A Season in the Snow

by Isla Gordon

  The runner slowed to a stop after he passed her, pulling out his headphones and facing her. ‘Hey,’ he said, wiping sweat from his eyes. ‘You okay?’

  Alice opened her eyes, ashamed at her vulnerability. He was just out jogging. He was just a guy. Still, she struggled to form any words and reached her fingers into Bear’s fur, breathing fast.

  The man looked at her for a moment. ‘Hey, boy,’ he said to Bear. ‘You looking after your owner?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Alice whispered.

  ‘Don’t apologise, I’m sorry if I scared you running up behind you. Sometimes I get so lost in my Greatest Showman soundtrack I forget about other people’s personal space.’

  Alice met his eyes, surprised, and laughed a little despite herself.

  ‘I’m not actually joking,’ he said, showing her his phone. ‘Anyway, can I get you anything?’

  ‘No,’ she said, still feeling Bear’s fur. ‘Thank you, though. I’m just a bit . . . on edge.’

  ‘I totally get it.’

  Did he get it? Was he at the concert?

  ‘Puppies are a pain in the arse but we get so protective over them. So I get it. At least he’ll grow into a great bodyguard for you. Take care of yourself.’

  And with a wave and a smile, he jogged away, easy as that.

  He didn’t get it.

  Back at the flat, Alice closed the door behind her with a sigh. She would have to face that again, and again, and again. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken on the dog. Maybe they’d all been right.

  Everyone in the park had been nice, she was aware of that. She was aware of the effect this silly great puppy had on people even before any of this had happened – she’d gone with Jill on her first outdoor walk with Bear and it had been exactly the same. People hadn’t changed; she had.

  Bear plodded through her flat like he owned the place after only one day, and went to have a drink. Alice stood in her living room, then wandered to the kitchen, then wandered to the bedroom. She wasn’t sure what to do with herself. What would she normally be doing on a Sunday at home?

  Making a cup of tea, she went back to her sofa and opened her laptop. Social media, her emails, it all seemed fruitless, a combination of a waste of effort and too much effort to even try. Closing her laptop, she hunkered down on the sofa, soon to be joined by Bear who was ready for a snooze, and she put the TV on for background noise.

  She wasn’t going to try, not today.

  Chapter 11

  As August took its last stretch before stepping into September, Alice and Bear kept each other company. She walked him as early as it was light, when most of the people out were joggers who still smiled at the cute puppy but tended not to stop. She wore headphones with no sound playing, and kept off the path to avoid people further, sticking to walking on the grass which she hadn’t noticed was growing green again. To the outside world she looked deeply involved in a podcast, or an audiobook, or favourite tunes, but actually her ears were listening, alert. When she thought he’d had enough she’d scuttle them both back home, locking the doors behind her.

  Alice ate a lot of toast and pasta, basic things she could buy in bulk from the small supermarket around the corner. She kept the curtains closed and her friends at bay. She wandered from room to room and watched a lot of TV, but never the news. She didn’t want to draw, she didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to think.

  Bear slept when she slept and stuck to her side at all times, leaping when she stood, following her from room to room, keeping a close eye on her always. He seemed to hurt with a mild separation anxiety, and would bite her ankles or whine when she tried to leave the house, and so she did so less and less.

  He desperately wanted to play every waking hour, bursting to life and full of bounce, and Alice struggled to find the energy to keep up. ‘You do realise we apparently have to join the real world again at some point?’ Alice asked him one time, after he’d knocked over her bowl of pasta by trying too hard to get at it. ‘We probably can’t both get a free pass for antisocial behaviour for ever.’ But as she said it, a huge part of her closed its doors and battened down the hatches.

  The knock on the door seemed so loud it made her jump, which made Bear woof in a way that surprised them both.

  ‘It’s just Mum and Dad. My mum and dad. It’s okay,’ Alice soothed, and Bear scampered towards the door (some guard dog). She nudged him aside to open the door and there were her parents, heads tilted in concern already. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello. honey.’ Liz gave her a hug. The door was still open and Bear tried to make a leap for freedom but Ed caught him.

  ‘Come in,’ said Alice.

  Usually if people came to stay, even her parents, she’d have spruced the place up, lit the odd scented candle, plumped the sofa cushions and had the kettle ready-boiled. But as she led Ed and Liz into her living room she realised how stale it seemed.

  ‘Sorry it’s a bit of a mess, we’re still getting used to . . . everything.’

  ‘No problem at all, darling,’ Liz said. ‘I’ll just pop the kettle on if that’s okay with you.’

  ‘We brought brownies,’ Ed said, clutching a neat cardboard box from Waitrose. ‘Mind if I have one with my cuppa?’

  Bear’s eyes were wide and he sniffed at the box. ‘Sure,’ Alice said. ‘But don’t give any to Bear.’

  ‘Hard luck, matey, more for me. And your mum, of course,’ Ed said, winking at his daughter and tucking in before Liz had even finished boiling the kettle.

  ‘So how have you found it being back?’ asked Liz. ‘Have you been meeting up with any of your friends this week?’

  ‘No, I’ve just been here.’

  ‘Don’t you have that exercise class on Tuesday nights you like? It would be a nice distraction to get back to doing something like that.’

  Alice shook her head. ‘I can’t leave Bear on his own.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  Her mum wasn’t believing a word of it, and it irked Alice.

  ‘So what’s going on at home?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Not much,’ Ed answered. ‘It seems quite empty now you’ve gone again. I’ve fixed that leak in the bathroom.’

  ‘Oh, that reminds me, while you’re here can you just take a look at a shelf in my bathroom?’

  ‘Of course, let’s take a look now.’

  It was all rather mundane, but each member of the family was glad for some mundanity right now. All four of them shuffled down the corridor and into the tiny bathroom, while Alice pointed out a tilt that was appearing in her bathroom shelf. Ed pulled a pencil from his pocket and Liz helped by neatly stacking the items from the shelf on the nearby tallboy. It was only when they were all silent while Ed, tongue poking out to the side, was carefully drawing a pale line across the paintwork that Alice noticed her white noise machine – the dog – was no longer snuffling around her legs.

  ‘Where’s Bear?’

  Her parents looked around, as if he might be hiding in this tiny space, and Alice left the bathroom and strode down the corridor. ‘Oh shit!’

  Bear was stretched, paws on the kitchen island, nose in the box of brownies. He jumped down, his tail wagging and his teeth full of gloopy chocolate.

  ‘Shit!’ Alice repeated, and her parents appeared.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Ed. ‘I’m so sorry love, this is my fault.’

  ‘No it isn’t, I had no idea he could stretch all the way up there. Bugger, bugger, bugger.’

  Liz looked in the box. ‘He’s finished the lot.’

  ‘Bear, we were gone for two minutes!’ Alice held her head for a moment. ‘I need to take him to the vet, they say you need to get them there ASAP if they eat chocolate. It’s toxic.’

  Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. She couldn’t handle it if anything happened to Bear, who had no idea he’d done anything wrong and was wagging his tail like the happiest dog alive.

  ‘We’ll go in our car,’ said Liz, taking charge. ‘Come on Ed, you find Bear’s collar and lead and carry him
to the car, Ali you get your things together and find the address for the vet.’

  ‘I’m such an idiot, leaving them out,’ Alice mumbled as she pulled on her trainers.

  ‘I’m the idiot, love,’ Ed said with sorrow.

  ‘No you’re not, he’s my responsibility,’ she replied sharply.

  The three of them zoomed the five-minute drive to the vet’s (as much as you can zoom anywhere in Greater London) and Alice’s heart was thudding the whole time.

  Bear was just pleased to be being taken somewhere new, so he bounded into the vet’s like it was Disneyland.

  ‘My dog, my puppy, my Bear just ate some chocolate brownies,’ Alice babbled to the veterinary nurse behind the counter, who from the minute they raced through the door was leaning forward, cooing at Bear and handing him bone-shaped dog biscuits. ‘We rushed straight over here.’

  Alice was expecting a situation like on Grey’s Anatomy. She thought sirens would wail, a trolley would appear, vets would be shouting about emergency surgery and people in scrubs would start running through the building.

  Instead of freaking out, though, the nurse simply said, ‘Whoopsie-daisy! I bet you loved them, didn’t you, you naughty boy?’ and called through to the vet. ‘We have Bear Bright and he’s got hold of some chocolate,’ she said down the receiver, calm as anything. ‘You’ll be next in,’ she told Alice with a smile, and went back to doting on Bear.

  The clinic door opened and out stepped a kind-looking vet. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m Peter. You must be Alice – we spoke on the phone?’

  Alice nodded. She’d called her local vet’s earlier in the week to register Bear and arrange a check-up. ‘Is it okay that I brought him? I know he hasn’t had his . . . new patient appointment yet.’ She had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘Yes, that’s fine, I’ll give him a little look over while you’re in.’ Peter ushered all of them through and Alice unclipped Bear’s harness once the door was safely closed behind them.

  ‘So he ate some brownies, eh?’

  ‘It was my fault, I left them where he could reach them,’ said Ed.

  Peter laughed with kindness. ‘Don’t worry about it, owning a new dog is a learning curve. And this just happened?’

  ‘Maybe fifteen minutes ago,’ answered Liz.

  ‘What were the ingredients of the brownies? Were they made of dark chocolate?’

  Liz and Ed shrugged at each other. ‘I don’t know, they were Waitrose ones,’ Liz said.

  ‘Oh, very nice for you.’ The vet ruffled Bear’s ears, who was looking super pleased with himself. ‘All righty, you did exactly the right thing bringing him in as soon as it happened. I’m just going to give him an injection and it’s going to make him throw up rather a lot, I’m afraid. It’ll basically clean out his stomach. Sound okay to you?’

  ‘Yep,’ answered Alice, sitting on the floor, her bad leg stretched out, and looking anxiously at Bear.

  ‘He’ll be absolutely fine,’ Peter reassured her. ‘After the injection we’ll have about five minutes where he’ll be completely normal, and that’s when I’ll give him a mini check-up. Then he’ll get a bit droopy and dribbly, and his tail and ears will go a bit low, and then we’ll have lots and lots and lots of sick and he’ll feel very sorry for himself. And after he’s done he’ll still be a bit flopsy for a few hours. Maybe don’t take him on any more walks today. But he’ll start to perk back up again by this evening.’

  ‘Okay,’ Alice said, feeling rotten.

  ‘Aaaand, there we go, all done,’ said Peter, and Bear had barely noticed a needle being pressed into the squish of the back of his neck.

  Alice spent the next five minutes watching him closely, watching for signs of waning, dreading the sickness coming but wanting the brownies out of his system. She’d only owned Bear for a week but she felt like she’d been a part of him all along, since the first time she’d gone with Jill to visit the three-week-old puppies.

  True to the vet’s word, Bear started to look less smiley after a few minutes. His ears flopped down and then his tail, and then he walked into Alice’s open arms and rested his forehead against her tummy, as though saying, ‘Mum, I don’t feel well.’

  And then came the vomit. So much vomit.

  Peter chattered away to them all whilst at the same time putting fresh trays and towels out across the floor of the clinic, and Liz and Ed answered most of the questions while Alice stayed close to her pup. Eventually, when the tired thing seemed not to have anything left in him, the vet smiled.

  ‘Okay, well done, everybody; that was an eventful first trip to the vet. Go gently on the food today. And you –’ he booped Bear’s nose, who looked at him sadly ‘– no more stealing brownies.’

  Ed insisted on paying the bill, and the three of them returned to Alice’s flat, with her holding Bear on her lap in the car.

  Once inside, Bear skulked straight into the corner of Alice’s living room – his living room – and lay down. Alice exhaled, and her mum appeared at her side.

  ‘Jill would be very proud of how well you’re doing looking after her dog, you know.’

  ‘I just let him eat poison.’

  ‘No you didn’t, you just saved him. Believe me, as a mother – of a daughter, not a dog, granted – we can’t stop bad things happening to the ones we look after. Okay? The most we can do is be there when they need us.’

  Alice put the kettle on. ‘Well, that’s very Disney Channel of you.’

  ‘Cheeky madam.’ Liz laughed.

  Ed, who’d been petting Bear, gently, walked into the kitchen. ‘Those ended up being the most expensive brownies I ever bought,’ he said. ‘Shall I pop out and get some more?’

  Chapter 12

  When Monday came, and her parents had gone home, and she was back from Bear’s morning walk, Alice made the decision to try and get back into work. She wasn’t going to go into central London and attempt to work from the Funny Pack office. Instead she got out all of her art supplies and lined them up neatly on her desk. Then she refilled Bear’s water and made a cup of tea. Then she had a quick shower. Then she sat down and got up again to load some washing.

  There was a barrier up between her and her artwork. Her pen hovered over the paper and refused to make contact. Illustration usually came easy to her, but now it seemed like the hardest thing to climb out of her own head and enter the world of imagination that creativity needed. Alice just couldn’t summon the optimism she usually painted onto the page. She couldn’t create the humorous take on the world around her because she couldn’t see the funny in it any more.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered to the page. ‘Come on.’

  She knew before she even got to this stage that it had gone. Her passions had evaporated and she didn’t know if they’d ever come back. Alice sat for a long time thinking about this, and eventually picked up the phone to call the Funny Pack office.

  She told them she needed more time out, even more than they’d already generously allowed her, and wouldn’t be coming back in for a while. She asked them to work with another freelancer until further notice. She politely declined their offer to send her ideas, and compromised by saying she’d dig out some of her back stock and sell it to them if they were interested. When she hung up she was exhausted and turned to Bear, but he wasn’t there. Rising from her seat, she followed the sound of snuffling, only to find him ripping one of her books to pieces in the next room.

  ‘What are you doing that for?’ she cried, wrangling the book away from him. ‘Can I not take my eyes off you for a second?’

  Alice went back to her desk and pulled out a large folder where she kept finished cartoons that, for a variety of reasons, she hadn’t sold yet. She photographed them one by one to send over to Funny Pack.

  Bear watched her. ‘I always liked this one a lot,’ she said, picking up one of the women dressed in superhero costumes. ‘I guess I was waiting for the right circumstance to submit it. Now is the right circumstance, because otherwise
we’ll be on the street.’

  It wasn’t quite true. Alice had savings she wasn’t planning on using on anything else now that her European adventure had evaporated, and her parents would always help her with rent if she asked, but she didn’t like to take the risk of anything running out, and there were enough pictures here that, if they all sold at the usual Funny Pack pricing, could tide her over, at least for a while.

  And now she could climb back into bed for the day.

  Alice was getting lethargic. She knew it while she was walking the dog; she knew it from the sluggish feeling she got as the day went on; and she knew it from the state of her skin. Her body craved a good workout and some healthy food and water, but everything just seemed too much effort, especially since using her leg still smarted a little. It was easier to stay in and hide herself away.

  Her muscles really showed weakness one afternoon, two and a half weeks into having Bear live with her, when he was off the lead, tearing around an enclosed part of the park while nobody else was in there, and he stumbled, tumbling down a bank, and yelped. Alice ran over to him where he hobbled in circles, whining.

  ‘Stop moving, stop moving, puppy, let me see.’ He leaned into her, his front left paw aloft.

  Alice held it gently, looking for cuts or broken claws but there were none. ‘I think you must have sprained it, if that’s something dogs can do,’ she said. ‘You poor thing. Let’s take you home.’

  She stood, and Bear tried to follow, but he yelped and sat down again. It started to rain.

  Alice could carry twenty kilograms of dog home. It was a five-minute walk from here, maximum, and she used to be able to hold ten kilos on each side during the squat track at Body Pump. She scooped him up, grunting, while she straightened her legs.

  Of course her body pump weights hadn’t lolled about or tried to lick her face. They hadn’t wriggled or tried to grab at leaves on trees with their mouth as they passed. There was also a reason she hadn’t been doing twenty kilograms on the biceps track, because it was much, much harder, as she was finding out.