The Snow Angel Read online

  The world buzzed and roared all around Emily. Images poured into her mind as she mentally raced through everything they had. All those carefully hoarded bulwarks against the unknown, the funds to provide for the children, a guarantee for their future. All the safety nets – the house (mortgage free), the savings . . . Something occurred to her; she managed to speak. ‘My . . . my legacy . . . the money Mum and Dad left me . . .’

  ‘Gone,’ he said abruptly. ‘I took it. I thought I was making us rich. But I’ve made us paupers. We’ve got nothing, Emily. It’s all gone, all of it.’

  She was dazed and breathless, grasping at her seat, her neck suddenly barely able to support her head. ‘What . . . gone? All of it? You mean . . .’ She stopped, trying to take it in. An hour ago she’d been sitting at her dressing table, picking her jewellery, spraying scent on her freshly showered skin, finishing her make-up. She’d been listening to the babysitter reading the children one last story before their light was turned off. Even though she’d been worried about Carrie, she’d been happy, though she hadn’t known it.

  Will went on relentlessly, not trying to soften what he was saying, as though he’d hardened himself to delivering the blows. ‘Yes. It’s all gone. I don’t have a job. There’s not enough in the current account to pay more than a couple of months of mortgage payments, before we’ve bought any food or paid any bills.’

  ‘We’ll sell the house,’ she said frantically. ‘We’ll move.’

  ‘The bank will take it and we’ll still owe them everything on the slate.’

  ‘No, no, that can’t be right. We’ll sell it. The market’s healthy enough around us. We’ll . . .’ She squeezed her eyes shut against the chaos exploding inside her head. Nothing? My money from Mum and Dad is gone? Outrage boomed in some part of her mind, and a terrible anger was screaming for her attention, but she had no time for it now, not right now. She had to solve a problem first. But what was the problem? We have no money, Will has no job and he might be criminally responsible for Vlady’s actions. He’s wiped out everything, everything, everything. In one part of her mind she was thinking about selling her jewellery, taking all her fancy bits and pieces to market on eBay. In another she was already mourning the loss of what they’d had. And yet . . . that wasn’t the problem she had to solve right now. It was something else altogether.

  She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at Will. They were speeding again, the needle moving inexorably up from eighty towards eighty-five miles an hour. The car was alone on the stretch of motorway, hugging the central reservation as it sped through the night in the fast lane. Far off in the darkness flickered the red lights of distant traffic on which they were steadily gaining. Slowly, Will turned his head and looked at her, his eyes strange in the blue-black light.

  He’s been so different lately. Not like my Will at all. How long has he been like this? Not weeks. Months. Even longer . . . She didn’t want to admit how long it had been. Oh Will, what’s happened to you? When did you change? Why haven’t I let myself see it? She had the sudden urgent sensation that she had to reassure him that he was loved and needed; she had to pull him back from some awful pit . . . but where were the right words?

  ‘There’s no coming back from this,’ he said in a tone of such utter bleakness that she felt her blood go icy in her veins. ‘We’re ruined. It’s over.’

  ‘No.’ Panic began to speed through her. ‘Over? It’s not over.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve failed you. The children. Everyone. I can’t face what will happen to us, and you shouldn’t have to either.’

  She felt the car take another powerful thrust forward. The needle shook up to ninety, and then over. ‘Will,’ she said, fear gripping her insides. ‘Slow down. What are you doing?’

  She realised he was still looking at her. How long had it been since he’d glanced at the road? The speedometer moved over ninety-five.

  ‘Slow down! Watch where you’re going!’ she cried, her voice tinny with panic. Carrie! she thought. She saw her daughter tucked up in bed asleep, her forehead a little damp with fever. Joe! The little boy was curled up in his cot, thumb in his mouth, eyelashes curling on his soft cheek. ‘Will! Stop it!’

  The strange hooded eyes didn’t take their gaze off her. ‘I’m sorry, Emily,’ he said in a flat tone. With one swift movement he pulled the steering wheel downwards with his left hand. Emily felt the car career abruptly to her left, the suddenness throwing her to the right, as they hurtled over the middle lane towards pitch black.

  She opened her mouth to scream but they were already off the motorway and all around them was an explosion of sound and blackness and vast movement so inexorable that she was unable to do anything but surrender to it.

  Chapter Two

  1962

  Oh please, please, don’t go!

  As she emerged from the side street, Cressie had seen the bus’s huge red curved behind and had started to trot, hoping the jostling mass of people waiting to board would keep it at the stop until she got there. But the crowd seemed to melt onto it, and her way was blocked by people stepping in front of her or loitering almost purposefully, it seemed, to prevent her reaching it.

  Blast! I must get it. I can’t keep Papa waiting. More than my life’s worth.

  She broke into a run, sidestepping the slower pedestrians who blocked her way, one hand pressing her hat to her head, but she could hear the grating roar of the engine and see the great behind shaking like a huge lumbering animal preparing to pounce on something.

  ‘Please wait!’ she cried, hoping a tender-hearted conductor might see her and hold the bus for a moment, but her voice sailed upwards and away unheeded. The bus started to pull away from the pavement.

  Oh, bother it! She slowed a little, panting, and then a determination gripped her. No, I shan’t give up. I want that bus! And she was running again as the bus rumbled away, too big to gather speed at any rapid rate. She was gaining on it now, the platform tantalisingly close, and she was just planning how she would reach out and grab the steel pole to help her leap on-board when it seemed to begin pulling away from her at too great a speed.

  I shall have to stop, I’ve missed it, she thought, her chest burning and her heart pounding. Then she saw a tall shape appear on the platform and a hand extend out towards her.

  ‘Come on!’ a voice urged. ‘You can do it!’

  As if bound to obey, she found a sudden burst of speed, reached out and grasped the hand. It closed on hers, the long fingers wrapping around her wrist, and as she leapt up towards the platform, the stranger pulled and she flew upwards, feeling suddenly quite weightless, as if she’d unexpectedly taken off and begun to fly. The next moment she had landed on the platform, breathless and delighted to find herself on-board the bus as it ground its way up Piccadilly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she panted, looking up at the man who had helped her. He released her wrist and she pulled her hand away.

  A pair of deep-set grey eyes gazed down at her, a look of amusement making them sparkle with a bluish light. She blinked at him, wondering if she knew this man somehow, he seemed so strangely familiar: the pale complexion, the fine-boned face and the large forehead with a swoop of brown hair falling over it. But I don’t know him. I’m sure of it.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he said in a low, rather musical voice. ‘You’re obviously in a hurry.’

  ‘Yes . . . yes.’ She felt an urge to explain to him exactly why she’d had to catch the bus but then looked away, a little embarrassed. There was no need. Why would he be interested, after all? She went to make her way into the bus but all the seats on the lower deck were taken and a hulking man in a raincoat stood in her way, one hand clutching a leather strap that dangled from the roof.

  ‘No room upstairs either,’ her rescuer said conversationally. ‘I just came down and saw you pelting along after us. Are you going far?’

  ‘No,’ she said, still getting her breath back. Her cheeks felt warm. ‘Only to Pall Mall.’

  He raised
an eyebrow. ‘You could have walked that. Or run it, at the pace you were going.’ He glanced out at the road through the open gap by the platform where they stood. ‘Look, we’re stopping at lights again.’

  She wanted to explain that, even so, the bus was quicker but she had the faint feeling he was laughing at her somehow, and so said nothing. As he looked out, she took the opportunity to observe him more closely. His face was one of those deceptive types: seemingly rather ordinary, a little too pale perhaps, but otherwise unremarkable until one noticed the structure of it, with the hollows beneath the cheeks emphasising their high bones, and the straight lines of the brow and the nose. It held a hint of nobility and the light in the eyes was intelligent and sensitive. It was only now, standing so close to him, that she could see the shape of his eyes, the flecks of green and gold within the grey of the irises, and the dark lashes.

  He’s beautiful, she thought, and then, surprised that she should think such a thing, she dragged her gaze away in case he sensed her gawping at him.

  The conductor came down the stairs, calling for fares as he joined them on the platform, crowding them even more. Cressie paid her money and he churned out a ticket from the canister hanging from his neck just as the bus pulled up at the next stop. In the jostling of the incomers, she got pushed past the raincoat man and into the depths of the bus. A man stood up to offer her a seat but she refused with a breathless, ‘No . . . no, thank you. I’m getting off in a minute.’ Her helper was now obscured from her view. She could only catch a glimpse of his mac, a beige gabardine, and his hand on the pole, long slender fingers wrapped around it. The fingers that a few minutes before had been clasped around her wrist. Her skin seemed to burn where he’d touched it.

  You’re being ridiculous, she scolded herself. Besides, there’s Adam.

  Adam had been paying court to her for a few weeks now, ever since she’d been placed next to him at the dinner party at the Robertsons’. A pupil in legal chambers at Temple Inn, he had a promising future and Cressie had no doubt that her father would be more than pleased with him as a suitor. He was nice enough and she tried to see the best in him, but she couldn’t quite overcome her resistance to his looks. He was plain, that was all there was to it. She didn’t find him in the least appealing despite the scoldings she administered to herself for being so shallow and not responding to the person within rather than the outer shell.

  Sometimes it occurred to her that while she was telling herself off and suffering waves of guilt for being so superficial, none of the young men at balls and parties ever paid any attention to poor Alicia Bond, who had inherited her father’s looks. The fact that she had also inherited her mother’s very sweet nature was neither here nor there. There were naked double standards, with the girls judged by their faces and the boys by their intelligence and prospects.

  I’m just as bad. Look at me, dazzled by a handsome man without knowing anything about him.

  She tried to glimpse him again as she clutched hard at a strap. The bus rumbled on up Piccadilly, making her sway and bump against her fellow passengers as it halted at lights and then surged off again when they changed. She pushed against the drag of the bus as it swung round a sharp bend. Was he still there? she wondered, but she could no longer even see his arm or his hand on the pole. When she got off at the bottom of Haymarket, pushing her way out through the crowded lower deck, he was gone. He’d got off somewhere and she hadn’t noticed.

  Oh. Her heart fell, though what she’d been hoping for, she had no idea. He was already striding away somewhere, the distance between them increasing every moment. Then she caught a glimpse of the clock hanging over the Theatre Royal. Only five minutes to meet Papa. She dashed over the road, dodging cars, vans and buzzing motorbikes, and headed down Pall Mall.

  The staff in the club knew her. The man in the gold-buttoned uniform took her coat and hat, and watched sympathetically as she smoothed her hair while she got her breath back. When she’d recovered, she made her way towards the green dining room. Ladies were only allowed in this small part of the club: the stretch of corridor from the marble-floored hall to the dining room and this room itself, green and gilt, lit by crystal chandeliers and hung with huge oil portraits. The rest of the place remained a mystery revealed only to the men who belonged to the club, but she caught a whiff of cigar smoke and the tang of whisky from one room, the musty smell of books and newspapers from another and guessed what lay hidden from view. She was not much interested in it: the snoozing clergy, the portly gentlemen in suits absorbing the day’s news while they coughed and drank and nodded at one another. As far as she was concerned, they could have their sleepy old clubs while the world outside changed and grew more interesting. If only they saw what she did when she took the Underground out east.

  Standing at the entrance to the green dining room, she spotted her father at once, sitting at his favourite table by the window where he could watch people going up and down the front steps. He must have seen her arrive, but nevertheless he was simultaneously consulting his watch and glancing up at the doorway with a stern expression that barely softened when he saw Cressie standing there. By the time she reached his table, though, he had evidently relented and was almost smiling.

  I must be in his good books.

  ‘Only a little late.’ He stood up. A waiter hurried up and pulled out a chair for Cressie.

  ‘Two minutes?’ she asked, sitting down.

  ‘Yes, two,’ her father said gravely, taking his seat again. His mania for punctuality and order ruled all their lives. Almost three.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Papa.’ The waiter came up, picked up the napkin that lay on her plate, snapped it out and draped it gently on her lap. The rituals of the meal began: the menus in large red leather folders – hers without prices – the choice of the food, the little slip and silver pencil that was brought over so that her father could write out what they wanted. Water glasses were filled, and a decanter of claret was brought over by the white-gloved sommelier and her father’s glass filled while hers was left empty.

  ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’ he asked, as the ceremonies unfolded around them. ‘Soup first. Then beef or lamb?’

  ‘Lamb, please,’ Cressie said, although she quailed at the thought of one of the big club lunches which always seemed to sit heavily inside her for hours, so she felt like the wolf in the fairy tale whose belly was filled with stones while he slept. ‘I’ve been in the library, reading up about educational techniques.’

  Her father’s expression darkened. ‘You intend to go through with it then?’

  ‘Of course.’ She sipped her water. ‘You know I do.’

  ‘I see I won’t be able to stop you.’ He sighed.

  ‘Why would you want to?’ returned Cressie with a touch of tartness, more than she would usually allow herself when talking to her father. But honestly, why is he being so obstructive? I can’t see the problem. I’m not leaving home or anything like that, only spreading my wings a little . . . trying to be useful.

  He hesitated while he handed the menu slip to the waiter. ‘I don’t think . . . I don’t know. If you want education, there are plenty of things you could do – a course or something . . . French, sewing . . .’

  She laughed. ‘I don’t need the educating! I want to educate others, you know that. I want to do what I can to help. If you went out and saw what I’ve seen, you’d know there’s so much to be done . . .’ Enthusiasm surged through her and she longed to talk, tell him everything and convince him. If he only knew how things really were just a mile or so from this place with its ludicrous self-importance and all the plush cushioning against reality. Not far away from white-gloved waiters and chandeliers and pudding trolleys, children were going hungry, growing up ignorant and condemned to a life without the kind of comfort or charm her father considered essential to a tolerable existence.

  ‘But really, Cressida, what can you do?’ he retorted. ‘I don’t mean it to sound as though you can do nothing, but real
ly . . . If you’re bored, why not do a little wholesome charity work – like holding bazaars and so on? Once you’re married, which could be very soon, you won’t be working. I don’t understand why you want to go to such trouble when at most you could be teaching for a year. What good will that do for the downtrodden, eh?’

  She stared at him, seeing suddenly how very old he had become lately. She had a picture of him in her brain that must have formed in her childhood: a dark-haired, vigorous man with icy blue eyes and an air of determination. Sometimes it came as a shock to realise that man had gone and the one in his place was stouter, his hair now gun-metal and silver, his cheeks crosshatched with red veins from the club claret, his eyes a little faded. He didn’t see the future as she did – a glorious unknown full of adventures yet to be lived – but as a postscript to a vanished time when life was better. He wanted her to embrace his vision of the world as a place of dangers and irritants best avoided, and to see her safely tucked away like a child put to bed at night, where she could slumber her own life through. He disliked the changes in the world and the loud demands of the young for something other than what had gone before.

  But I’m young. I want to be a part of it. Life’s changing for everyone. For women. For the poor. She looked down at her fingers twisting in her lap, choking silently on her speech, her throat feeling full, as though everything she wanted to say was jammed there, unable to escape.

  A waiter came over with a basket of bread rolls and her father took one and broke it open. Then he looked up with a different expression and said, ‘That reminds me . . . I was talking to old Few last night. His nephew’s only gone and become a painter.’

  ‘Oh?’ Cressie was polite but she had no idea who her father was talking about.

  ‘Naturally, it’s a blow for the family. Few’s the boy’s guardian, you see, since the parents died and there’s only a sister otherwise. They’ve all tried to talk him out of it but he’s determined, apparently, so Few is trying to take it well.’ Her father glanced up with a smile. ‘We old men sometimes do, you know.’