groaned against her mouth. ‘I just didn’t want to get involved with the others feeling they had to find me somewhere to sleep.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ Lily rubbed against him to make him catch his breath. ‘I have the key to Los’s annexe because I had the choice of staying there but preferred to be here – with my own family.’ The final words came out shyly.

  Behind them a tiny wooden bird shot out of the Lötscher clock. ‘Cu-ckoo, cu-ckoo—’

  Isaac grinned. ‘That clock is so not going to hang in the bedroom unless we can find a way to shut it up.’

  Lily giggled. ‘We can’t leave it here. It might wake the baby or Dugal and Keir could find it in the morning and take it apart.’ So they took it down from the wall and found out how to disable the cuckoo mechanism before packing it back in its box.

  Without telling the others, who had all discreetly stayed upstairs, they bundled up in their coats and set off hand in hand along the snowy streets to Los’s annexe, Isaac carrying the clock, letting themselves in and closing all the blinds.

  Then Isaac pulled Lily back into his arms and began to steer her in the direction of the bedroom with its welcoming double bed. ‘I love you, Lily. Let’s begin that shared time.’

  Epilogue

  January, thirteen months later

  Lily sat in one of the new mini-armchairs at The Three Fishes, Tubb and Janice to her left on a matching sofa, Tubb looking slightly out of place. ‘Weird for us all to be on the customer side of the bar.’ Lily grinned, giving her brother a nudge with her toe.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, sipping his alcohol-free gin and slimline tonic.

  ‘We love it,’ said Janice firmly, giving Tubb’s arm a squeeze. ‘Retirement’s wonderful, isn’t it, Harrison? We can live in the village, travel whenever we feel like it and reap the benefit of all those years of hard work.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said again.

  Lily exchanged a conspiratorial look with Janice. Tubb loved being retired except when he visited the village pub that had been his life. Lily knew Isaac had never regretted leaving the trade but she wasn’t so sure about her older brother.

  Two new people running it now, both men: Ferdy and Elvis. Yes, Elvis was his real name, as he told everybody as soon as he introduced himself. They’d ‘done a refurb’ and the red-patterned carpet was a thing of the past. Wood flooring had been laid in front of the bar, multi-coloured tiles in the dining area and grey carpet in the rest. Lily thought the carpet looked as if someone had shaded it with a pencil in a way her art teacher used to call ‘hatching’. There were more gambling machines and a bigger telly. Of the bar staff Lily had worked with, only Tina, Vita and Flora remained.

  Lily could hear Carola telling Elvis and Ferdy about last winter’s trip to Switzerland and the Middletones. Warwick and Eddie were at uni now, Alfie working in Bristol and Franciszka, though still seeing Neil occasionally, had moved out of the village to be near her sister in Peterborough so, judging from their baffled expressions, Elvis and Ferdy weren’t completely following the tale.

  Owen was holding Carola’s hand and listening, a role he’d settled into well. Lily knew they were incredibly happy together, especially now Duncan had found another job in London. He’d only moved into Carola’s basement for nine months and now it was once again an Airbnb.

  Lily let her mind return to last winter and all it had brought. Roma and Patsie’s break-up, which, to Lily’s immense sadness, had proved permanent.

  Zinnia and George’s house fire. Their baby daughter, Leonie, was now eight months old. Lily saw a lot of her and found she loved being an aunt and was a willing babysitter. Playing with her niece, bathing her and getting her ready for bed never felt like a chore. Leonie thought Doggo was the funniest thing on the planet. As Doggo had a similarly high opinion of his charms, they played together beautifully.

  Hayley, currently cancer-free, had returned to heading up the casino in Peterborough, which was even more swanky than before. She turned up every week for a Doggo-date.

  But by far the most important thing that had happened in Lily’s life last winter had been Isaac.

  She checked her phone. No messages. Peeped behind the curtains
– grey linen now, not red velvet – and shaded her eyes so she could see through the glass. Snowflakes were wafting down like the fall-out from a gigantic pillow fight. Four inches of snow lay on the ground and British road and transport systems were grinding to a halt. Isaac had called hours ago to say he was stuck on the M6 with hardly any phone battery and he’d broken the lead to his in-car charger. Since then nothing, so his battery must have died.

  It seemed ridiculous to worry about a fully-fledged instructor in bracing outdoorsy stuff and survival training, but Lily was anxious nonetheless.

  Absently, she chatted to Tubb and Janice. Finally, her phone chirped with a text. I’m home. Come and get me. xxxxxxxxxxxx Her pulse jumped in several places.

  ‘Night then. Gotta go.’ Ignoring the knowing grins from Carola, Owen, Tubb and Janice as she called hurried goodnights, she dragged on her coat without finishing her drink. She skated rather than ran down Main Street to Rotten Row, slithering and sliding all the way to a brick cottage with dormer windows that had been their home for several months. Breath burning in her throat she fumbled with her key and burst in.

  On the quarry-tiled floor of the tiny hall stood a rucksack and a pair of hiking boots in a puddle of melting snow. A delighted Dalmatian burst out of the sitting room shouting a welcoming, ‘Hnuh, hnuh, WOAH! Hnuh, hnuh, WOAH!’

  ‘Hey, Doggo,’ Lily panted, patting his wiggling back. ‘Where’s your human?’

  ‘Waiting for you.’ Isaac appeared in the doorway and swept her into his arms, kissing her slowly and thoroughly, only letting her up for air when she was completely breathless. ‘Do you mind that I didn’t come to the pub? I just wanted to be with you.’

  ‘Not one bit,’ she assured him. ‘I want to be with you too.’ Then, between kisses, she added, ‘Carola was telling Ferdy and Elvis about last year in Switzerland.’

  His movements slowed and he pulled back to look into her face. ‘Did it make you wish you’d taken that job with Los at British Country Foods?’