The Start of Everything (23 page)

I was really cold.

There was no staying asleep, so I made myself sit up. Katja’s bed was empty. I considered adding her duvet to mine and curling back up, but then I turned my head to the window.

The glow of oncoming morning light behind the curtain was splotched and … 
undulating
, it seemed. I pushed the curtain to one side.

Falling snow.

I jumped into a kneeling position and clutched the duvet up to my chin.
Snow!
Great thick hunks of it, not a sprinkle or powder. All my winters had been cold, but not to the point of ice—just persistent with the bone-reaching chill of damp and almost-frozen rain. An occasional flurry got my hopes up as a child, but there had never been enough for snowmen or even snowballs.

This was thick stuff, dumping from the sky. The grey garden walls and green yew hedge were topped inches high already. A dark coat flashed past the window, followed by an abrupt wallop against the glass.

I pulled on a second pair of socks, and jeans over my leggings. At the door, I stepped into my wellies and buttoned up my Paddington-Bear-style coat over the college sweatshirt I’d slept in.

Even the hallway felt different. Colder, of course, and the radiator hissed more viciously. The Christmas tree was gone; the stand was there, empty, and the ornament boxes, mostly packed except for a flash of silver garland springing out of the top. There was a weight on the house, an enveloping quietness. Then, suddenly, shrill laughter, and another
whap
against an outside wall.

I opened the front door. Frigid air hit the back of my throat. Snow stung my tongue. The Christmas tree and the dry, browning wreath from the door leaned up one side of the steps, so there was only a narrow path down.

Katja scooped up another snowball, patting it round. She flung it overhand, towards the hedge, where it crashed and shook snow loose from the branches. From behind there, a figure rose, retaliating with three quick balls in succession, then ducking again. Katja was hit, on the shoulder and knee. She squealed and ran around the other side of the hedge. He kept low and came around the front, where I could see
him. He lifted a finger to his lips. It was Mr. Bennet. Katja leapfrogged over the hedge and grabbed off his hat. She ran, and he tackled her.

Katja squealed again, but this time it sounded painful. I ran to them. He got off her. “Are you all right?” he asked. She was breathing heavily but sat up. “Bastard,” she said, then something vicious-sounding in Finnish. He laughed.

Mr. Bennet’s dark hair was wild and he hadn’t shaved. Katja stared at him, still breathing hard.

I wondered where his family was, but then I remembered. Mrs. Bennet had talked up her Christmas gift to the girls: appointments with an astrologer in London. It was the perfect way, she said, to begin a new school term and a new year. Max, the sick daughter, had come home for Christmas just like the doctors said she would, and seemed nice, if quiet. She had a lot of wigs. Christmas day, she wore a bright red bob.

I glanced over at the car park. Their car was gone.

“Ow,” Katja said, grabbing her neck.

“Are you all right?” I asked, at the same time that Mr. Bennet leaned over.

With her other hand, she smashed him in the face with snow. He roared and shook his head, while she scuttled backwards then got up and ran again. “Get him, Grace!” she called.

“Grace!” called a littler voice from the steps. Lizzy and Brent ran to me. They wore proper snowsuits, all quilted and waterproof. Their outfits were so puffed and shiny that they almost appeared to be inflated. Lizzy took a tumble, and for a moment I thought she’d pop or bounce.

The sun was fully up now, its light bouncing off the white everywhere. The snow was still coming down, piling up on my shoulders, my hair, my lashes, my chest, anywhere there was any kind of shelf. I turned around to see what Katja was laughing at, and a ball of snow as big as my head smacked me full on the face.

Bitch
, I thought. How dare she? And how dare she flirt like that with a dad while his family is out for the day? She said once that she wished Mr. Finley had had a full-blown affair with the woman from work. She said Mrs. Finley deserved to be cheated on. Did she think the same of Mrs. Bennet?

Once I’d caught her staring at him. “That’s not funny,” I’d told her. “His kid is in hospital.”

“He’s their stepfather, not their real father. Stop being so serious.”

If anyone ever said it was okay for someone to sleep with Shep because he’s not my real father, only my mum’s second husband, I wouldn’t take it. But this was Katja. She liked to get a rise out of people.

With my hands I started sweeping together the mother of all snowballs.

Mr. Finley, dressed for work, skirted the war zone on the way to his car. He wiped his windscreen with a handkerchief, then looked back at Mrs. Finley watching from their window. He waved with the handkerchief hand. It looked like a surrender. This weekend they’d sent the kids to Grandma’s, Katja thinks so they can have loud sex to make up for his almost-affair. We worked out that we sleep underneath them. So far we haven’t heard anything.

Mr. Finley’s wheels spun in the snow, then the car lurched back out of his place. We all watched him. He backed far enough to turn and fishtailed a bit. The whole group of us flinched.

He coasted in a perfect gentle curve to the mouth of the exit.

The drive bends, so we didn’t see it happen. The snow softened sound, so the impact was muffled; it sounded like a box falling off a shelf. But he hit the horn on impact, so we ran after him.

He hadn’t veered far off. Most of his car was still on the drive—across it, actually. The front tyres had dipped into the ditch on the side, and the bumper had come to rest against a birch.

Mr. Bennet and Mr. Holst joined Mr. Finley around the vehicle, discussing options. They decided it wasn’t worth it to try to pull it out with one of the other cars, given the chances of a worse accident resulting. Mr. Bennet knew a farmer nearby who could do it with a tractor. “I’ll ring him,” he offered, and a few minutes later reported that he’d try to come before the end of the day.

Behind me, Mrs. Holst explained to the kids that they couldn’t go to a friend’s birthday party. There was no way anyone could get a car out around Mr. Finley’s. We turned to trudge back towards the house.

The wafting flakes turned to slushy globs, then sloppy, wet lashings. Rain spots stippled the white expanse covering the garden. By the
time we reached the footpath to the house, it was spilling on us. We huddled on the steps and around the front door, as Mr. Bennet reached for the handle. It rattled, but he hadn’t touched it yet. He froze, hand hovering. The handle turned perpendicular, and the door fell in. We all leaned forward. Stephen, the writer, blinked at us from inside. “Did I sleep through it?”

We all dripped in the hallway. Mr. Bennet unfolded a wool blanket to make it wide enough for all our boots and trainers. We hung coats from the bannister and door handles and from the corners of the pigeonhole shelving that divided the mail. Gloves and hats were laid on the radiator. We stood around in wet socks, damp sweaters and jeans, looking to politely unbond. Mr. Finley’s accident had blocked any escape by car, and the rain put the garden out of the running. We were all in for the rest of the day. With halfhearted waves and some awkward handshakes, the Holst family and the Finleys as a couple retreated upstairs to their flats. Katja pulled off the sweater she had on over a purple T-shirt and shook out her hair, smiling at Mr. Bennet. He pretended not to notice and apologised to the rest of us that he’d get the Christmas detritus to the recycling centre another day. Their individual doors closed behind them. Ten seconds later, music pulsed from our room.

My heart thudded. It took me a moment to figure out that it was in anger. She knows I hate that CD; she treats our room like it’s hers and I’m just there for sleepovers; she pretends to be Dru’s and Max’s friend and then shimmies her chest at their stepdad; she laughs at Mr. Finley’s almost-affair and wishes he would “get some” because Mrs. Finley is a bitch. She is, but she’s not the only one.

“Katja,” said Stephen.

I flinched and shivered. I hadn’t realised he was still there.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” he said, half turned towards his door and half towards me. Except his face, which looked straight at the shiny wood floor and his blue socks. “Must have been a good time out there.” He tilted his head up just a bit and smiled at me.

“It was,” I said coolly. “Why didn’t you come outside?”

“I just woke up. Late night. I was finishing a chapter.”

My sweatshirt was wet through. My feet were frozen.

“Katja,” he said again. This time I twigged that he meant me. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“I hate tea,” I said automatically, because I do hate it. Inside, I was thinking,
That bitch
.

He’d meant me. Katja was always sending me to do her work; the kids must have called for her and got me instead a dozen times. He worked behind that window right in front of the climbing frame every day. He’d written a note for Katja—thinking me—and made a date for dinner—with me—and when she showed up? He must have asked her where I was, and I bet she thought fast. Said that I’d sent her to say I wasn’t coming, then told
me
that he had “offended” her. My imagination had filled in the blanks, and held it against him.

“I like coffee,” I added.

We went into his flat and closed the door.

He’d been tidying and packing. He’d arranged that he’d drive to the Peterborough station and leave the car for his uncle to pick up on his return train from Heathrow. Stephen himself was catching a train down to Cornwall, to crash at a friend’s farm and write. It was a dairy farm, with a guesthouse and seventy-five cows.

Outside, the rain just kept coming. I think he was nervous around me. Figuring out the equipment for grinding the beans and frothing the milk gave him something else to focus on. “Are you cold?” he suddenly asked, over his shoulder. “Would you like a dry sweater?”

None of the fireplaces at Deeping House worked. That was just too much trouble, I guess, but it would have been nice today.

“Yes, please.” I pulled off my Corpus sweatshirt and laid it over the back of a chair. My T-shirt underneath was dry but thin. He went into the bedroom, where his suitcase was open on the neatly made bed. I followed. “Here,” he said, holding out a red sweater.

His hair hadn’t been cut in ages but was clearly the grow-out of a once shorter cut, not deliberately long. He had thick eyelashes and clean fingernails. He was slim, long-legged. Hadn’t shaved today but probably yesterday. He was offering me a sweater and had made me a coffee and stayed up late to do work he loved.

I pulled my T-shirt off over my head. He goggled and turned his back; that hand with the sweater still reached out to me. I took it and threw it back into the suitcase. “Would a different one …” he said, turning towards the suitcase, full of sweaters, sweaters on sweaters like kittens in a basket. I was in his peripheral vision. I unhooked my bra.

“Katja,” he said, glancing at me.

I wriggled the bra down my arms and dropped it. I got close, which rubbed my nipples up against his rough sweater. “Get it off,” I said, and he did. Then the buttoned shirt, which caught for a moment at the cuffs, inside-out sleeves dangling from his wrists; then the T-shirt over his head. He put his hands on my bare waist and we grazed lips, tapped tongues. His caution turned into confidence, our standing embrace into a tangle across the pillows.

“Do you have a condom?” I asked. I had some in the help flat, in my bathroom bag. I asked out of convenience, out of don’t-kill-the-mood-by-making-me-go-get-them, but he must have thought I was depending on him. He ransacked all three dresser drawers, shoving their contents around. In the bottom one he found a box and he held it up, breathing hard, triumphant.

We got the rest of the way naked, dumped the suitcase, and got under the duvet. We hugged to warm up, rubbing each other’s backs with our fronts pressed together. My hair was all over his face; his mouth kissed up and down my neck. He tickled my ear with his tongue, which makes me crazy, and loud.

I got on top. The duvet slipped from my shoulders to my hips. I rocked. “Do you like it?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Should I stop?”

“No!”

“Say how much you want me to keep fucking you.”

“I want it. I want you to do it. Please don’t stop.”

“Beg me.”

“Fuck me. Please, fuck me.” He chanted it while I rolled my hips back and forth, back and forth, until he reached up and pinched my tits and made me come. “Oh!” I yelled. “Oh!” I flopped, and my thighs spasmed. I lay on his chest.

He rolled me over and thrust three times to come, too. We breathed hard together for a few minutes. Finally, “Blimey,” he said, and smiled.

He had a crooked canine tooth and pink cheeks. I kissed his mouth. “Blimey,” I said in return.

We hugged and petted a little, until the clock reminded him of his uncle’s train. “Shit,” he said. “I’m going to have to wash the sheets again.”