Let It Snow by Sue Moorcroft

Author:Sue Moorcroft
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-08-27T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

They drove towards black-and-white peaks that wore clouds around their heads like scarves. Steep fields and tall pines interspersed modern buildings and traditional Swiss chalets. Lily lost count of the tunnels they whizzed through but for the last fifteen minutes their route had taken them east of a lake called Ägerisee, climbing steadily up, up and up, through a village called Alosen, the snow cleared tidily to the sides of the roads.

Then, finally, they passed a sign saying Schützenberg and Emily shouted, ‘We’re here!’ They all craned to drink in the rows of houses perched as if on ledges and shuttered and painted gasthauses, one flying the Swiss flag. Shops clustered together near a church with such a tall, pointed spire that the snow had failed to cling except in a band around the base like an Elizabethan ruff. Cheery Christmas trees or star-shaped lights decorated balconies. Snow lay on every roof like cotton wool and, for some reason, a big orange model of a cow stood on a porch wearing a string of Christmas lights. Its enormous eyes made it look shocked to see the minibus emerging through the snowflakes.

‘Max says his house in Terrassenweg is quite high up,’ Lily breathed as Isaac changed down the gears when the sat nav pointed them firmly uphill. She could hardly sit still for excitement.

Isaac grinned. ‘Thank goodness for snow tyres.’

Evidently they’d been through the middle of town and were now heading into a residential district where drives were flanked by heaps of snow and children were slithering home from school in snowboots, wearing colourful reflective yokes over their coats. Even children who looked to be as young as eight walked without adult supervision.

‘Switzerland seems a well-behaved place, doesn’t it?’ observed Carola.

Finally, Isaac made a right and the sat nav lady pronounced, ‘You have reached your destination.’ They drew up outside a tall grey building wearing a pretty white hat, fairy lights frothing along its balconies. Isaac turned and gave Lily an expectant look.

‘Oh, yes, I have to ring Max,’ she said, waking up from gazing at what seemed to her a magical snow scene outside.

But she never made the phone call because suddenly three figures wrapped up in ski jackets and boots were hurrying down the driveway towards them. ‘Tubb!’ Carola cried, fumbling with the door handle. ‘Janice!’

Lily felt an enormous smile stretch across her face, jolted by an unexpectedly deep pleasure at seeing these familiar faces in unfamiliar surroundings. ‘And Max too.’ Janice’s son, Max, had left the village before Lily ever moved there but he was a regular at The Three Fishes when he and the family came home for holidays.

Then doors were opening all over the minibus. People leapt out, gasping at the temperature that had plummeted in the over five hundred metres altitude they’d gained since leaving Würenlos. Hoods went up and coats were hastily zipped.

Isaac put his hand on Lily’s knee. ‘OK?’

She nodded, aware that he alone knew her dual purpose in being here and suddenly finding it hard to speak.

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