Page 65 of Light Up
Corey giggled. “Pull mine.”
Tal tried to make it so that his side broke, but failed. He handed the larger bit of cracker to Corey. The contents were silver cufflinks shaped like reindeer and Corey smiled. “So cute.” But about as useful to him as the silver dice were to Tal.
“Why was the snowman looking through the carrots?” Corey read his joke.
“He was picking his nose?”
“You’re not supposed to guess the right answer.” Corey mock-frowned.
“You’re the pair who won the snow sculpting competition,” Shen said from the seat next to Tal.
“Yes.” Tal hoped that would deter further conversation.
“It was very good. Are you a professional?” Harry asked.
Yes, he was a professional but not of snow sculpting. What sort of question was that? He didn’t answer and could feel the silence growing awkward.
“He should be, shouldn’t he?” Corey said. “He can paint too, make lovely bowls and decorate Christmas biscuits like an expert. I’ve not found anything he’s not brilliant at yet.” He shot Tal a bright smile. “Though it’s early days. We only met…” Corey suddenly stopped talking and frowned. “Not very long ago.”
Tal nodded. It was… How many days had they been here? He couldn’t remember either. That was crazy. He tried to work it out but everything blurred in his memory.
“You didn’t know one another before?” asked Charlotte.
“We were in a car accident down the road and walked here,” Corey said.
The starter arrived as Corey was telling a rapt audience what had happened. Tal noticed he downplayed his role in saving him from a burning vehicle. The conversation turned to cars. Corey was talking to Diana about arctic mirages and Tal realised Harry had asked him a question about the snow.
“Our helicopter got here just before the snow storm,” Harry said. “It wasn’t forecast, was it, this amount of snow?”
“No,” Tal said.
“Things were dicey for a while, even so,” Sheng said. “If I’d not spotted the hotel landing pad we could have ended up in a field.”
“You weren’t booked in here?” Tal asked.
“No. We were lucky there was a room for us.”
Tal’s head throbbed for a moment. He wanted to ask another question but it flittered out of his mind as he began to eat. Smoked salmon mousse topped by caviar, served with thin slices of crisp brown toast. It was delicious. Corey carefully removed the caviar from the top of his.
“You don’t like it?” Tal asked.
“I tried it. I don’t like the way it pops in my mouth. Unpleasant. Not like popping candy at all. Fish eggs, right?”
“Yes.”
“Bleuch.”
“What sort of cars did you have?” Calvin asked. “You going to buy the same? I can recommend BMW. Mine is superb.”
Oh God. Not cars again.“Not thought about it,” Tal said.
But that didn’t stop Calvin giving them every detail of his, until Corey interrupted.
“Do you all actually like caviar? Or it is an emperor’s new clothes sort of thing?”
He’s saving me.The change of conversation meant Tal didn’t have to talk about cars. Though he had an equal lack of interest in types of caviar. Topics discussed with strangers were usually cars, holidays, children or sports, never about things he was really interested in.
“And what do you do?” Lucas asked Corey.
