Snow

Outside it’s not totally white yet. You can still see bits of green in the garden – but the sky is that milky-grey colour – dull and heavy – and it’s snowing again now – great big fat flakes swirling down. I’m transfixed for a minute, forgetting everything else, watching the beautiful swirling snow.

The last thing I do before I close the laptop and turn the light off at night, is send love. It’s all I can do. It’s been nine days since I had a reply, but there’s nothing I can do except wait, and send love. I don’t sleep much.

Weather forecasters are predicting the coldest November night since 1993.

Last time I was at Marnie’s cottage – picking my way through what used to be the dining room – past the long narrow table now completely obscured by books and papers – shaking away memories of those huge dinner parties every weekend. At the window, a sky blue kaftan –intricately embroidered – beautiful, if a little ragged in places, hung from the curtain rail, swinging quite violently to and fro a couple of inches above an electric blow heater which was blasting an unpleasant heat into the icy cold room

Sitting either side of the open fire, I tried not to stare too hard at the smoking log teetering, half in half out of the grate as Marnie pressed the button on the gas poker and huge flames shot sideways into the room.

“…and now they say they want four hundred pounds a month for the electricity or they’ll cut me off. It’s ridiculous. I haven’t got four hundred pounds. Let them cut me off I say..”

She pressed the button again and there was a wooshing sound but no flame. She looked at it puzzled, and I noticed her hand was shaking slightly

I don’t want to – I really don’t want to. I love being on my own and I only have one more week of it. Next Saturday this house will be full again – comings and goings, parties, music, size ten shoes, hairclips inexplicably all over the place. I have to though. I have no choice. I open the laptop again, take a deep breath, and start typing:

Marnie -It’s freezing – do come if you’re cold.

Then I turn out the light again, and try to sleep, hoping she won’t reply.

The next morning, I’m glad to see she hasn’t, and I go to the gym. I don’t enjoy it exactly, but I’m starting to see a difference. The main thing is it takes my mind off things.

A little envelope is flashing on my phone when I get back. It’s from my youngest son, thanking me for the socks I posted him in a jiffy bag the other day. I think if you’re going to take part in an occupation, you should at least have warm feet – it can get very cold

“…. and we’re online – check it out!”

I click on the link, and it’s a clip from the BBC. A boy with an earnest expression, and a very curious haircut – shaved sides, a fringe of ringlets, and long, ratty dreads at the back – is telling the reporter that everyone is looking forward to the arrival of a Marxist poet who is going to read to them.

The camera swings away from the boy, and zooms in on a trestle table loaded with food; then it switches to an outside shot, where three students stand, arms linked, at the entrance to the building. They look cold, but determined. Their straggly moustaches make them look even younger than they are, and slightly comical. One of them is my son.

I message him, and I say “please try not to get arrested or thrown off your course,” and five minutes later he answers, and says he doesn’t think they could possibly arrest all two hundred of them, and I’m not to worry, but he will let me know if anything happens.

I don’t switch my phone off that night, and that makes it even harder to sleep, because ….. I don’t know why it does really. It just does.

I have no idea how he is …. If he’s even…… I’m not sure what to do anymore.

The next morning, the snow is quite deep. Where I live, it stays frozen forever once it snows. There’s no way I’m taking my car out when it’s like this. I’m rummaging around in the drawer for headache pills – I can’t find anything since I tidied up – and someone knocks at the front door. When I open it, there’s a stressed looking taxi driver – god knows how he got up my drive - willpower perhaps – and Marnie. I hold the door open wide, put a smile on my face, and welcome her in. She sits down to take her boots off and I notice they’re cheap fake uggs – not proper ones, and so they’ve half collapsed at the back. They don’t look at all warm.

She’s also wearing several beautiful Japanese padded coats, one on top of the other, in slightly different shades of caramel and gold, and a rather fetching hat with fur around the rim, but her face is very pale and she’s shivering.

We both pretend this is totally normal – that she often pops over like this, until I’ve made coffee, and we’re sitting at the table. Then she looks at me, and says it was minus eight degrees in her bedroom the night before, and she asks if I mind if she stays until Friday. I tell her she can stay as long as she likes.