Finally, the processions turned back towards the different roads from which they’d appeared, still shaking their cowbells and blowing horns, leaving ringing ears behind them. The men with whips were last, still snapping and cracking the whips in the middle of the road. After several minutes they followed their respective processions with a fading CRACK! CRACK!
Lily was about to remind everyone that they had a day off tomorrow and were to visit Zürich when Franciszka turned to her. ‘I won’t be back to the annexe tonight.’ She winked. ‘I hinted to Eddie it was a shame he wasn’t sharing the room of Alfie and Warwick, so he asked his father if he could.’ A sly smile spread across her face. ‘Who wants to share with their father while their friends laugh and joke in another room?’
A mini shockwave tingled through Lily. ‘So you’ll be …?’
‘Sharing with Neil.’ Franciszka’s eyes reflected the myriad Christmas lights suspended over the crossroads. ‘A little happiness for us both.’ She winked again and turned to join Neil, waiting a few yards away.
Wow. Lily stared after her, impressed at Franciszka’s pragmatism. A little happiness for us both. She thought about Tubb and Janice living separate, slightly lonely lives until they found each other last Christmas. And her mothers, together for nearly forty years yet now apart. Carola, miserable now her new love had foundered. Her own marriage, which had begun promisingly but fizzled out.
Happiness didn’t always come along at a convenient time and it wasn’t always permanent.
The group split up and Isaac and Lily set off in the same direction as Tubb, Janice, and the two suddenly sleepy boys, Max with Keir again on his shoulders and Isaac taking Dugal piggyback.
The night was icy now and they had to watch their footing, even in boots. At Max’s house Lily and Isaac reclaimed Doggo and said goodnight. As they tramped further up the hill Lily took Isaac’s hand and he smiled down at her, Christmas lights from the houses around flickering behind his head. His hat was pulled down over his ears and he had a decided five-o’clock shadow. His gloved hand squeezed hers and his voice was low and rough. ‘Did I see Franciszka heading for the Little Apartments? How long do you think we have?’
She sent him a sidelong glance. ‘All night.’ When his eyebrows shot up she repeated what Franciszka had told her. ‘I like the idea of a little happiness,’ she added.
Isaac stopped and kissed her slowly and thoroughly, his mouth warm and tender. ‘So do I,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s grab it.’
Chapter Seventeen
Unspeaking, breathing fast, they hurried up to Los’s gracious white house, windows lit behind the blinds, a Christmas tree twinkling from the upper balcony, and took the path where the snow lay like a carpet on either side. Isaac unlocked the door and let Doggo off the lead. Doggo shook, trotted to his bowls to see if any food had appeared in his absence, slurped up a little water and looked at Isaac.
Isaac pointed at Doggo’s bed. ‘’Night, Doggo.’ Doggo waved goodnight with his tail and flopped down with a yawn.
In seconds Lily found herself in Isaac’s bedroom watching him pull off gloves, hat, coat and boots as if it was a speed test.
Then everything seemed to slow down.
Gently, he drew her close. His mouth fastened over hers in a deep, drugging kiss as she felt him sliding her hat from her head, her gloves from her hands, slow and gentle with the damaged one. Her hands floated up to stroke his face as he found the zip on her coat and eased it down. The coat slid to the floor.
It was warm in the room, warmer by the moment. His skin was fragrant with the scent of outdoors. She melted against him as his mouth caressed her cheeks, her eyelids and he fumbled with her fleece. ‘Stop me if I’m taking too much for granted,’ he breathed, sliding his hands under her top and grazing her back with his palms, prickling her skin as every hair stood on end.
‘Don’t stop,’ she gasped as he inched her top up and over her head, her hair tumbling softly back onto her shoulders and upper arms.
‘Beautiful,’ he breathed, his gaze on her breasts, cupped by her lacy, lavender-coloured bra, stroking her skin above the lace. A delicious tide of goose bumps followed his fingertips and her breasts tightened as he flicked open the bra and slid it from her, lowering his head to bring his mouth to her, licking, nipping, nibbling, sucking until she wasn’t sure her legs would keep her up.
Anchoring herself to him, she slid her hands up under his top, sighing at the feel of his skin, his body hair coarse yet silky. A couple of economic movements from him and the top was gone and she dropped her fingers to the fastening of his jeans.
‘Damned hand,’ she groaned after a moment. ‘I can’t undress you.’
His rumble of laughter was low in his throat. ‘Leave it to me.’ His jeans were gone in a moment.
Hers too.
Then he was easing her down onto the bed, the cotton softness of the duvet at her back as she found the satin-covered hardness of him, trickling her fingertips over his flesh, his breath hissing between his teeth as she meandered a pathway of kisses across his body. Struggling with keeping her injured hand out of the way and using the ‘wrong’ hand to touch him she kind of lost her place when he began exploring her, making her clench and push against him, wrap him in her arms and legs. His skin smelled deliciously of outdoors and the fine hair of his body slid over her skin until she felt as if she were encapsulated in a halo of sensitivity and sensation.
Soon she wasn’t really thinking. She was just doing.
One of them retained the presence of mind to use a condom – though it wasn’t her. His breath rushed against her shoulder as he entered her. Hard flesh stroked soft flesh and she felt him in every part of herself, opening and closing, pushing and pulling, felt the way he moved, caressing her with every part of himself, stroking her inside and out.
And there was nothing in the world for her but that man and this moment.
They definitely didn’t get enough sleep. ‘But we have to make the most of our time together,’ she murmured to him as she was dragged from her slumbers by the intriguing sensation of a hot male body and caressing hands. Whether she woke him or he woke her the tingling sex was unhurried and tender. Isaac made love with intensity and curiosity, enclosing them in a private bubble of pleasure.
Friday morning finally arrived with Isaac’s phone alarm going off. He stretched, then caught Lily up against him. ‘I have to take Doggo to visit the vet or he won’t be allowed to set paw back on British soil. Ona says he can stay with her today while we’re out.’
‘Awwwww.’ She nuzzled the side of his neck. ‘I want to stay in bed.’
His laugh was rueful as his hand slid down to stroke her bottom. ‘If you want to let the others go to Zürich on their own then let’s do it.’
‘They can’t get to Biberbrugg station without you to drive them there. Hope Franciszka meant she’ll be staying with Neil tonight as well,’ she groaned, reluctantly letting him slide out from under her hands, out of bed. Then she eased herself from the warm cocoon of Isaac’s quilt and began to gather up her clothes.
‘The Christmasness of this place is awesome!’ Alfie announced. They were exploring the market currently occupying most of Zürich Main Station, passing under the banner reading, Christkindlimarkt – ENCHANTINGLY WELCOME! to slaver over chocolate cakes and wince at a price tag of fifty Swiss francs for a single – though beautiful – glass decoration.
The Swarovski Christmas tree, encrusted top to bottom with glittering crystals, was so ostentatiously beautiful it was hard to absorb. Almost more crystal than tree, soaring thirty feet into the rafters of the great building, it was surrounded by display cases of jewellery and even a crystal-encrusted bowler hat.
Charlotte and Emily pressed their faces against the security glass and groaned. ‘Mum …?’
Carola laughed incredulously. ‘Darlings, if you think I have enough money to buy you something amazing from Swarovski then I’m afraid you’ve got me mixed up with some other mother.’
They left the station below a thousand tiny lights, like fairyland, glittery without being glitzy. Isaac drew level with Lily, swapping sides to take her good hand as an old-fashioned red tram covered in lights and stars and full of children rattled past. Although Lily caught a couple of interested looks directed their way, the hand-holding seemed quickly accepted, especially when Franciszka and Neil followed their lead. Carola cast both couples wistful looks.
It was close to a perfect day. They went uphill in a little old funicular called the Polybahn, also red, which left from a tiny station decorated with stained glass, and they gazed out over Zürich from the front of the university, admiring slender pointed spires and the mountain backdrop. Emily was particularly entranced by golden lamp posts in front of which she took so many selfies the boys photobombed her, making her dissolve into giggles.
They rode the trams past massive adverts for Lindt chocolate and painted buildings and found a fantastic tea room, decorated with curly gilt plaster and red velvet furniture, drenched with Christmas decorations, and ordered hot chocolate and selected their ravishing cakes, enjoying every crumb and sip, despite the bill at the end.
They worked the calories off by climbing the tower of the sixteenth-century Grossmünster Church to look out over the city and Lake Zürich, Lily marvelling that a graffiti artist had been allowed to paint what looked like stickmen in one of the chambers halfway up.
Another Christmas market, this time outside the opera house, more bratwurst and waffles. They bought glühwein too but only Carola, Franciszka and Isaac really seemed to enjoy it. Lily thought it tasted like cough medicine. Warwick drank his and Eddie’s, feeling that, at eighteen, he ought to drink alcohol when it was offered, but he felt sick afterwards.
It was while they were enjoying the repast at rustic wooden tables that Lily’s phone rang. She read the caller ID in surprise. ‘It’s Tina,’ she told Isaac. ‘Maybe she needs to know when I’ll be able to work again.’ But when Lily answered, she discovered Lily wasn’t who Tina wanted at all. ‘Is Carola with you?’ Tina asked in her usual unflappable way.
‘I’ll pass you over.’ Wondering, Lily said to Carola, ‘Tina at the pub wants you.’
Carola looked surprised as she took the handset and said hello. She listened, frowning. Then shock rippled across her features. ‘Really?’ Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Oh!’
‘What’s up?’ Charlotte was jolted out of her conversation with Eddie and Alfie.
Carola gave her daughter a watery smile. ‘Nothing to worry about. I just have to take this call.’ She unwound her legs from the wooden bench, stumbling in her haste to rise, and turned her back, phone clamped to her ear.
Charlotte and Emily looked at each other, faces slack with apprehension.
Lily distracted them by asking for help working a map app, letting them explain with teenage loftiness even though she knew perfectly well how to work it. Anxiously, she watched Carola wipe her eyes on her coat cuff.
Her apprehension almost matched Charlotte and Emily’s by the time Carola came back to the table wearing a wobbly smile. ‘Well,’ she said, flopping back to the bench and giving Lily back her phone.
‘What’s up?’ Charlotte demanded again.
‘What?’ Emily echoed, looking suddenly young and unsure and fidgeting with her mittens.
Carola’s laugh shook. ‘Tina had Owen in the pub. Owen! He’s been mugged.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘He lost his phone and laptop and was kept in hospital for a couple of days. Then he had several days of creasing headaches and couldn’t drive. He didn’t have his contact list backed up anywhere. He’s still off work so didn’t get hands on another computer to send me a message. Once he was well enough to get a mate to drive him to our house on Monday, we’d already gone on this trip. He thought he’d have to wait until we got back but then it occurred to him to go into the pub, thinking someone there would have a way of getting a message to me.’ Suddenly she was beaming and laughing. ‘I haven’t been ghosted!’
‘Oh, has he been out of touch?’ asked Charlotte, proving how little teenagers needed to know about their parents’ lives.
Maybe only Lily got how euphoric Carola was feeling. ‘That’s brilliant!’ she said, giving Carola a hug. ‘So you’re still a thing?’
Carola nodded, happiness bursting from her. ‘Very much so, apparently. I’m going to call him later so we can talk properly. I feel awful for thinking so many bad things about him now and I can hardly wait to get home now to check he’s really OK. Such severe concussion’s worrying.’
Lily talked to Isaac out of the corner of her mouth like a comedy gangster. ‘Don’t take a bribe from her to leave early. It’s only Friday and we’re singing at the Christmas market again on Saturday and the advent brunch. That minibus doesn’t leave till Monday, got it?’
Isaac mimicked her delivery. ‘You gotta make it worth my while, honey.’
She grinned, signalling with her gaze that she had plenty of ideas in that direction. Judging from the glow in his eyes and the way his hand came to rest on her thigh beneath the table, he received her message.
When the last crumb of the last waffle had been eaten Lily checked the time. ‘Stephen told me about this shop that sells cuckoo clocks and people go on the hour to hear all the cuckoos going off.’
‘Awesome,’ breathed Emily. ‘Mum, can I have a cuckoo clock for my room as an extra Chrissy prezzy?’
Carola, whose face had been wreathed in smiles ever since she got the phone call from Owen, gave Emily a big hug. ‘I should imagine they’d be a little expensive but we can look.’
‘I’d love one too,’ Lily said, falling into step beside Emily. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in real life but I’m afraid your mum’s right to suspect they’ll be expensive. It’s a famous brand of clock, I think.’
The shop, when they reached it, was elegant. Warwick commented loudly, ‘Swanky or what?’ Tourists were gathering on the marble tiles in front of the wall of cuckoo clocks, each one like a little chalet frozen within a scene. At five minutes to the hour a dapper man in a dark suit stepped up to give a quick talk in English, having established that everybody waiting spoke that language, about Lötscher cuckoo clocks.
He smiled around. ‘Lötscher has been crafting these wonderful clocks since 1920 and is now the only Swiss manufacturer to create the clocks by hand. Every one, with its attention to detail and use of local material such as linden wood, is a work of art.’ He paused for them to assimilate these impressive facts. As he went on to eulogise about clockwork, music boxes and gears, Lily gazed at the beautifully carved clocks in wonder. The figures of people and animals seemed almost real, living daily lives around tiny chalets with shuttered windows.
Emily whispered to her. ‘Which one do you like? I like Santa Claus’s Chalet.’
‘That’s one of the most expensive at over two thousand Swiss francs!’ Lily whispered back. ‘I’d settle for the Brienz Chalet but I can’t spend four hundred on it.’ The little chalet had flowers at every window and balcony. A stack of logs waited as if for someone to take them indoors for the fire. Above the clock face was the cuckoo’s little door. The weights of the winding mechanism were brass fir cones on chains, a pendulum swinging behind.
The man patted the clock that had caught Lily’s eye. ‘This is our classic, based on the very first Lötscher workshop. Some people say it’s the only genuine cuckoo clock.’ He twinkled at Emily. ‘Miss, you have more expensive tastes but Santa Claus’s Chalet features moving platforms for the gifts and the baby deer.’
Then four o’clock arrived and all over the shop little doors popped open and cuckoos bobbed, their ‘Cuck-oo, cuck-oo!’ mixing on the air with clock chimes. The most elaborate clocks continued with moving figures and pretty music-box tunes.
Carola gave Emily a hug. ‘Sorry, sweetie. You’ll either have to find a cheaper mass-produced version or to save up your pocket money for a few years.’
After thanking the genial man, the group s
tepped out of the shop into a darkening afternoon. The temperature had plunged and the Christmas lights like bunting overhead burned brighter as they set off for the last treat on their schedule, something called a singing Christmas tree. Max had exhorted them not to miss it and they arrived at the appropriate square with a hazy idea of an animatronic tree. What they found was by far more charming. The ‘tree’ was actually a pyramid-shape of balconies one atop the other, trimmed with fir tree branches spangled with lights and a huge star on top. The members of a local choir filled the balconies, looking like Christmas decorations in their gaily coloured hats and scarves. A band played at the foot of the tree and the choir sang ‘Joy to the World’ and ‘Feliz Navidad’. A nearby stall provided beer and hot chocolate and, dancing and singing, the Middletones joined in. Lily, laughing, took a video on her phone and thought she had rarely been so happy.
It felt like one of those special moments when family problems and time running out faded into the background in the face of a special joy.
But as the closing notes of ‘White Christmas’ faded away she heard Isaac’s voice speaking rapidly, angrily, and turned to find him with his phone clamped to his ear. ‘Just hold your friggin’ horses. I’m in another country. I can’t just drop everything,’ he snapped. Then, in an altered tone, ‘What do you mean? What’s happened to Hayley?’
Chapter Eighteen
‘Hang on, Nicola. I need to move somewhere quieter.’ Isaac turned his back on the singing and dancing that had been engrossing him before his phone rang and strode out of the pool of light and away from the crowd.
When he reached a bench he dropped down on it. ‘What’s happened?’ he demanded.
Nicola’s voice was tight and anxious. ‘Don’t think I wanted to make this call. I’m not doing it to piss you off. I’m doing it because we haven’t got a choice.’
Let It Snow Page 21
