The Texture of Snow (part 3)

by Hannah Persaud

Pulling on her goose-down jacket and snow boots, Carey tugs open the front door. Snow tumbles in. She’s not walked in snow since she was a child, the texture of snow ill-suited as it is to her attire. Pulling her gloves on she takes one step forward then another, red cheeks and snow-fights and hot chocolate-after memories spurring her on. A voice calls out.

            ‘Hello.’ Carey looks up to see an elderly woman standing in the doorway of the house next to her own.

            ‘Hi.’ She waves then lowers her hand, embarrassed.

            ‘Are you my new neighbour?’ The woman who must be in her eighties, is painfully thin and wearing a long velvet dressing gown, bare feet exposed.

            ‘Yes, I’m Carey. Pleased to meet you. Aren’t you cold?’ The woman smiles and thirty years crumble.

            ‘It’s refreshing don’t you think? I’m Sylvie,’ she replies. Carey shuffles from foot to foot aware of her toes going numb.

            ‘Look I’m sorry but I should get on.’

            ‘Are you there alone dear?’

            ‘No, Giles, my husband, he’s coming today.’ Recognition flashes across the woman’s face.

            ‘Ah yes, Giles. The jet ski delivery.’ Carey blushes. ‘There’s good reason why they’re banned.  There was a man a while back who had one.’ Curiosity gets the better of Carey.

            ‘What happened?’

            ‘He was going too fast and something got stuck, he couldn’t release himself. He got crushed.’

            ‘He died?’ Carey asks. Sylvie nods.

            ‘A shock for all of us.’ Sylvie looks around as if he might appear from somewhere. ‘He’d only lived here a week as well. Of course they rebuilt the terrace.’ She nods towards Carey’s house. Inside Carey there’s a sliver of doubt.

            ‘He lived in our house?’

            ‘I’m sorry dear, that was thoughtless of me. Too much information Gerard always said. He was right of course, always was! God I miss that man.’ Sylvie’s eyes fill with tears and Carey turns away, conscious of the gaps within her own marriage. Sylvie clears her throat. ‘I’m sure you must get on, but you should come around for a drink later, if you’d like. I’ll play you my repertoire.’ Carey tries to push the image of the crushed man aside.

‘Was that you playing Moonlight Sonata yesterday? It was beautiful.’ Sylvie smiles.

            ‘I try. Not as good as I was. Do you play yourself?’ Carey shakes her head.

            ‘Not anymore, I used to though, as a child.’ Those piano lessons were hard earned by her father, they cost more than the weekly grocery budget though he’d never complained. A carpenter by day he’d taken on extra work at night to pay for them, helping at the farm. Good honest work that you could see the fruits of.

            ‘That’s a shame. So many people stop doing what they love.’  What was it Giles had said when he’d told her there was no room for her piano?

‘My house may seem large but every item has its place. There’s simply not room for it darling, why don’t you leave piano playing to the professionals.’ Shortly after Carey moved in Giles dedicated an un-used room to display his cycling trophies. Carey didn’t complain. She doesn’t tell Sylvie that there was an offer of a scholarship to Guildhall on the table that she turned down to be with Giles. Carey nods.

‘I’d love to come round later thank you.’

·          

It takes Carey two hours to reach the café by the lake despite it being little more than three miles away. By the time she reaches it her hangover is almost cleared, the ends of her hair frozen crisp. The smell of the coffee is mouth-watering. She buys two coffees and a croissant and sits back at the table from yesterday, buttery layers dissolving on her tongue. It may be the best croissant she’s ever tasted.

            ‘Hey.’ Matthew sits down beside her. ‘You came back!’ He’s wearing a towelling robe and his hair is wet.

            ‘You’ve been swimming in this?’ she asks.

            ‘Yep. It’s frigging amazing. Life affirming.’ He grins. ‘Tempted yet?’ She laughs and it feels like something is thawing inside of her. ‘You know,’ he carries on. ‘There’s a difference between being alive and feeling alive.’ Carey blushes and changes the subject.

            ‘Do you know anything about a jet ski accident at Water’s Edge a while ago?’ she asks. He wrinkles his forehead in concentration and she notices a scar above his right eyebrow.

            ‘Actually I do, a couple of years ago some banker dude who just moved down out on the lake, hammered, lost control of the jet ski and smashed himself up proper good, but the worst thing was he took out a Bittern clutch too.’ Carey looks at him blankly.

            ‘They’re really rare birds and they were nesting. We hardly ever get them there.’

            ‘Is that why they banned the jet skiing then?’ Carey asks. Matthew laughs at her.

            ‘Nah. It was banned way before that guy killed himself. He just thought he could break the rules. Jet Skis can be awful for wildlife, disturb breeding colonies, ruin foraging banks, cause turbidity in shallow areas…the list goes on.’ There’s so much she has to learn if she’s going to live here. Carey thinks about Giles threatening to pull out of the purchase, of his casual misinterpretation of the facts. Of how his truth is always an alternate version.

An hour later she says goodbye, it’ll be getting dark by the time she gets back. Matthew offers her a lift but she declines. As she walks away a snowball breaks against her shoulder, showering her face with snow.

            ‘Gotcha,’ Matthew shouts.

            ‘Next time,’ she replies.

·          

Back indoors she selects a roast chicken meal and unwraps it carefully. It feels like someone else is here again and her thoughts shift to the man who lived here who crashed his jet ski. When people die, does their residue linger? The world is full of things she’s not yet considered. When did Giles become her reference point?

Carey is not the person she once was. She is not yet the person she will become.

Once it’s all in the oven she checks her phone. Nothing from Giles. Music from the playlist filters through the speakers in every room. She pours herself a glass of wine then, watching the lake, she calls him. On the third ring he picks up, sounding distant.

            ‘Carey?’

            ‘You sound surprised.’

            ‘No no, I just, I meant to phone earlier.’ In the background Carey can hear the ruffling of something.

            ‘I guess you’re not going to make it down.’

            ‘Not today no, sorry babe, this blasted snow. Soon as I can though.’ Carey watches a murmuration of small dark birds make shapes in the sky. It’s classic Carey, knowing what a murmuration is but not what the names of the birds are. Knowing what a marriage is but nothing about love.

            ‘That’s okay’, Carey says, and it is.

            ‘Gotta go babe, deadline to make.’ His voice fades and Carey’s about to hang up but then she hears him again, talking to someone else.

‘Yeah she’s gone.’ There’s a woman laughing in the background. Carey realises something. She doesn’t care. She hangs up.

·          

All night snowflakes fall from the sky, filling in the footprints between Sylvie and Carey’s houses. If her stiff fingers and hoarse voice did not tell her otherwise Carey could almost imagine that the evening never happened. She stands outside on the terrace in her pyjamas watching the sun lifting, ears ringing with songs and tunes she played on the piano. Her cheeks ache from laughing. A bird slips beneath the water in front of her and vanishes, no ripples. As if it were never there at all. Carey shifts her balance and pulls her cardigan closer, fiddles with a loose woollen thread. Metres from where it disappeared the bird resurfaces and Carey lets out the breath she has been holding, feeling foolish for worrying.

She makes a decision. Later she will call Giles, but for now she watches the lake morphing from red to orange to purple, snowflakes landing on her skin and her warmth melting them.

The End