Snowflake

by Heide Goody

  I sat on a lump of broken concrete that I’d commandeered for myself.

  “I’ve thought of something that might be a problem,” I said. “There’s no way the takeaways are going to bring food to this island for us.”

  “We’re not having takeaway, are we?”

  “I think a desperate situation like this calls for a curry. With a mountain of poppadoms.”

  “I was going to forage for food,” he said.

  “And what are you going to forage for?” I asked him.

  “Nuts.”

  “Nuts?”

  “And berries.”

  “Could you possibly forage for a chicken korma with pilau rice, a keema naan and aloo sag side?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Thought so.”

  Ashbert wore the pout of a man whose survivalist fantasies were being trampled on. “Fine. Why don’t you phone the takeaway and see where in the park they’re prepared to deliver to. I can meet them there. I’m going to light the stove now, so we can have a cup of tea.”

  He fed twigs into a thing that looked like a tiny aluminium jam jar, and then spent some time getting them alight. He knelt over it and poked more twigs in, one at a time. I could tell it wasn’t hot because it still rested against his leg, but he put a small can of water on top of it and stepped away, looking satisfied.

  Meanwhile, after pacing back and forth to get a mobile signal. I found one and dialled the nearest takeaway. Forty minutes and twelve phone calls later, the stove still hadn’t got the water boiling and I was thinking of reporting several Indian and Cantonese restaurants to trading standards for failing to honour their promise to deliver anywhere within a three-mile radius.

  “No takeaway for us,” I reported back to Ashbert glumly.

  “I’ll just have to go hunting,” he said with glee.

  I wanted to ask him what he planned to hunt and what he planned to kill it with, as the police still had his knife, but I nodded wordlessly, preferring not to know.

  I took over the twig feeding duty. It was amazingly tedious, because it still wasn’t possible to discern any actual heat coming from it, so it felt as if I was a one-woman production line whose sole purpose was to produce burnt twigs. Thoroughly unengaged by the marvel of fire, I turned my attention to the email on my phone I’d been sent earlier:

  Dear Miss Belkin,

  I hope this email finds you well. I’ve come across your blog today and I’m fascinated by what you have to say. I’d love to interview you and share your work with the world. I have a column in one of the UK’s best selling papers. Let me know when you’re available and I’ll travel to you.

  Regards, Chorley Danglespear

  Chorley Danglespear. Sounded posh. And a journalist from a national paper wanted to interview me about my blog! This was, in a day of crappy annoyances, wonderful news. I couldn’t wait to tell Ashbert but thoughts of newspaper interviews flew out of my head when he came crashing back through the trees. I heard him before I saw him.

  “I only went and did it! Check this out!”

  He carried what looked like an exploded pillow in his arms. It was only when he stood in the glow of the stove fire that I saw it was a bird.

  “You killed a goose!” I said.

  “Better than that!” He turned so I could see its dangling head. “It’s a swan!”

  “Blimey!”

  I’d never seen a swan at such close quarters, and I was immediately struck by how big it was. It was far bigger than the grotty lawn ornament Terence had rescued from the tip.

  “Er, well done,” I said. “I mean, how…? No, don’t tell me.”

  “It’s a tale bards will sing for years to come.”

  “Good for them. But what shall we do with it?” I asked.

  “I thought we might use the stove,” he said airily, and then his eyes went from the swan to the stove and back again. “Of course, we might need to cut it up a bit.”

  He took the swan off a distance and started to rifle through his bag, looking for some utensil with which to carve up a huge bird. I texted Cookie while I fed more twigs into the stove.

  How do you cook a swan?

  She came straight back on that. Did you just butt text me?

  I tutted and phoned her.

  “No, seriously,” I said. “How do you cook a swan?”

  “You can’t,” she said.

  “Not with that attitude.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Baby Belkin. You’re not allowed to cook them. They all belong to the Queen.”

  “Oh.” This was very bad. I glanced up, half expecting to see the police helicopter swooping down with Sergeant Fenton poised to make an arrest now that we’d gone and committed an actual crime.

  “That’s the mute swans at least,” said Cookie.

  “What, the ones that don’t talk?”

  “It’s their name. I think they can make noises.”

  At that there came a number of noises, including honking, an angry hissing and the screams of a very surprised man. I reached him in time to piece together what had happened. The swan, now looking very much alive (although mightily annoyed) had flapped back into the water, but not before viciously pecking Ashbert’s face.

  “I thought you killed it!” I said.

  “I thought it was dead!” he managed to mumble, through his mutilated lips.

  The swan paddled indignantly across the darkening pond.

  “I think swan might be off the menu,” I said.

  We gave up on the idea of eating. We gave up on the idea of a hot drink as well, sipping tepid water and pretending to enjoy it while slapping bugs from our faces and arms.

  In the end, we went to bed because there really wasn’t anything else to do. I began to wonder if biting insects like their meat pre-tenderised because they were definitely attracted to Ashbert’s battered face. By the time we climbed into the sleeping bag, the swelling around his lips had been augmented by inflammation from dozens of itchy insect bites. He was still devoted to making me happy though. He offered to lie underneath me, so it was softer, and then he worried that I didn’t have a pillow, so he curled himself around my head, patting my hair in his lap. I even think he might have been singing lullabies at some point, but that might have been a dream.

  I was exhausted from a night in the cells and a day of wilderness-living misery and I slept like a log. However, when morning came, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Ashbert said he would carry me back through the water, although when he came to strap his homemade flip-flops onto his feet, he found more clusters of insect bites and I could see him wincing with the pain.

  I put it all behind me, and went off to work, leaving Ashbert at the camp. My mind was already turning over various plans to avoid another hateful night in the park.

  Cookie found me in the women’s toilets, trying to wash my hair in one of the sinks.

  “I’ve never been so glad to come to work,” I said. “You’ll never guess where I spent the night.”

  “A skip?”

  “No.”

  “Prison?”

  “No. But thanks for the campaign to free me. I’m sure it helped.”

  I told her the story of my rubbish night on Ashbert Island. Cookie looked shocked at the swan murder; there are certain things that Cookie holds dear, and she does not approve of cruelty to wildlife.

  “Just to be clear, which was the most annoying part?” she asked. “Was it being in a tent, or was it Ashbert’s constant efforts to make you happy?”

  I sighed and thought about the answer. I really was getting very fed up with Ashbert, but why did it make me feel like such a bad person? I had created Ashbert. I had brought him into my life. I owed him my time and my company, didn’t I? I resigned myself to another evening of caveman-style hunger and boredom.

  And then James phoned me up and invited me out for dinner.

  “Dinner?” I said.

  “Well, Theo and I are going to grab a burger and fries but, if that’s
not beneath you…”

  “Hey. As long as I don’t have to catch it and kill it myself, I’m in,” I said.

  Chapter 29

  We went to a fast food drive-through place near that new development where the car factories used to be. James sent Theo to the counter to order for us. I asked for burger and fries and a thick chocolate milkshake. And a side order of nine chicken nuggets. I was hungry.

  I had – oh, vain woman I am! – worried that James would scoff at my tired and dishevelled appearance. But he looked just as bad.

  “A tough day?” I asked.

  He heaved a deep and heartfelt sigh.

  “A bit of fallout from the whole, you know, ‘murder’ thing.”

  “I’m sorry. Again.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “On the one hand, Theo’s been well looked after by Uncle Phil. But this kind of situation can’t be good for a boy: an absent mother camping with indigenous peoples halfway up a mountain somewhere, a father in prison...”

  “Hey, you’re not in prison yet,” I said which wasn’t half as comforting as I meant it to be.

  “Social services will no doubt begin to show an interest. School have already had a ‘chat’ with me about having to sell our old house because…” He shook his head.

  “Because?” I said.

  His smile was unintentionally bitter. “Living the simple life of a global traveller is surprisingly expensive. Elena dipped deep into our finances.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t put it so strongly but thanks. And the salary of a university academic and part-time curator is surprisingly small. But, hey, there’s no point complaining. As our good friend, Epicurus, said, ‘Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not. Remember, what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.’”

  I have no idea who Epicurus was. It might have been one of his work colleagues.

  “And what do you have now that you had once only hoped for?” I asked.

  “Chips!” said James and pointed.

  Theo came back with a tray heaped high with boxed and wrapped food. Burgers! Fries! Nuggets! And not a bloody swan in sight!

  I practically inhaled half a dozen nuggets. Seriously, no pausing for breath in between. Theo stared at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Not had a proper meal today.”

  “Maybe we’ve all had tough days,” said James.

  Theo gave a game shrug. “Mine was cool. I spoke to the policeman who came to collect Uncle Phil’s car.”

  “They did what?” I said.

  “Forensics want a look, apparently,” said James. “I take it they’ve been round to your place too?”

  “Yup. They’re still there. It’s all sealed up. I’m kind of temporarily homeless.”

  “And the policeman used to be in the army,” said Theo, “and I asked him about where he’d been and he told me all about his time in Afghanistan. It was really interesting.”

  “See?” said James weakly. “Some good has come from the day.”

  “Yes,” I said with forced cheeriness. “I’m sure we’ve all got something to be grateful for.”

  “Yes.” James thought. “Oh, I’ve been asked to give the key address to the potential Ancient History students at the university next week.”

  “That is good,” I said. “Oh. I know. I’m going to be interviewed about my blog.”

  “Are you?”

  “By a national newspaper no less.”

  I showed James the email. He read it and then pulled a funny face, as if it might not be brilliant news.

  “Interesting,” he said. It wasn’t a good ‘interesting’.

  “Exciting,” I suggested.

  “Hmmm.”

  Couldn’t he see that this was going to be great for me? I was thrilled about his university speech or whatever it was.

  “This, um, Chorley Danglespear doesn’t say what his interest is,” said James after reading the email again.

  “Yeah, he says it right there: he’s fascinated by what I have to say,” I pointed out. I wondered if James was still a bit sleep-deprived from his time at the police station.

  “Tabloid journalists aren’t known for writing columns purely about artistic merit,” he said. “If I were you, I think I’d be a bit careful with what I said to him, that’s all.”

  “I’m always careful about what I say to –”

  James gave me a look before I even finished the sentence and we both burst out laughing.

  “You are many things, Lori,” he said to me. The intensity of his accompanying stare was enough to send a small shiver of pleasure through me. “But taking care about what you say is not something that I’d put at the top of the list.”

  I had to acknowledge the truth of this.

  “Listen,” he said. “I did ask you out for a reason tonight.”

  “Oh?”

  “I had an idea about your pendant. You know we lived in Crete. I was out there for nine months cataloguing a collection for a local museum. Well, when he was much younger, Theo was friends with a boy whose father runs a bar in Malia. They still Skype each other from time to time. I thought we might get his help with finding your stall holder and you could ask him yourself.”

  “That would be great!” I said.

  “But let’s kill three birds with one stone. Get back to this Chorley Danglespear and arrange a time to meet and, when you come over to ours to Skype with Hector in Crete, let me coach you through a few hints and tips about dealing with the press.”

  “Have you had much experience with the press?”

  “No, but I might just be able to offer a… worldly perspective on things.”

  “It can’t hurt.”

  “Exactly.”

  I nibbled a fry. “What’s the third bird?”

  “Third bird? Oh. Yes. It’s a sofa bed. If you need it.”

  “You mean tonight?”

  I looked at the man who I had caused no end of hassle and heartache over the last forty-eight hours and he was offering me an alternative to the cold, hard groundsheet of Ashbert’s island den. I could have cried.

  “If you’re homeless,” he said. “If you need somewhere.”

  It occurred to me only then that I had left Ashbert on that wretched island to be eaten alive by insects for another night. He was probably wondering where I was. He was probably alone and hungry and needed me more than ever.

  “I’d love to stay on your sofa bed,” I said.

  Chapter 30

  I went round to see James, to kill those three birds as we’d arranged. It wasn’t a pleasing metaphor, after the swan horror on Ashbert Island.

  “I wonder why people don’t update some of the daft sayings in English,” I said, as he opened the door. “You know, like the one about killing two birds with one stone. It’s completely unsuitable for vegetarians.”

  James nodded. “Perhaps we need a more twenty-first century reference for efficient multitasking.” He stood aside so that I could walk in and I could see that he was giving it some serious thought. “No. I have no idea. I don’t think efficient multitasking comes naturally to me.”

  I had little to add. “You sometimes see these lists of things called life hacks,” I ventured. “My favourite one is putting ice cream in a Nutella jar that’s nearly empty to make a tasty snack, but I’m not sure that it’s as punchy as killing birds. Actually, I’m not even sure if vegetarians can eat Nutella either.”

  We settled on the sofa. Theo was nowhere to be seen. I’d been looking forward to Theo’s company, but I realised that I was thrilled to get James to myself. I was conscious of how close we were on the sofa, our legs almost touching as he turned to me with his serious face. I really liked his serious face, it made me want to soften it, with say, a kiss or something.

  “Let’s have a chat about this interview,” he said. “Now, do you think you could practise pausing for a second or two before answering a question?”

  I paused for a second or t
wo, pushing thoughts of kissing from my mind so that I could concentrate.

  “Yes,” I said smugly. I was smug because I was pretty sure I hadn’t said Mississippi out loud.

  “Very good! Try to use that time to think about what you’re saying. Imagine that the smallest fragment of your sentence can be printed on its own. Does it make you look stupid? If it does then think of another way of saying it.”

  “Right. Got it.” I detected the faintest scent of aftershave, something subtle and manly that made me want to lean in closer and inhale deeply. I was getting distracted again.

  “Another thing you could think about is this. Try not to be drawn into making any statements that might seem extreme in any way. Tone things down a bit.” He gave me a look. “Actually, tone things down a lot.”

  I scowled at him.

  “And something that I really want you to think about is photos. If he wants you to pose for a photo, don’t let him trick you into pulling a face. If he takes your photo, you want it to be smiley and normal, yes?”

  “Of course,” I said, wondering who on earth would let themselves be tricked like that.

  “That’s great news,” he said, standing up. “Now, I hope you like tuna? I’m making a Greek salad with some tuna steaks.”

  “That sounds amazing,” I said. I followed him into the kitchen. “No Theo this evening?” I asked.

  “Staying over at a friend’s,” said James, “although I did get him to talk to Hector, his buddy. He’s expecting a Skype call from us in thirty minutes.”

  I helped with the salad, to the extent that I was capable anyway, which mostly meant adding olives to an already attractive, glistening pile of delicious things. I popped one in my mouth and quickly realised that they were the ones with a stone still inside. I needed to find the right moment to discreetly spit it out or he would know that I’d filched one.