Snowflake

by Heide Goody

  I frowned at that. “You can’t? Why not?”

  “Someone has to take responsibility. A child needs stability. His mother’s gone off to travel the world, so I need to make sure that I don’t mess things up around here.”

  “So, what’s she doing, exactly?” I asked

  “Elena’s a doctor. Always been a real high flyer,” said James. “She’s a great doctor. Great mom. It just wasn’t enough for her.” He stared into his glass. “She’d done voluntary work overseas before we met, and she’d said lots of times that she wanted to go back to it. I thought she meant small stints, or maybe something more when Theo was older. I was wrong. She’d seen so many things in the world that needed fixing, she was constantly itching to go back out there and fix them.”

  He sipped his drink thoughtfully.

  “No, that’s not entirely true,” he said. “Elena wanted to see the world. Being a doctor, volunteering, that was a means to an end. What she really wanted, what she wants, is to travel everywhere, see everything. It’s like she’s got this massive bucket list in her head and it’s like she’s lost the great game of life if she doesn’t manage to swim with the dolphins, climb Everest, swim the Amazon and visit Machu Picchu.”

  “Gotta catch’em all,” I said.

  “Exactly. I think it got to the point where she saw me, and maybe even Theo as being like a millstone around her neck, holding her here.”

  I swigged my drink, remembering halfway through that it was whiskey, not the cheap wine I’m used to quaffing. I coughed and tried to turn it into a thoughtful noise.

  “Being abandoned’s no fun, is it?” I said.

  “Ah. How goes the search for your parents?” he said. “Any word?”

  “Nope. The only communication with anyone in my family is with Adam, and I’ve already told you how that goes. This is Adam. Watch.” I affected a voice that was somewhere between Adam and Homer Simpson. “‘Lori, you need to act more like a grown up and pretend you’re me. Because I’m great! I’ve been catching dinosaurs and digging up mummies in Fuerteventura and I’ve got my own TV show and what have you ever done with your life, eh?’”

  “Another globetrotter,” said James with a wink.

  “Another over-achieving globetrotter,” I emphasised. “Why does everyone assume I need to match up to his standards? Why can’t I just be allowed to get on with my life in my own way?”

  “Exactly. Here’s to getting on with our lives in our own way.” He clinked his glass against mine and smiled at me. Actually at me. Like, he smiled and he looked at me. With his eyes. An entirely improper shiver ran through me.

  “Sooooo,” I said, “Pippa.”

  “What about her?”

  “Not girlfriend material, huh?” I could imagine that James would have high standards, so it wasn’t hard to imagine things going wrong. “What, was she not smart enough? Not pretty enough?” I asked.

  “Not pretty enough?” he said. “Really? What kind of man rejects a woman purely because she doesn’t match up to some secret list of ideal physical traits?”

  Two thoughts jostled in my head. One was that I had known plenty of men who were just like that (one guy had dumped me immediately after taking me to bed, claiming that wearing a push-up bra was false advertising and he should report me to Trading Standards). The other thought was that Ashbert was the walking proof that I was equally capable of such shallowness.

  “So, you’d go out with any woman?” I said archly.

  “I’d like to say that I would. I know there’s some biological hard-wiring within us all that works below the surface. Isn’t there an entirely unscientific formula about your ideal partner being half your age plus seven years?”

  “Is there?” I said and thought. “Fifty-seven. Wow, I’ve been totally hitting on the wrong guys.”

  “Possibly got a bit confused with the maths there,” said James. “The age thing is our subconscious trying to find a healthy partner. It’s an evolution thing. Same goes for the whole facial symmetry and golden ratio thing.”

  Uh-oh. James had forgotten that I was a doofus and didn’t understand any of this highfaluting talk.

  “Golden ratio?”

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s about the relationship between the lengths of the different body parts.”

  “Oh, that!” I said. “I’ve known a lot of guys who were fixated with that. More than a couple who would text me pictures. Mind you, you can’t really get a sense of proportion from a picture. I texted one guy back to explain that and so he sent me another with a six-inch Darth Vader action figure in shot for scale. Weird picture. I’ve still got it somewhere. Dick and Darth. It’s like the world’s worst buddy cop movie. ‘One’s a Sith Lord, one’s a flaccid penis. Together they will bring the city’s criminals to just–’ you okay?”

  James was staring at me. I think I might have been a bit drunk and gone off on a conversational tangent. It certainly took James a long time to find his voice.

  “No, I don’t mean that,” he said. “I definitely don’t mean that. The golden ratio is about how the proportions of the body compare. It’s where the ratio between the two measurements is the same as the ratio between the larger measure and the total of the two.”

  “Um?”

  “The ancient Greek sculptor, Phidias, used it to create classically beautiful figures in the frieze of the Parthenon. They’re just astonishing.”

  “Ah, it’s a Greek thing.”

  “It’s like this, if I may…” He put his drink down and tentatively reached out to touch my face. “The height of your nose,” he said, placing thumb and finger above and below, “versus the width of your nose. The height of your nose and the length of your ears. The distance from your hairline to the bridge of your nose and from the bottom of your nose to your chin.” With each statement, his fingers softly touched my skin. He was like an explorer taking a casual stroll across my face. Like that but, you know, nice. And a bit sexy.

  “And you put all the numbers into your calculator and if the numbers come up right, you have a perfectly beautiful face.”

  “And do I?”

  “What?”

  “Have a perfectly beautiful face?”

  He laughed.

  “That bad?” I said.

  “Lori, you don’t need maths to tell you that you’re beautiful.”

  “Sounds liked you’re avoiding the question to be nice instead of being honest.”

  “Not at all.” He sighed. “Pippa, tonight’s would-be date, is a very beautiful woman. Intelligent and witty too. She’s a barrister. But, no, she’s not the woman for me. Attractiveness – physical attraction between two people – is not something you can work out with a formula.”

  Intelligence is though, I thought. I almost certainly fell far short of James’ standards.

  “At least I don’t need your clever golden ratio to tell me that I’m too stupid to be girlfriend material,” I said.

  James blinked, slightly panicked. “Girlfriend material?”

  “I mean hypothetically.”

  He shook his head. “You have a unique mind, Lori. That much is certain.”

  “Unique mind? Ha! Now you’re definitely being kind instead of honest.”

  He simply arched an eyebrow at me. The damned man didn’t even try to deny it! I picked up a cushion and playfully bashed him. It was unfortunate that I picked one of the cushions that had been savaged by a fox. Whatever was in this glass was potent and fast-acting, because I cared less than I probably should have that we were now surrounded by a haze of floating feathers. James wafted a hand across his face.

  “I had a snow globe when I was a child,” he mused at the drifting feathers, “and the thing I wanted more than anything was to be inside that charming little world where everything was safe and cosy. I feel as though I am tonight. Thank you, Lori.”

  He reached out and squeezed my hand briefly, which made my pulse quicken. The moment passed, and he climbed off the sofa.

  “Feath
ers are a terrible allergen for kids. I’d best get the dustpan.”

  I’m no domestic goddess. I was happy to lift my feet as he cleared up the feathers around me. I half-listened to his chatter about Elena, but truthfully, I was thinking about being inside that cosy snow globe together.

  He stopped and looked at me. I felt there was a potential moment between us. I gazed into his dark and expressive eyes.”

  “Seriously?” he said before continuing with the sweeping. “Dick and Darth? Jeez, I’m going to have nightmares.”

  Chapter 22

  I woke and, for a moment, couldn’t work out where I was. It wasn’t my home. My home had been sold by my devious parents who had selfishly used the proceeds to follow their dreams in wildest Wales or Guatemala or Norfolk or somewhere.

  I was on the sofa in James’ living room (he was a bit posh so maybe he called it the drawing room or parlour). I was underneath a rough-woven throw that my mom would have described as ‘ethnic’. I was still wearing another woman’s clothes; I peeked under the throw and checked.

  I stared vacantly at the ceiling and tried to remember what had happened.

  We’d gone to the car wash, released two wild animals in the park and come back to the house for a stiff one. Warming spirits were good for a tired body. I’d knocked back a couple, we’d bitched about our estranged loved ones, he’d stuck his fingers in my face, we’d had a ‘moment’ or maybe half a moment and then, as I sank another drink, he’d swept up and told me more of his woes and…

  I’d fallen asleep on him, knocked out by some frantic fox-based exercise, a couple of shots and his dull recollection of his bitch of an ex. That wasn’t good. Falling asleep as someone opened their heart to you. Was there a positive spin to be put on this? No. It had almost certainly cemented his view that I was a clueless snowflake with no discernible skills or prospects. His perfect match would be a doctor or an academic or a globe-trotting explorer – super intelligent, cultured and suave like himself. Like James Bond.

  “Hmmm.”

  Putting aside my current social predicament (and if waking up in a strange man’s house because he’s bored you to sleep isn’t a social predicament, I don’t know what is), it was interesting to think that James Reynolds possessed a number of the attributes that I suppose I admired in James Bond. He was sort of like James Bond but without the violence and gadgets and over-presumptive bedroom behaviour.

  I located my phone (it had got wedged in a crevice) and started typing a document. I entitled it Making My Ideal Man then backspaced and renamed it Making My NEW Ideal Man. I would fill in some details and thoughts later. It was time to get out of here. I’d not yet been paid but decided I’d rather face poverty than the shame of bumping into James. It was barely seven o’clock. The house was quiet. I just needed to find my shoes and keys and creep out of there before anyone woke.

  “Stealthy, Lori,” I told myself and sat up.

  On the next armchair over, Theo sat, reading on a tablet.

  “Morning, stealthy Lori,” he said without looking up.

  “Ah,” I said.

  The lad smiled at me. “Stealthy Lori snores, you know.”

  “Does she?”

  “Like a hippo.”

  “Has our guest woken?” called James from the next room.

  “Yep,” said Theo.

  James came in with a tray bearing a pot of tea and a pair of hot buttery crumpets.

  So much for creeping out.

  “Morning,” he said.

  “Last night…” I gave up on a reasonable explanation. “I’m sorry.”

  James smiled. I realised he didn’t do it often and it was a delight to see when he did.

  “Ah, my personal troubles are dull enough to send anyone to sleep.”

  “Still,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” said Theo.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “Because we never did work out which fox was the furriest,” he said solemnly.

  James gave me a quizzical look. “Yes, Lori. Which one was the furriest?”

  “Hmmm,” I said. “I did carry out a brief assessment when we’d captured them, and I concluded that while the fennec fox had very soft fur, the red fox had a greater depth of fur. In overall furriness, I would say that the red fox was the winner.”

  “I knew it,” said Theo with a quiet confidence. “I told you.”

  “You did,” I conceded and poured myself a tea.

  “I checked over Uncle Phil’s car in the cold light of day,” said James.

  I pulled a face.

  “No, it looks good,” he said. “I think we did a good job on that.”

  “We?”

  “There’s no ‘I’ in team,” he said on his way back to the kitchen.

  “Depends how you spell it,” I said.

  I pulled out my phone. Now was as good a time as any to make the most of James’ status as a fully-fledged and mature man for my own personal notes. I had just jotted, Teamwork, modest, knows wise ancient sayings, when he returned with a plate of crumpets of his own.

  “Theo says you had some questions about a brooch or something,” said James.

  “Hmm? Oh.” I touched the pendant at my neck. “We were just discussing whether it might be Minoan or something.”

  “Do you mind if I have a look?” he said.

  “Of course. You know all about old Greek stuff.”

  “Old Greek stuff,” he said. “That’s exactly what it says on my master’s degree.”

  He sat on the sofa beside me. I was suddenly very conscious that I was probably suffering from appalling bed head and morning breath.

  “The chances of it actually being Minoan are supremely slim,” he said and leaned in to get a better look.

  “I bought it in Crete,” I said. “Didn’t think much about it at the time.”

  He peered at it intently and then all of a sudden we both seemed to become flustered by the fact that he was fixated on my cleavage. I blushed, he gave a light cough and looked away.

  “Let me get a magnifying glass,” he said and stood.

  “They’re not that small,” I said. It was an attempt at a joke, to defuse the embarrassment. Unfortunately, I think I sounded like a woman with a complex about her modest-sized boobs. I’ve got modest boobs like Holland’s got modest mountains.

  While I took the pendant off, James rummaged red-faced in a sideboard drawer. I marvelled at the fact that he had a magnifying glass. Only old people and experts have magnifying glasses to hand. I added a note to my phone document: Always has the right tool to hand.

  I held out the pendant, and he inspected it, turning it over to look at the back too.

  “It’s a lovely piece,” he said. “Lovely colour.”

  “I got it from a little shop just off the market square in Malia. The guy was really old, and maybe a bit deaf because he didn’t hear me saying I wasn’t looking for jewellery, he just kept lowering the price. I almost thought he’d give it to me if I held out.”

  “Can you remember the name of the shop? I know Crete quite well.”

  Imagine knowing Crete quite well! I bet when James knows a place quite well he doesn’t mean where you can get two drinks for the price of one in happy hour either... I made a sneaky note: Knows foreign and exotic locations.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I can picture it exactly but I don’t know the name.”

  James straightened up. “I’ll need to dig a bit deeper to understand how old it might be. It’s not my area of expertise. Cameos have been made the same way for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.”

  I looked at him. “Really? Plastic and glue haven’t been around for that long, surely?”

  He gave me an appalled, sideways look. “I never know when you’re joking, Lori. The contrast colour isn’t plastic, it’s where someone has carved away a layer of stone that’s a different colour. The skill of making a genuine cameo is in selecting the correct stone as well as the c
arving.”

  “Oh. Wow.” I peered again at the pendant. I had a renewed respect for it. There was a real delicacy to the carving. The woman on the pedestal was beautiful. It was clear from her confident, perky stance. The man who knelt before her seemed really into her. It oozed from every aspect of his body language. James seemed to read my thoughts.

  “It’s very expressive, isn’t it?”

  “I wonder who they are?” I said.

  “It’s possible that it’s a depiction of Pygmalion and Galatea,” said James.

  Pygmalion. The name sounded like something I’d heard but when I searched my memory for a clue, nothing was forthcoming.

  “Pygmalion didn’t like women,” piped up Theo.

  “Ah yes,” I nodded.

  “Not that he was gay,” added Theo helpfully, “more that they weren’t good enough for him.”

  I found myself taking against Pygmalion already.

  “He carved his ideal woman out of ivory and fell in love with her,” said Theo.

  “That’s right,” said his dad.

  “The goddess Aphrodite was flattered that the statue looked like her, so she brought the statue, Galatea, to life for Pygmalion.”

  “A real-life woman as a present, just because the statue looked like her...” I mused, wondering why that felt so uncomfortable.

  “Yeah,” said Theo. “Nobody knows whether Galatea had free will once she was animated, and whether she really liked Pygmalion either. It’s like one of those robot dolls men buy.”

  “Um,” I said.

  “I’d buy one,” said Theo.

  “Really?” said James.

  “If she could play Xbox or build Lego.”

  “The attributes of an ideal woman.”

  It’s not often that I am lost for words, but Theo’s casual analysis made me stop and think for a whole variety of reasons. Not only had he managed to put his finger on the exact reason that the story was disturbing but it made me immediately think of the relationship I had with Ashbert, if you could even call it a relationship.