The Couple at Number 9: a Novel by Claire Douglas

Author:Claire Douglas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

28

Rose

February 1980

THE DAY AFTER I RAN INTO JOEL IN THE VILLAGE SQUARE the snow came.

You woke me up, scrambling into my room and jumping on my bed, an angel in your long white nightie. ‘Snow! Snow!’ you cried, shaking me awake and dragging me to the window, the wooden floorboards cold underfoot. You looked so cute, your big brown eyes wide with delight and your hair in dark tendrils around your shoulders. Thick dense flakes were falling fast and settling onto the layer already on the ground. The sky was a perfect pearly white and gave the impression the world was wrapped in a quilt.

‘No playschool today! I’m not going out in this,’ I said, climbing back into bed and snuggling down.

You clapped your hands excitedly. ‘Snowman!’

‘Yes, snowman. But later.’

Daphne appeared at the bedroom door then, dressed in many layers with thick socks pulled up over pyjama bottoms, which ballooned over the top giving the impression she was wearing old-fashioned breeches. Her long fair hair was a messy halo around her face. ‘It’s bloody freezing,’ she said, blowing theatrically onto her hands.

‘Snow! Snow!’ you sang, grabbing her hands, pulling her around, like you were playing a game of ring-a-roses. Daphne threw her head back and laughed and, as I watched the two of you, I felt my heart burst with happiness. The three of us, in that little cottage, cosy and safe, cocooned from the world.

We didn’t need anybody else.

We lit the fire in the front room and Daphne made hot chocolate, heating milk on the stove, while I rummaged in cupboards making sure we had enough food for the next few days, just in case we couldn’t get to the shops. I bought most of my food in the grocery store but once a month I was forced to drive to the big Safeway on the roundabout, two miles or so out of the village. Luckily I’d only gone the week before.

‘We’ve got lots of tins of beans and spaghetti hoops,’ I announced. ‘And I froze some bread yesterday.’

‘We’ve still got batches of my homemade soup,’ Daphne said, handing me a mug of hot chocolate.

You were already sitting at the kitchen table slurping yours noisily, your little legs swinging. Under your nightie I could see you’d pulled your bright yellow wellies onto the wrong feet. ‘Lolly, sweetheart, you need to get dressed before we can go outside.’

‘Daffy,’ you said, standing up.

‘You’re a big girl now, you can get dressed by yourself,’ I said, rolling my eyes at Daphne but she flashed you a beatific smile.

‘Of course I’ll help,’ she said, taking your hand. ‘Come on, Princess Lollipop, let’s find lots of warm clothes to put on.’

She always called you Princess Lollipop and you loved it. You loved her.

Daphne spent hours with you that day, building a snowman in the garden. I watched for a bit out of the window, laughing with you both every time the head fell off, which it did, often. ‘It’s harder than it looks,’ mouthed Daphne.

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