The Texture of Snow (part 1)

by Hannah Persaud

It is Valentine’s day when Carey leaves the Kensington townhouse that she shares with her husband to go the Cotswolds. She does not kiss Giles goodbye as he makes promises to join her later that evening. She drives fast, the convertible roof peeled back, Louis Vuitton scarf pressed against her newly blonde hair.

As she leaves the motorway her phone rings. For once she lets it go to answerphone, no way she could hold a conversation with the wind as it is and it feels good to let the phone ring out for a change, isn’t that what this is all about anyway, this house in the Cotswolds, a chance to get away from it all for a bit, reset the old stopwatch?

At least that’s the way Giles describes it. The blue sky of earlier is replaced with marshmallow clouds that hang in heavy clusters. The temperature drops and Carey presses the button that closes the roof, her fingers numb. Catching sight of herself in the rear-view mirror she barely recognises her reflection, cheeks flushed, hair curling its way out of the scarf in a bid for freedom. She pushes her hair down with her right hand and attempts to smooth it back under the edges of the fabric but it springs straight back out. Following a narrow road, she glimpses flashes of glimmering water on either side. Driving slowly she looks for the entrance on the left that Giles told her about, the gold-plated sign that announces the development that he’s invested in for them and their future.

‘You’ve got a nose for the finer things in life, you’ll find it,’ he said to her this morning. A larger lake emerges. Despite the cold there are people scattered around the edges of it in various stages of undress; a woman peeling her swimsuit down, pendulous breasts apparently unnoticed by others; a man wearing swimming trunks doing star jumps; a runner and her dog pausing at a café. A café! In the midst of Giles’s silent treatment Carey missed breakfast and her stomach rumbles. She swings in, parking in the only spot that’s remotely mud free. Stepping out, she’s aware of how out of place she looks in her Louboutin heels, in the dress that clings to her thighs and plunges boldly between her recently fake tanned breasts. Pulling her jacket close she turns the collar up and picks her way through the mud to the café, the smell of bacon causing her for a moment to consider ditching her recent vegetarian resolutions, another of Giles’s suggestions. Scanning the blackboard she notes the lack of choices – no Americanos, no lattes, not even a mocha.

‘I’ll have a white coffee and a mozzarella pesto panini please,’ she tells the boy at the counter, then steps aside to wait, allowing the woman and child behind her to shuffle up to the counter. When her order is ready, Carey takes it outside. She won’t eat in the Porsche. Giles doesn’t like crumbs in this car that is technically hers. She perches on the edge of a wooden picnic bench, shuffling as the damp cold seeps through her sheer tights to her thighs. Her phone vibrates with a voicemail. The coffee is strong and bitter and tastes of hazelnuts. It might be the best coffee she’s ever tasted. Cheese oozes from the panini.

‘Oops, dropped a bit,’ a man in a wetsuit interrupts, pointing to a piece of melted mozzarella that has fallen onto her Ralph Lauren jacket. Carey wipes it off with the napkin.

‘Thanks.’

‘Here to swim?’ he asks. He’s about her age, and now she looks at him properly, good looking in a sort of surfery windswept way. Not really her type but fit, definitely.

‘Not in my wildest dreams,’ she replies. A snowflake spirals out of the sky and lands on the table in front of her.

‘Guess it’s an acquired taste,’ the man replies. ‘Cold water swimming.’

‘Swimming’s not really my thing anyway,’ Carey says. When was the last time she swam, the Maldives back in 2016? Two or three years ago at least. Far too much hassle for the minimum of pleasure as far as she’s concerned – such a faff having to re-do her hair and make-up afterwards, not to mention the way the water washes weeks off her ever-bronze tan. She doesn’t get why anyone likes it really.

‘These people are crazy,’ she says out loud. Anyone can see that they’re only pretending to enjoy it as they emerge lobster pink and teeth chattering from the water. Another snowflake lands and then another. She lifts one on her perfect pink nail and examines the pattern. It’s astonishing to her that each snowflake in the world is different, shaped by the different temperatures and moisture levels they are exposed to, the ice crystal forming completely uniquely. Is being human similarly unique, each person shaped by every facet of experience, every moment, every touch? How will she know when she is complete?

‘One persons’ lunacy is another persons’ joy,’ the surfer man comments. She stands up. ‘I’m Matthew by the way,’ he says, holding out his hand. ‘Are you local?’

‘Just,’ she replies. ‘I’m moving into one of the houses in Water’s Edge today actually. I’ll be there part-time.’

Matthew whistles.

‘Nice for some’.

‘I’d better get off, things to unpack.’

‘Well if you change your mind about us being nutjobs you’ll find us here at Lake 32 most days. It can be intimidating at first but we have a lot of fun.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ she replies.

Back in the car she turns the heating up and revs the engine, edging cautiously across the mud and slush onto the road. It wasn’t true what she said about unpacking, there’s nothing for her to do, they chose their furniture and fittings months ago online, right down to the soft finishes – lilac blue blinds on all the windows and white Egyptian cotton for all the beds. White silk sheets beneath. She’d like to have had a chance to be in the house a bit before choosing, get a sense of what it needed, of how it would wrap itself around them – but Giles had hired an interior designer and wanted everything done quickly.

‘The quicker we get it decorated the faster we can enjoy it,’ he’d insisted. ‘It’s the end game that counts.’ It was hard to get excited about choosing everything online so Carey had simply signed off on the designers’ advice. And the boxes of things that they were moving down here have already been transferred and unpacked in preparation for their arrival. They’ve a wardrobe for every season, for Giles is nothing if not organised and forward thinking.

‘If you fail to plan you plan to fail,’ he says often.  Food for the week they have planned to be here has already been delivered by the luxury restaurant Blacklock and stored safely away by the housekeeper they’ve employed to keep an eye on things when they’re not around. The elegantly wrapped parcels include everything needed to create perfect feasts at a moment’s notice. Not that Carey will eat much of any of it, the panini alone is probably more than her daily calorific allowance.  An individual playlist comes with every meal to set the mood, along with candles.

The sky stoops so low that the treeline is partially obscured and it’s snowing heavily. The road is already white and the wheels struggle to gain traction. The wipers beat a mournful song as a gold sign glints through the snow swirl. It reminds her of childhood pillow fights with her brother, a nosebleed, once. Does he have children of his own now? She pulls in and follows the driveway halfway round in the wrong direction before realising. Doing a U-turn she checks herself, she’s not usually nostalgic about days gone by. At last she sees their house at the very end of the drive.  Cormorant. It looks just like it does online, all wood and glass and angles and light, bi-fold doors opening onto a pine terrace that fronts the lake. It’s even more exquisite than she imagined. Parking the car she grabs her holdall from the boot and walks up to the front door, keys heavy in her smooth palm; something awakening inside her.