Page 13 of Light Up
“Why don’t you have one of my gloves for the case-pulling hand?” Corey removed it and offered it to him. “They’re a bit big on me so should be fine for you.”
“Thank you.”
“Pre-warmed,” Corey said.
“So it is.” And it felt lovely. Tal kept wriggling his fingers around the handle of his case to get the blood flowing.
“Christmas with friends sounds fun.” There was a wistful tone to Corey’s voice. “Eating nice food, making unusual cocktails, going for walks, maybe with a dog or two. Not making cocktails with the dogs, obviously. Playing board games,watching TV, decorating a tree, opening presents and liking what you’d been given. I guess some Christmases are like that.”
Not the Christmas Tal had planned.
“And to continue the fantasy… It all happens in a cosy cottage, in a village called Christmas, with festive lights everywhere and snow sculpture competitions, an ice rink and beautifully decorated biscuits and the scent of gingerbread swirling in the air. I’d stroll happily down the high street looking into beautifully decorated shop windows as snow fell and never feel anything but warm.”
Corey had quite an imagination. Tal mostly didn’t.
Corey chuckled. “I’ve watched a lot of soppy movies. Consequently, my expectations for Christmas are way too high. One of the reasons I’m not very fond of the season, to be honest. At no point in my life has it ever quite lived up to what I wanted it to be. Not when I wrote pleading letters to Santa in my very best handwriting for…a particular toy, nor when I was left with one of my uncle’s friends over the Christmas period while he went on holiday to somewhere I apparently wouldn’t like. Mean bastard. And after I left home, and theoretically could do whatever I liked, with whoever I liked, wherever I liked, I didn’t…have the money.”
“Why do I feel that wasn’t what you were going to say?”
“I don’t have money to splurge on Christmas but you’re right. There was an incident with my friends and it happened just before Christmas.”
Corey rushed on, as though he was trying to avoid talking about it. “It’s such a massive build up to a frenzy of eating and drinking, and it starts earlier and earlier. Christmas stuff in the shops in September. Trees and lights up in homes in early November.” He kicked at the snow. “I can’t be the only person who ends up disappointed.” He sighed. “Now I feel selfish andentitled for whining about it. Sorry. Mostly, I just hunker down until it’s all over.”
That sounded familiar.
They emerged from the shelter of the trees to be caught in an arctic blast that blew the snow horizontally across the road, almost taking them with it. Tal dug in his heels and shivered. Visibility was terrible, conditions blizzard-like.
“Bloody hell, I suddenly feel a lot colder,” Corey said with a low moan. “Your blazing car seems strangely attractive now.”
Tal agreed, but when the fire had gone out, which would have happened eventually, then what would they have done? He couldn’t even think of a way they could have set fire to Corey’s vehicle.
Since they’d started to walk, nothing had passed them. He tried his phone and there was still no signal. They were doing the right thing walking to safety. It wasn’t as if they were in the middle of the Scottish Highlands. There was bound to be a settlement sooner or later. Though he wished he was wearing his ski jacket, which was usefully hanging up in his wardrobe, and his walking boots, which were just as usefully on the rack in the downstairs cloakroom. This getaway had not included plans for cross-country hikes, so he’d not anticipated the need for that sort of gear. Nor had he seen on the news that snow was forecast. And he checked the weather regularly.
“Should we yell for help?” Corey asked. “I can scream really loud. It’s one of my super-powers.”
Despite their predicament, that made Tal smile. “Who do you think is going to hear us?”
“A flock of sheep?”
“And you screaming wouldn’t send them stampeding in the opposite direction?”
“Not if I used my best sheep-attracting scream.”
Tal was almost tempted to ask to hear it. “I suppose they might keep us warm if we could catch a couple and cuddle up to them.”
“Sometimes, people who are really cold start to think they’re too hot and take off all their clothes. Actually, if you’re going to die of hypothermia, it’s not a bad way to go, is it? Believing that you’re hot not cold?”
“Paradoxical undressing.”
“Is that what it’s called? I wonder if anyone’s survived if they did that.”
“Unlikely. It has something to do with peripheral vasoconstriction. The last-ditch attempt of the person to change their body temperature before they fall unconscious and die.”
“I thought you were an architect, not a doctor.”
“I have medical friends.”
“Useful. Okay. Oh God, I’d hate to get found frozen to death clutching a sheep, particularly if I’d taken my clothes off. People would get entirely the wrong idea. Imagine the headline.Pervert Meets Icy Demise.”
